Fishing Guide to the Stars starting 9.1.2011

“A lunatic and lean-witted fool.”
Shakespeare’s Richard II [IV.i.115]

King Richard is addressing his uncle, John of Gaunt, for critical appraisal of the king’s apparent lack of care for England.

Virgo: You would think, what with Venus and stuff, birthdays and all, you would think people could just be a little nicer. I think people should all be much nicer to Virgo people. All week long. Not going to happen, either. You’re going to get at least one card and/or gift that looks suspiciously recycled. The real phrase that goes with that, something along the lines of, “I’d a-done better, but times are tight, and I got no money, and anyway, it’s the thought that counts?” Right. Here’s me, wishing Virgo, a happy birthday. You know, you don’t have to let any of this drag you down. Venus makes nice with the Sun (both in Virgo) and that means you can be cheery about whatever is happening. One of the fun things about re-gifting? Give the original back to the person who gave it to you. It’s that whole “instant karma” thing. Completes the circle. Besides, as the birthday person this week, I can see the next year has plenty of Virgo poise and charm that you will be able to use. Let down for a week, but bolstered by charm for a whole year? I’ll take the year and not get too worked up about little exigencies.

Libra: We were eating in a famous TexMex joint, a palace built on grease and corn meal. Good stuff. Greasy, hot, spicy, smells delicious. It is delicious, if not always the most healthy for an Anglo’s diet. Anyway, halfway across the room, there was a table with a dozen or more, I’m guessing from the logo, coaches present, and t-shirts, a girl’s high school volleyball team. Almost all blond, tan, leggy, some buxom, all probably in high school. Just a guess. Too, there were two very tired coaches, supervising and chaperoning. Not at all happy about the meal choices. Or, the funniest part to me, the waiters.

I think, I couldn’t stare, so I didn’t, but I think it was a corn-fed state mid-western state, and I’m guessing the girls were all close to six foot. Blond. Waiters in that one place were swarming like flies. Short, dark, sexy, and not a waitress in sight. Wonder how that works out. Refills on chips, salsa, clean napkins, water. The boys, working? They were working it, hard. Between the exhausted coaches, and the boy-waiters, I’m pretty sure the girls themselves knew what to do. As a Libra, I’m sure you’re used to the attention, like that all-girls team, I’m sure you like that kind of attention. However, Saturn’s like the coaches.

Scorpio: Bird season just started. Means shotgun shells and beer are in high demand in portions of South and East Texas. “Bird Season” means Dove season, and the doves aren’t the brightest of the bird family. However, properly prepared? They are tasty. I’m not a bird hunter. Too much trouble, and if I want to use a firearm? I’ll head to the shooting range. Just a difference of opinions, not a bad thing.

One Scorpio client is headed out this weekend to drink some beer, shoot some birds and generally have himself a great deal of fun. Good luck. As there are several influences to watch for, the combination of alcohol and firearms can be, at best, problematic. I’m just warning you about targets. The Blue Bird of Happiness is not an appropriate Scorpio target. Some days it is. This isn’t one of those weeks. No winging, firing upon, or otherwise making sport of happiness.

Sagittarius: Price is what you pay while value is what you get. I’d like think my pricing reflects an inverse proportion on that, low price, good value. I also realize that at least once month I pull out a horoscope that makes absolutely no sense to anyone. Doesn’t matter. Made sense to me when I wrote it. I just see, the Sagittarius chart wheel, a little problem. Issue. Item, thing, hint. Makes sense to me, but I wonder if this isn’t one of those situations that only makes sense to me. It’s like this, we’re cooking along one level, here in Sagittarius, and the other 11 signs, bless them, they love us, or they should, but some times, we appear a little inscrutable. This is the inscrutable week. Not just for me, but almost every Sagittarius, partly as a function as the onerous square from Virgo, partly as Mercury not quite out of Leo, partly as Mars cooking in Cancer, and partly, we’re just not on the same wavelength as “normal” people. Doesn’t last long, not for all Sagittarius. Me? I’m pretty sure I’m not on the same wavelength as anyone. Haven’t been for some years, maybe all my adult life, but this isn’t about that. For Sagittarius, like, in general? Realize we’re half a step off, good, bad, or, like me, just a little different.

Capricorn: In the pub at the Royal Hotel in Pilgrims Rest, South Africa, hangs a board engraved WYBMADIITY. Each time a customer asks what this means, the bartender says, “Will you buy me a drink if I tell you?”

Some things should be obvious. As Mr. Mars fries along, on the other side of the chart wheel from Capricorn, I was thinking to myself, “Self, this is obvious, isn’t it?” However, like the bartender at that hotel, maybe it isn’t that obvious. There’s a similar, if not identical acronym useful for Capricorn, this next few days. I’m just suggesting that you might want to tailor it instead of outright theft. Although, stealing from me? That’s okay, as long as it’s for the greater Capricorn good. The trick is to come up with an acronym and put that on your desk, a bumper sticker, someplace. Splash that idea out there. Cryptic and not.

Aquarius: This isn’t about just any Aquarius, this week. It’s about one. This one Aquarius, s/he’s got a Virgo Ascendant. Means that the Sun and Venus have just crossed into that Aquarius’s First House. Makes it different for that one, so here’s the deal: Virgo is attention to detail. Virgo Sun, Venus in Virgo, even now, and those two are exacting, to say the least. Detail. Details. All of the little, miniature, arcane bits and bobs that make up the day-to-day existence. All of that details. “God is in the details,” sure we’ve heard that before, but, yes, the details are now more important. My one example Aquarius? S/he is is fretting over details to details about the details. If this were an outline, say, it would become one of those extended-tree kind of things with almost every branch sprouting even more details that need to accommodated. There will be a few, outside, non-partisan observers who find your Aquarius self OCD or obsessing, or some other manic name for the way you’re behaving. “Think ‘big picture,’ man.” No, think details. Think details, then thank me.

Pisces: Trance-Dance-House, I think, I could have it wrong, but I’m thinking that was the type of music that cycled up on a, this into a thing that was plugged into the computer, but the audio itself wasn’t sourced from the computer or, through the computer. Too many technical devices. Too much tech and not enough straight audio. The efficacy of the sound track itself, though, that can’t be disputed. While delivery system is a hammered attempt at streamlining that does less streamlining and more overly complicated bits and wires and ear jacks and stuff plugged into stuff, that’s not what this is about. It was that Trance-Dance-House track. Played soft and low, as a backing tune, not as the main focus. Muted, even. This is about as close as I can get to “soft music playing” as a backdrop. The idea that there needs to be soft music playing, sweet soul music, a little bit of the soft jazz as a backdrop? That helps calm the jangled Pisces nerves. Just a simple step, varies from Pisces to Pisces as tastes are different. But soft, sweet, gentle music. Down low. Sets the tone and helps you cope with Sun/Venus conjoined opposite you. Which isn’t bad. Just need something to help calm you down, you know, like a little music.

Aries: I poked the Aries chart. Poked it a second time, used a long stick, an irate Aries is no fun. Then I stopped. I got sidetracked by some incoming data stream. I was looking at statistics for the various websites, the little analytical programs and I started thinking about what a perfect metaphor it was. A half-dozen years ago, I paid the same price for web hosting as I pay now, but back then, a half-dozen years back, I was limited in bandwidth, namely I was limited to what my website will burn through on any given Monday, now. And that’s one day compared to what I used to go through in a whole month. Important because it’s about what we can and can’t adjust to. Changes. Bandwidth is a lot cheaper these days as (disk/hosting) storage gets less expensive. What was a huge image and took hours to download now takes moments. Dial-up gave way to DSL gave way to Cable gave way to Wireless 3G & 4G. I used the term “5G” some years ago, so I can brag I had the first Five G astrology network. Not what this is about. This about change and accepting it graceful. Changes are occurring, even now. Like the plummeting price of inter-web stuff. Do not get “wedded” to one idea. Not now. Poke.

Taurus: “A lunatic and lean-witted fool.” [R2, iv.i.115] There are several, looks like social, events going well for Taurus. Work, however, is more important. No, it’s not. Yes, yes it is. I had a social life once. Greatly overrated in terms of enjoyment compared with man-hours required to maintain the social life. Here’s the deal: a little bit of concentrated effort in the “work” arena will yield big benefits. Period. I have exactly one Taurus, you know who you are, out of work. Unemployed. Spend eight (8) hours a day, for the next five days, a typical work week, spend that time looking and it will yield results. How soon? Very soon. The problem being, this can’t be avoided. Sure, it’s fun to have social life, but in the next few days, just regular, 40-hour work-week, just try that. Next five says. 8 (eight) hours a day. I mean, around here? At the Fishing Guide to the Stars Headquarters. I could only wish that a typical work day didn’t start at 5 in the morning and end at 9 at night. Don’t complain — I’m only asking you for 8-hour shifts, next few days. Five days. 5 days.

Gemini: One of the greatest secrets of Feng Shui is the way a place’s “chi” is improved when the clutter goes away. Clean up, tidy up, let go of material items that no longer hold any true value, and other wise clean up. A quick sweep of a room with one of my Feng Shui practitioners showed how the easiest and quickest solutions are sometimes really simple. Like pick up the mess of clothing scattered around the bedroom. In true Gemini fashion, the clothes were scooped up and tossed into the bottom of an armoire. Not a long-term solution at all, but in terms of the instant effect of making the space feel a little batter? Worked wonders and illustrated the underlying principles of tidy versus messy. While a clean sweep would be really nice gesture in Gemini land, sometimes, a simpler, more time/cost-efficient method works well. Don’t have time for the thorough cleaning? A quick sweep to tidy up the clutter. One longstanding project you got that’s not going anywhere, probably ever? Don’t hesitate to toss. Mars, in the Gemini solar second house.

Cancer: The long holiday weekend is always associated with rain. Just seems that there’s rain on — or around — this holiday weekend. Every year. Threat of rain, real rain, thunder and lightening, light mist that doesn’t even qualify as rain, and, some years, hurricanes. The effect is quite different, though. Some thunderstorms and locally heavy weather bring a cooling effect. Others? The effect is that it cools off for a few minutes, but step outside and it’s back into the warm, sub-tropical heat. I love it when tourist show up and wonder why they are sweating so. Rain, around here, doesn’t mean it will cool off. Just means, there’s a chance, that the sun won’t shine for a day or two. Not for sure, though. Mars is frying, and I mean, frying his way through your sign. Nothing left to blame but the little red planet who seems a tad pissed off. Or maybe he’s causing the ire in Cancer Land. The clouds might show up, and it might look like there will be some cooling influence, you’d think, right? Nope. Hot and sweaty and face it, Mars like it that way.

Leo: I watched as fishing buddy deftly juggled two smart phones. I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit, and his reasoning was sound, he wanted one phone number for work and worked related stuff while the other number was strictly family life. He’s got a couple of daughters. He would switch from one to the other, sometimes, fishing pole in his right hand and phones in his left, working that thing. Working it well. I thought about that image, he managed the juggling part better than anyone I’ve seen, two rings, two ringtones, one for each phone, and sometimes, a pole in his hand. Pretty cool. Caught fish. Not big fish but caught some. With the juggling act on the side. That juggling act is part of what this is all about. That juggling act, two phones, two parts what seems to be business, or career, or family, and one fishing pole, that what is most important. Split this up anyway you like, but the the juggling act, you’re good at it right now. This week. Get all those things up in the air and keep them going. Good thing you’re The Leo as mere mortals probably couldn’t keep it up this long.