Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for February 06, 2021

MASH episode had Klinger doing fortunes with a deck of cards—his statement was along the same line “Holy Cow! I just drew a Royal Flush!”

If she dealt all 5 in a row off the top of the deck, I’d suspect that Madame Zoodoo didn’t shuffle the cards

We all talk about what we care about.

Also she predicts he’s a few cards short of a Tarot deck.

She’s obviously not using a Tarot deck—the suits (or “arcana”) of a Tarot deck are nothing like the suits in a deck of playing cards, so a royal flush is impossible, which means she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Done correctly, a Tarot reading can deliver uncanny results, for example: Skeptical me had a reading done at a Renaissance Faire using a hand-drawn Celtic deck. I was to think of a question, but not tell the reader. My silent question: “would I ever get my heart’s desire—to purchase my own home?” Her answer, based only on reading the cards: “Something would begin to happen in one month (i.e. in October). You will find it difficult and stressful, there will be obstacles that you will have to overcome, but it will all be resolved successfully by January.” “Yeah, right” I thought. But in October my landlord called out of the blue and asked if I was interested in buying the house I’d been renting for the last 10 years. I said “Yes!!!” There followed weeks of termite tenting, loan applications, getting a down payment from my 401K, sleepless nights, and continuous sheer terror at the huge step I was taking. But I did it—escrow closed in January and I had my heart’s desire. And skeptical me was a little less skeptical.

wonder if she knew the landlord

Or do you mean the Page of Epees?

It is difficult to be pragmatic and believe in the occult, but not impossible.

Must be the Devil card.

A good cold reader is often a master amateur psychologist. The client tells the fortune-teller what’s bothering him, and leaves convinced that the fortune-teller told him.

I am a skeptic. Not as skeptical as the man who was once riding a train with his companion. The companion looked out, saw a flock of sheep in a field and said, “Those sheep seem to have been recently sheared.” The skeptic replied, “At least on the sides that are facing us.”

I studied statistics. I can’t remember any of the derivations and only a few of the distribution models, but I do remember that outliers happen. Outliers are a test of people’s belief: some remember them vividly and therefore believe that they are the “normal” occurrence. Others attribute them to the supernatural or conspiracy theories.

I’m too much of a scientist not to use Occam’s Razor. If I have to invoke unnatural causes, extraterrestrial beings or multiple conspirators to make the theory work, I first look for another theory.

In the case of people and in particular, political people, a theory based on ignorance, selfishness, greed or fear usually works well.

I’ll lay you 3 to 1 odds that I can quit gambling!

Panel 3. To paraphrase Monty Python, “Ooh, if looks could kill she’d be in for thirty years.”

If you have a lot of company and the toilet backs up, it proves you cant have a full house and a straight flush at the same time.

“Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died”.’Steven Wright

I once saw on I think it was the Texas Hold-Em “Main Event” from some years ago, a guy who had four Aces get beat by a guy with a Royal Flush. I can imagine the “Four Aces” guy quitting Poker after that… ㋡

Wrong cards. Should be Tarot, not Vegas.

“That devil up and challenged me to a game of five card tarot, pentacles wild. I saw him deal the High Priestess from the bottom of the deck…”

I’ve never spent time with a fortune teller. A belly dancer, yes.

IMNSHO, there is no ‘supernatural.’ Everything is natural; supernatural just refers to natural things science does not yet understand.

The ‘occult’ originally meant those things unseen or hidden. Somehow it got associated with magic and the supernatural.

The spirits say don’t try drawing for an inside strait.

This guy has a ‘tell’.

The sad truth in this strip is that people with an addiction believe they keep it secret; therefore, it must take a psychic to catch on.

When I was a gullible grade-schooler, my family went to a school carnival. There was a “mind-reader” type of booth there – for a dime or something you could have things revealed about yourself. I went in to try it out. The lady in there asked me my name, so of course I told her. Then she correctly told me that I took the bus to school, had siblings also attending that school, etc. I told my parents how amazingly accurate she was! When I told them I had given her my name, they were rather aggravated, though – and I felt pretty silly.

His reply, “You want’a bet?”