May is an exciting month, but only if you’re still in school, since you’re the only one getting any time off. For the rest of us, it means Mother’s Day, which means it’s time to whale on your promiscuous mothers once again.

TAURUS (Apr. 20-May 20): Your momma’s chest is so hairy her cleavage looks like coconuts.

April is more than the first full month of spring; it’s also National Holocaust Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month…YAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!  It’s also the month you’ll find both Earth Day and Arbor Day – two of the biggest non-holidays of the year; you’re talking about two holidays that are celebrated with physical labor.  I guess April sucks.  But lucky for all of us, astrology is all about lying to yourself to make you feel better about how very awful your life really is.  So here are some lies to delude yourself with all month long.

ARIES(Mar. 21-Apr. 19):That recurring pain is natural.  The fact that it only happens when you have to pee is nothing to worry about.

March, like many other months, was, at one time, the first month of the year.  It seems like every time a new emperor took power in Rome, he felt the best way to shore up his legacy was to rearrange the calendar and add himself to it.  But don’t feel bad, March; you’re still important. March 14 is Pi Day, and for those of you still with me, March 14 at 1:59pm is Pi Minute, and if you really want to dork it up, March 14^that 1:59pm and 26 seconds is Pi Second.  There, you go now and annoy your friends with that.

The name of our current month (February, for all you stoners out there) comes from the Latin februum, which means purification.  Originally, February was the last month of the year, when the Romans would celebrate their purity festival to make up for the awful things they did that year.  Carrying on that tradition, we have Black History Month, which was celebrated in my high school (60% Black/40% Other [including but not limited to White, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, Native American, Eskimo, Pacific Islander, Mongolian, and Latino]) with a brotherhood rally, where leaders from the black community would come in and speak briefly about how a black man invented the traffic light and the shower curtain rod (both true) before negating any scholastic message by encouraging everyone to get out there and play sports or sing in order to become somebody.  I really wish that was a joke.

On the other hand, if social guilt isn’t your thing, you always have Lent to express all that moral angst you’ve accrued by giving up chocolate for a few weeks.  Nobody knows guilt better than the church, which would have a hard time selling the product if everybody felt good about themselves all the time.  So, for those of you taking this Lenten season a bit too hard, I’m giving you each an historic atrocity committed in the name of religion to make you feel a little better.

Buckle up, folks: It’s 2008, and boy, it’s going to be a long one.  Literally.  2008 is a leap year, meaning one extra day of suck, right at the tail end of February.  According to the Chinese calendar, it’s the year of the rat, which is associated with death, war, the occult, pestilence, and atrocities.  Aside from all the crap that’s going down your throat this year concerning the Olympics and the presidential election, you can look forward to the nutcases coming out of the woodwork on Feb. 21 during the lunar eclipse, and then a whole other group of nuts coming out because of the slew of apocalyptic sci-fi books that are set in 2008.  Plus, according to Futurama, this is the year suicide booths get invented.

I would love to take this time to welcome you to December and the onset of the Christmas season, but I’m afraid I was preempted this year by Wal-Mart, who ushered in the holidays not the day after Thanksgiving but the day after Halloween this year.  I wandered into the local Wally World on November 1 to pick up a bag of dog food and swore I was having a stroke.  The Halloween candy wasn’t even cold on the counters, and I was hearing Kenny G’s “White Christmas” through the loudspeakers.

September is, for all intents and purposes, a boring month. Sure, there's a free Monday off, but what else? Baby Safety Month?! Ramadan begins, Rosh Hashanah happens. Come on, September, get with the program! Your buddies, August and October, are all over it.

The one thing September has going for it is Banned Books Week. I've gotta appreciate any holiday that celebrates writing that gets on the nerves of the ignorant. So, to celebrate, I'm assigning each of you homework. Every sign gets one. Start reading, secure in the knowledge that some uppity old guy in Congress is pounding his wrinkled fists in frustration at you reading a book he doesn't agree with.

August is the most significant month of the entire year. Not because it is Women's Small Business Month or because it's when the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally takes place, but because more events of worldwide significance have taken place in the month of August than in any other month of the year.  Singapore, Pakistan, India, and Korea all became independent in August.  It's also the month when the two nuclear bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

July is a month dedicated to the proliferation and control of fire. For some reason, we've decided to take the hottest month of the year and fill it with fireworks and bar-b-ques.