Horror-scope

- 1 February 1991

Picture’s ratio of cheesecake to beefcake favours the former to such an extent it must be considered a man’s magazine.

Picture is also extremely crude. “World-wide photo exclusive—SEX-MAD FOOL CUTS OFF HIS TOOL

(‘Ouch!”)” was the lead story on the cover of its 20 March 1990 issue. The photographic evidence is unconvincing, I hasten to add.

The magazine, published in Australia (you guessed?), has a number of paranormal features in its 20 March issue. “Atomic rays fix sick ticker” is, surprisingly, about the ‘science of dowsing’. Two pages are devoted to “Mysterious Worlds”, a regular column by Garry Wiseman called ‘Australia’s liveliest psychic investigator’. The column is somewhat eccentric, containing as it does a sceptical item “Psycho-rapists are having themselves on” which reports that hypnotising UFO abductees may be producing bogus results.

The most eccentric thing, however, about this ‘man’s magazine” is that it contains horoscopes. They’re in “Off the Planet” with Stella Starkers. Looking up my own horoscope under Scorpio (you guessed that too?) I find this:

You dream you’re in a Vietnam rice paddy under heavy shelling. You wake up to find you’ve wet the bed and a maniac is shooting up the neighbourhood. Stella advises: Shoot him or be shot.

Definitely not your usual horoscope.

oe