Gabe Joselow Arizona Daily Wildcat

In Dante's "Inferno," the psychics and fortunetellers have their heads turned backward as an ironic punishment for looking too far forward into the future. It seems a more suiting punishment would be to have their heads shoved up their asses. But I guess they're pretty much up there anyway. That was my conclusion after spending a few too many hours at the Psychic Fair at the Viscount Suite Hotel on Broadway.

On the second Sunday of every month, all the different soothsayers get together and show off their skills. So, the tarot people show off their new "royal assassin" card, the palm readers reveal new developments in reading the often misunderstood thumb and the numerologists 69 each other.

Actually, it's more like a sixth-grade science fair: They all set up their own little booth and tell you how their rocks, jewelry or air purifiers are going to improve your life, and you smile and patronize them. Nevertheless, I liked the air purifier display because there was a bowl of candy in front of it, which is, incidentally, exactly how I won a blue ribbon at my own sixth-grade science fair.

I'm totally open to metaphysics ÷ I love fortune cookies. But most of that stuff is totally whack. The first offender is aura photography. It's actually something started in the middle of the 19th century, shortly after the invention of photography. By 1900, it was completely invalidated. Today, in 2004, it's back ÷ only instead of exploiting the new science of daguerreotype photography, it exploits biofeedback photography.

My friend Ted ÷ who came with me under the usual condition of he drinks, I drive ÷ got his aura photographed. It was red. Just red. All around his head, a big red ring, like a mane. With the photograph came a breakdown of the color scheme on a dot matrix printer. According to the literature provided on aura photography, red is a good color, but only because there is no such thing as a bad aura. People are special in their own way, as reflected in the ever-changing aura. In other words, it cost us $20 to find out that Ted was a passionate person at the time the photograph was taken. Of course, had we taken the photograph any other time, it could have been another color, thus negating the accuracy of the reading. I've seen episodes of "Pokemon" that make more sense than this.

On closer inspection of the photograph, the woman that runs the booth thought she saw a third eye forming in a shiny spot in the middle of Ted's forehead. Holy shit! Can Ted harness the powers of the universe to guide our eternal spirits to drink the milk of Paradise in Xanadu? Nah, he was just a little greasy.

Next was my rune stone reading. This is an ancient Viking technique for fortune-telling. According to tradition, you pull out some stones that have little symbols on them and this lady tells you what they mean. She says things like "You are about to make a big decision" or "You must harmonize the different forces in your life." You might as well spill a can of alphabet soup on the floor and read your fortune that way because it would be just as indirect and vague as this was. As if the actual reading didn't arouse enough contempt in me for the rune stones, the lady told me that the Nazis used them every day, too! Who knew there was a dark side to black magic?

There was one bastion of hope in the room and it was the Amazonian herbal tea booth: a delicious exhibit and by far, my favorite. This guy had some kind of amazing tea. I had one little Dixie-cup-worth and I have to say, it got me pretty high. It felt like my legs were made out of rainbows and dandelions. And the whole world became one tiny bumblebee alighting upon a quivering geranium. After that wore off, I started jonesing for it pretty bad and had about seven cups while I was there. It wasn't approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but it made my time at the psychic fair much more enjoyable.

I don't know why people get sucked into this metaphysical stuff. Even I bought a $5 rock because the guy convinced me it had some special energy. I guess people want to feel like they've got some kind of control over this crazy electric grasshopper we call life, so they look for the easy answers. All I can say to that is shut up and drink your tea.