On the Darkside, this makes you a cold, cruel, petty-minded slave driver with unsuspected yet unquenchable ambition and an addiction to tightfisted penny-pinching.
ANNOYING HABITS
Punctuality
You always arrive 30 minutes early, to impress important people and make underlings feel insecure, unless the inner goat has seized control, when you won't turn up at all because you are busy corrupting innocents.
Toothpaste
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Capricorn toothpaste tube is always tightly rolled from the bottom up. When it's finished, you unroll it, cut it open, and scrape off the last smears.
Temper gauge
0 to boiling point in one second (although you have high Latent Tetchiness levels and are easy to rile). You never forgive a slight and, if shown disrespect, will charge at the offender and headbutt them into a ravine.
personalitypetty, parsimonious, pessimistic
Brightsiders have got it in for you, haven't they? You must be familiar with the list (but don't think that's going to stop me rubbing it in): mean, miserly, cruel, cold-hearted, tightfisted, self-opinionated, petty, negative, unforgiving, pessimistic, etc, etc. Scorpio is the only other sign whose Darkside is quite to tediously well documented by the Pollyanna Tendency, but they are sort of redeemed (at least on the Darkside) by their magnetism, erotic overload, etc.; you appear far too respectable to have such a thing as a saving disgrace about you.
Virgo may be the zodiac's perfectionist nitpicker, but you are the one with the stamina and relentless bloody-mindedness to keep wearing away until the world follows The Way of the Goat, because they have lost the will to live. Resistance is exhausted by endless spirit-dulling routine and petty regulations. You very much enjoyed F. Kafka's meticulous accounts of a well-run administrative department and effective judiciary system; if only more people thought that way, your job would be so much easier. A herd of corporate-minded goats can achieve the total desertification of an alpine meadow if they keep nibbling long enough; you can achieve total desertification of the soul using much the same method.
You may bleat that you are insecure inside (so who isn't), but it doesn't help that you come on so ultra-respectable and old-at-heart on the outside. You are a gift to Gemini and Sagittarius since you loathe being teased, embarrassed, or made to look undignified. You'd do absolutely anything to preserve your social status (why do you think there are so many blood-soaked net drapes, bizarre gardening accidents, and inexplicable and fatal outbreaks of salmonella in respectable leafy suburbs?). You'd also prefer to keep your ruthless, pathological ambition under wraps, in case anyone notices what you are doing and pulls away from the ladder.
As for your famous Scrooge gene, that is far too much of a cliché to discuss here. So yes, you are Hon. Sec. of the local branch of the Skinflint Society and author of a monograph on String Saving for Success, yadda yadda yadda, but the real reason for all that penny-pinching and wet-blanketing is to conserve your resources and energy for what you actually get up to.
Because the formal, conventional pinstripes and stiff manner are all a front, aren't they? Underneath it all you are a mad square-eyed goat, fourth cousin to the Horned God, the living symbol of mischievous lechery and anarchic goings-on. Nothing can be proved, of course, but the general folk opinion is that you have a timeshare in Pan Demonium, are on cups-of-sugar-borrowing terms with Beelzebub, and spend most Sunday nights clustered around a pentangle in the nude. If nothing else, it explains the number of gifted, doomed Capricorn musicians who evidently went down to the crossroads and came to some arrangement with the Prince of Darkness.
b***h rating
B++. You don't really have the spontaneity to b***h, since it is undignified, but you write excoriating emails and sharply worded letters to the more respected newspapers when you feel your status is being impugned. Your inner goat has no such scruples, however, especially after a few cups of black wine.
Collective noun
A procedural tip for non-Capricorns. You may find yourself, for some bizarre zodiacal reason, in a freezing banking hall full of Capricorns. The soft clunk of closing vault doors balances the swish of savings being transferred to higher-yielding accounts. This is an Audit of Capricorns. Bring your own lunch.
FAVE DEADLY SIN
After statistical analyses have been completed, you conclude that the DS that best matches your profile is Avarice, the sophisticated version of Greed. Greed just sounds gross and fat-making, but Avarice is cold accumulation, an insatiable hunger that sucks you dry from the inside, so that you have hollow cheeks and a tiny, tiny heart, and squat like a dragon on treasure you can't spend. However, your inner goat makes up for this when let out, going straight for naughty but life-affirming Lust and Gluttony (goats eat anything).
blame your planetstern, stifling, strong-willed
Twelve of the bank's more desperately feckless customers have just staged a mass suicide in your office because you refused to extend their overdrafts; good riddance—people should learn to live within their means like you do; you have successfully refused entry to another 62 asylum-seeking orphans on a exquisitely obscure technicality you unearthed after ten hours' hard graft at the paperwork; your petition to ban workplace smiling has attracted another five signatures. It's been a good day. Don't start puffing up with pride, though; you didn't achieve this all by yourself. Thank you planet, Saturn.
Saturn is the sixth rock from the sun, the large (but not as large as Jupiter) dignified one, banded with the rings of office that show just who is second-in-command around here, and accompanied by a grade I personal private secretary (the moon Titan) and 22 administrative assistants (grades 2 and 3). It takes 29 1/2 years to proceed around the sun and return to its original position on our birthchart, so comes back into our lives just when we think we might bust out in a different direction, to point out the restrictive clauses in our contracts.
Saturn is named for a pre-Roman god who taught humanity how to plow and was actually quite fun, with his own raunchy annual festival (Saturnalia) and everything; but he became equated with scary Cronos, son of Uranus, and father of the Olympic gods. Cronos castrated his own father to get his hands on power; an example to ambitious sons everywhere.
who's got your number?check out the opposition
Your polar opposite sign is Cancer: the snappy, soft-bellied, success-phobic sentimentalist. What would an upwardly mobile, tough-minded, tunnel-visioned, pragmatist like you want with an unreliable mood-driven despair-junkie like your average Cancer? How do you have this—shall we say—understanding? Well, like good cop and bad cop, or arch villain and fixer, you need each other to make the Darkside work for you. It's all about elements (undesirable ones, of course). You are Earth; Cancer is Water. That makes mud—Cancer likes to wallow in it' you get to work drying it out, employing illegal immigrant labor and cornering the market in cheap pottery piggy banks.
As you sit at midnight in your icy offices (it may be 20 below, but no way are you switching on the heating before January), preparing the next batch of pink slips for the old retainers you promised your dad you'd keep on (as if!), or composing terse emails threatening to withdraw canteen privileges from the entire workforce until whoever took a cookie from the executive cookie jar returns it, can’t you sense within yourself the reproachful gaze of two beady little eyes?
Respect your inner Cancerian—it rounds off your jagged bits and prompts you to behave at least in public as if you give a hoot for other people's needs and feelings, so you are less likely to be shot by a crazed underling. Careful, though: get too soft and you'll end up as scapegoat.
sexyou can't judge a book ...
It's Saturday night, time for your weekly bout of connubial unpleasantness, so it's on with the buttoned-up-to-the-neck pajamas and off with the light as you buckle down to your contractual obligations. You do this without fail every week, regardless of whether a partner is present; it's all over very quickly (you know exactly what is going to happen and when), so you can soon get back to your petit point. Indeed, some of you have developed a technique that allows you to continue with the less taxing stitches throughout the entire two minutes.
What a nice respectable cover story; but some of us have not forgotten that you are, underneath all those layers of bedtime flannel, a goat—a randy lascivious long-eyed lecher. Twitch aside the polyester sheets fast enough, and we catch a fleeting glimpse of your inner satyr, part man, part horse, but mostly goat (horns, you see, and clove hooves), notorious for its unquenchable lust and the enormity of its schlong. So don't act the repressed libidophobe with me.
DARKSIDE DATE
Naturally you will get an assignation with a young person because you are a respected member of society, with whom it is an honor and a privilege to go out. You make the arrangements through the proper channels, via a reputable agency or trusted family members. More adventurous Capricorns might try speed dating, which eliminates the waffle and waste you cannot abide, or even mail order. You take them to lunch where you always have lunch and order what you always order (Dutch treat). You quiz them about their academic qualifications, fiscal status, current employment, prospects, and long-terms plans, then whisk them off to the free exhibition (A Hundred Years of the Spokeshave) at the local museum. As dusk falls, you shake hands and hurry home to check their family tree.
What kind of love rat are you?
You don't dump (you have a binding agreement) unless betrayed, when your revenge is terrible and reaches down the generations. However, few people ever even know that they are the object of your affection (and therefore prospective dumpees), for you despise flirting and never utter the L-word again after you have fulfilled statutory demands by saying it once, usually out of anyone's hearing.
IMCOMPATIBILITY RATING
Aries—you know what they say about separating the sheep from the goats? Well, it's true.
Taurus—they do it their way; you do it your way.
Gemini—tease you mercilessly in front of the neighbors.
Cancer—they take pity on lame ducks; you shoot them.
Leo—you grovel ingratiatingly to royalty; they walk all over you.
Virgo—nothing either one of you does is ever good enough for the other one.
Libra—they are your trophy partner; you are their meal ticket.
Scorpio—despise you because your ambition is so obvious.
Sagittarius—saw through the rungs of your career ladder.
Capricorn—who is this rude, self-opinionated curmudgeon?
Aquarius—they're on Mt. Chalk, you're on Mt. Cheese.
Pisces—always slide off the hook just when you think you've got their life organized for them.
relationshipsfriends in high places
You are unlikely to be at a party (unless your inner goat has chewed through its rope)because you despise wasting your valuable time and resources on fun and levity that yield no tangible returns. Frankly, you'd rather be at home gloating over your assets. You've given up on friends because they do not appreciate your help, even though they need it since your methods are so much more efficient than theirs; remember that time when you kindly used your power and influence at the bank to cancel all Libra's credit cards because you knew they had exceeded their limit and were incurring punitive interest charges? And they call you and interfering m**********r? Well, really.
But you are obsessed with status and respectability, and you realize that, however velcro-clad your little goat hooves are, you need help negotiating some of the trickier traverses of the social mountain; so you cultivate useful acquaintances on strategic ledges. Brightsiders say you are a terrible judge of character; you say why waste time on character when only social standing count? What's wrong with obscene groveling to appalling people who are higher up than you and might throw down a rope? You'd have invited Augusto Pinochet and Pol Pot around for Sunday brunch if you'd thought it would make you look good at the golf club.
You approve of marriage (you approve of any institution): it's a very sensible way to tie up money and property to your advantage. What love got to do with it?
workrespect my authority!
You make a point of getting into the office just that strategic half hour before everyone else, and are always seen to be the last to leave. The boss appears impressed, and the rest of the workforce starts the day feeling surly and inadequate, which is just how you like it, for it makes you look better—although they get their own back by bribing Gemini to tease you, as they know it will provoke a flurry of pompous emails that can be quoted in the bar after work.
It doesn't really matter what the work is, as long as it revolves round a greasy pole you can climb up, because although you show the world the dull, neat exterior of a harmless office drudge, inside you seethe with the kind of high-voltage ambition the Macbeths could only dream of. On the way up you brown-nose the boss class while trampling on the heads of those poor saps who gave you a leg up in the early days, or whose good ideas you have passed off as your own. When hoisted to middle management level, you issue Cartman directives insisting on respect for your authority and devise a Five Year Plan only you can administer.
Your aim is power, not glory; you don't want to be the front person (Leo can do that); as number two, you get to make all the real decisions, and this gives you a chance to make life hell for all those smartasses who laughed at you in the first paragraph. Plus, if you are number two in a dubious organization, when the law catches up with you, you can simply tell them you were just following orders.
DREAM JOBS
You don't have time to waste on idle dreams as Mr. Terwilliger has asked you to present your report ("Micromanaging the Catering Interface" wink to the board, and it does not do to set a bad example to the workforce, but when you get a minute between meetings, consider:
Loss adjuster
Sneering at people who fitted substandard burglar alarms or forgot to lock the restroom window, and writing damning reports, so insurance companies can pay out on the Scrooge scale and as late as possible.
Politician
A natural for a self-important, self-opinionated status junkie with the stamina to do the spadework on substeering committees until called to office; then you can draft laws to make us all do things your way.
crimes and misdemeanorshow bad could it get?
So what sort of criminal would you be, if sociopathy became the new world order? How would you spend your days (or maybe your nights) if you really lived on the Darkside? You would only consider white-collar crime, and then only with a properly run syndicate that offered ample opportunity for preferment. You'd do well at corporate crime, the kind that depends on the coordinated collusion of every key executive in the company and involves so much money and top-level corruption that governments can't afford to recognize it as crime, and everyone gets away with it: global oil conglomerates, for example, or arms manufacturers with iron-clad government contracts. Or you could orchestrate mutual fund rip-offs; is it your fault if people don't read small print?
You respect law and order, because people are feckless and disorganized and need to be told, and it's true that the state system keeps inefficient amateur criminals off the streets and out of your hair. However, sometimes it deviates from your personal code, so naturally you are obliged to follow your own, superior way. You can explain all this in court, where you conduct your own defense at great length, with flipcharts and spreadsheets, correcting the judge on minor points of procedure. When you are locked up, you find you have a lot in common with the guards and that working the hierarchy to your advantage couldn't be simpler. And assiduous networking with strategic co-inmates guarantees employment after you get early release for good behavior.
WHEN GOATS GO WRONG
Successful top-of-the-range career crime demands a tough mind, rigorous attention to planning and detail, and a high degree of organization. It offers a chance for anyone to work their way up from nothing, and punishes slackers and incompetents. Very you.
Inside trader
How can this be against the law? You are simply taking advantage of unpublished information you happen to have come across to buy and sell shares and get ahead of the game. Isn't that just sensible?
Pimp/madam
Your inner goat knows all about lust and lechery, and how it can part temporarily blinded fools from their money; your outer goat understands how to harness and organize this dionysiac power to make it pay.
at homebleak house
Although you have made it clear that your residences are open to business contacts only, acquaintances who have found out where you live sometimes make the mistake of dropping in. After you have checked via the one-way spyhole that they are dressed respectably enough to impress the neighbors, you unlock the doors, letting out a welcoming blast of cold air. Your guests blunder about at first, because of the low wattage of the few light bulbs you allow, but eventually find upright wooden chairs to sit on (upholstery and soft furnishings weaken the character). They leave soon afterward.
DOMESTIC DISHARMONY
Aries—use your cash-stuffed mattresses for trampolines.
Taurus—they insist on using the oven to bake cakes to their own recipes, rather than yours.
Gemini—live rent-free because they know about the pentangle and the black altar in the cellar.
Cancer—always feeding your breakfast stale crusts and bacon rinds to the birdies.
Leo—run up enormous fuel bills and ignore all the gilt-edged invoices you deliver by hand.
Virgo—constantly tut-tut under their breath about something they call a hot water supply.
Libra—couriers clutter the front path with silk cushions and fur rugs sent by their sugar daddies.
Scorpio—they despise you for wallowing in luxury.
Sagittarius—use the back of the chores rota to calculate the odds on you throwing them out.
Capricorn—the coroner will record the first known deaths by spontaneous hypothermia.
Aquarius—absentmindedly crack the combination to your vaults via their Playstation II.
Pisces—stay warm by drinking your secret stash of single malt.
Decor
Because you own a lot of residence (tax losses, foreclosures, investments), you buy a job lot of unlabeled paint at a fire sale and decorate them all at once. Your main residence is home to your prized collection of Early Counting House Gothic escritoires, arranged in rows; modern flatpacks just don't provide enough secret drawers for hiding money in.
Sharing the Capricorn establishment
It will probably help to have spent time in German youth hostels, reformatory, or boot camp: the routine, the rosters, the inspection parade won't come as such a shock, and they'll know enough to keep quiet and avoid double latrine duty.
playtimethe darkside of fun
It is one of your many rules that vacations should be planned ruthlessly to prevent dangerous outbreaks of fun, spontaneity, or a budget overrun of more than 0.02 percent (you're not a complete killjoy). You return from sunbaked vacations paler than you left because: 1)you never take your clothes off; and 2) you spent the whole time in museums and among ruins. Who would loll on a lounger enjoying the landscape when they could take thigh-bracing 10-hour walks through it, with nothing but a handful of raisins and an Old German walking song for company? A city break in Florence to study the book-keeping methods of the Medici? Oh yes!
You hyperprogram your leisure time with improving activities, because you're afraid that if you relax for one second, the pagan goat locked in the cellar of your soul will bust out and force you to drink the bar dry, dance on the tables, and act lewd; you also know that Gemini will take photographs and blackmail you.
Vacations from hell
* A week in Vegas with Sagittarius and Gemini; the sight of all that money being thrown away for fun would scar you for life.
* A month in unknown territory with Aries and Pisces (who's lost); this cuts out a lot of options, because you have a very narrow definition of "known."
* Two weeks in a Danish nudist colony with health-obsessed Virgo; they would have to drug you and cut you out of your clothes with a laser gun.
Road rage
You drive a car just slightly larger than you need and with more hidden extras than your neighbor's. You never break down or run out of gas, and like to sweep past feckless grasshoppers who do and cover them in dust. Everybody else's failure to follow lane discipline has you reaching for your shotgun, but as you tell the judge, that is not road rage—just good citizenship. You have a road atlas, three maps of different scales, and an in-car navigation device, so there's no chance of wandering off the straight and narrow.
Gamesmanship
You don't like team games, as people will not play them to your rules, however often you call time out and patiently reexplain the Offside Amendment (b) (1985). Annoyingly, games are often relocated at very short notice, but you never get the message. You don't take your ball home, for that would be childish and undignified. You invoice for it later.
