These be good humors indeed! Shall pack-horses
And hollow pamper’d jades of Asia,
Which cannot go but thirty mile a day,
Compare with Caesars and with Cannibals
And Troiant Greeks? Nay, rather damn them with
King Cerberus, and let the welkin roar.
Shall we fall foul for toys?

Pistol in Shakespeare’s Henry 4.2 II.iv.57-61

Happy Birthday Shakespeare, and happy St. George’s Day, patron saint — it’s a Taurus thing, the rest of you won’t understand.

The Sun moves into Taurus on April 19, at 10:12 PM (local).

Always an amusing trivial note, the assumed birthday of one William Shakespeare is, at best, a historical guess and educated estimate, rather than fact. Thus noted? It is observed on April 23 (Taurus sun sign).

Horoscopes starting 4.19.2018

Taurus

Tools tend to define most of my work. Artwork I do is limited to what tools are on hand. While I like the idea of using a “LeatherMan ™” type of tool to accomplish everything, in the real world, such devices are limited by functional qualities. I can use the awl to punch a single hole in a sandal’s leather, or use the pliers to grab a simple task that just required a little extra leverage, but that’s about it. Not exactly a production piece of equipment. The same applies to the software tools I use for the heavy-lifting, graphics management, and word-processors, as well as page-layout. The tools tend to define the outcome. As a Taurus, happy William Shakespeare Birthday, I let my tools dictate the most expedient route from my idea to what is produced. For graphics, especially, and this a Taurus birthday time, for the images I use, I tend to let some simple, stock manipulations be adequate. Nothing too fancy. That gets into “feature creep,” and I prefer simple, perhaps a little raw, with a minimal amount of adjustments. The software allows for endless ways to fiddle with the material; don’t make this too complicated.

Taurus: It’s birthday time, so let’s use what simple tools are here, and not complicate matters.

Gemini

It’s a time for the “doppelgänger” — the self as you might not see yourself, but as you might appear. Future Gemini, past Gemini, ghost of yourself? Yes, that type of “doppelgänger.” I ran into a fellow Sagittarius, you like us fine, and his chart was ten years younger than me, but the placement of a number of planets were eerily similar. Moon, Mars, and Venus, all the same. Cool, but spooky. I realized as I watched him offload for a show, that I was looking at someone at a similar point in his career to where I was ten or twelve years ago. I sold different products so my unloading and setting up was different by design, but the sentiment was the exact same.

What amused me further was attire, hair, jovial attitude, merry-making, and solo status all fit with where I was, then. It was a flashback in time, then a glance, for my buddy, at where he might be in a dozen years or so. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered a version of myself coming or going.

As a Gemini, it is important to pause long enough to reflect, and it helps if there is a physical reflection, like, a Gemini doppelgänger in front of you.

Cancer

Mars aligns with Pluto in the late evening sky. Not really visible as a conjunction, not with the naked eye, but as an astrological event, easily enough to feel, particularly in the sign of the sensitive Moon Child. Cancer is like much like my current workspace. My spot is littered with two sets of notes on sticky pads, one is a shopping list the other is technical details that require attention. There is an academic book with a passage underlined, and I need to make note of that material. Sort of a text-book, and one I know I used in a class, at one time, but that doesn’t count. Underneath that text is a book about German opera, and the music that’s playing in the background? Trance/Dance from a 2-hour DJ set. There is an empty coffee cup and a half-full mug with some kind of noxious herbal tea thing in it. Looked like lawn clippings but helps with the current atmospheric conditions.

That stuff is just this morning’s material that has washed downstream. Scattered yet there is focal point in here, and that’s the idea, for Cancer, scattered yet focused. Mars and Pluto are going to make demands on your time. Be ready to shift gears, jump pause, rewind, fast-forward, one, or more, of those actions, as we plot a way forward. Do you need all those distractions? At any given moment, yes, you might need access to those distractions and then? That makes them reference material, not distractions.

“Do you need all of these?”

Yes, yes we might.

The Leo

“Don’t look at me. I don’t want you to see me like this!” As soon as someone screams, “Don’t look at me!” What is our immediate reaction? I can’t speak for The Leo, but I tend to look right at whatever it was I wasn’t supposed to look at.

Funny, how that works. Remember, that, too, as we make our way along, there’s a funny but horrible moment at the beginning of the scope and an equally — for The Leo — horrifying moment at the end of this scope. During both those times, the first reactions from a mighty Leo?

“Don’t look at me!”

I understand you don’t want us to remember you like the way we see you at this time, you don’t want to be remembered in whatever — you feel like — compromising situation this is. Disrobed, undressed, over-dressed, too much make-up, not enough make-up, I have no idea what the particular situation is.

“Oh, oh, I look horrible, don’t look at me!”

Sorry, image is done. Now, you have two choices. You can scream, “Don’t look at me,” or you can hide. Simple, binary, and easy solutions for The Leo who doesn’t want to be seen like this.

You know, there is a third solution? Just be quiet. Not drawing attention yourself? We, the lesser 11 signs, we might not see whatever it was you didn’t want us to see in the first place.

Screaming, “Don’t look at me?” Yeah, that probably won’t work.

Virgo

Buddy I was fishing with was messing with me. We motored out to the middle of the bay, making a run for the backside of the barrier islands and some prime Redfish hunting grounds. Big outboard motor stuttered then stopped. I glanced over, and my buddy had — surreptitiously — hit the kill switch. He pretended he didn’t know what was wrong, so I went along with his ruse. Learn to read the water a little, and I knew we were over an oyster reef, or a hump of some sort, an underwater protuberance of some sort.

“We can call for help, and get a tow in, or we can fish…”

We fished. I’m sure there are pictures on the site someplace, boatload of decent fish, got us a few trout, and that was on the way to the redfish shoals. The whole ruse about the sudden dead engine in the water? I’m not sure what that was about. Maybe he wanted to try a place and didn’t want me to know about it? I’m not sure, I never worked it out. However, just when your Virgo self appears dead in the water? What did you come to do? Fish. Then fish.

Some days, doesn’t matter where you are, it just matters that you do the task. Like fish.

“Shut up and fish.”

Libra

The way the “random” function works on computer-algorithm based suggestions? Entirely not random. However, I made a joke about certain (German) opera appearing as heavy-metal, and that spun my musical selections into a weird orbit. Suddenly, I’m looking at Scandinavian Death Metal albums.

I have no qualms about Scandinavian Metal, black, death, heavy, or other. No, just not exactly my thing these days. However, in the spirit of cooperation and thinking that I am open-minded and broad of tastes? I listened to some of that material. No, not really my thing, easiest way to put it. Not opposed to it, just not that into it. If I were younger, or if I understood the nuance of the difference between Norwegian and Swedish Death Metal, or the difference between Black Metal and Death Metal, I suppose I would appreciate the music more. To some, it is just sound, albeit, certainly metal — as long as you know what that is.

Some time back, there was an assumption that the better metal albums would have covers shot in Norway or Iceland, something like that, with harsh, Viking roots visible. Again, I don’t see the connection — but that might just be me.

Some person will make a suggestion to the gentle Libra in this next couple of days. You must investigate. Listen to some clips. Watch a music video. Something. Can’t dismiss an entire genre or other suggestion, can’t dismiss it because, “Well, I don’t like that stuff.”

Investigate the suggestions. Who knows, you might like it.

Scorpio

Trying to convince one of my buddies I was “goth,” or, at the very least, that I had “goth” street cred?

Rock’n’Roll!

Got it? I had a black Tee, black shorts, black sport sandals, and an all-black linen shirt.

“Yeah, Kramer, I would almost buy it, but, you’re in shorts.”

Hey, this is Texas, and in South Texas, I can get away with shorts most near year-round. Not quite but almost.

“Ball cap, dude, it’s Jimmy Buffett hat. Ruins the look.”

He shrugged a sardonic Scorpio shrug.

I firmly belong to no particular class or type. Of that I am proud. As a Scorpio, you keep trying to fit into a certain group, and with the current Mars machinations? There’s a level of agitation, or level of frustration, or level where you — like me — try to pretend something that we’re really not.

Shrug a sardonic Scorpio shrug.

Blame Mars (and Pluto).

Sagittarius

“Burnt Ends” are delicacy from this one BBQ joint. I took one of my neighbors with me, and treated him to the BBQ. Because it was a late afternoon, the place was out of “Burnt Ends,” which suited my buddy well enough. He wasn’t gong to have anything to do with something called “Burnt Ends.”

Too bad, as they are tender beef tips charred at one end, the charcoal coating is good for the liver, and otherwise smoked to perfection. Tender, delightful, tasty, lean, but moist, with the special brand of flavor that the pitmaster brings to the meat.

My buddy recoiled in horror at the name itself, “Burnt Ends.” Since they were already out, place sells out in a hurry, get there early, right? He didn’t get to taste them. I missed them but there’s plenty of other stuff to work with. He was happy, no problem.

I was astonished at the reaction to the title, as they are really, really good, the essence of some of the best BBQ Texas has, distilled into chunks of smoked meaty goodness.

As a typical Sagittarius, a name like “Burnt Ends” wouldn’t normally put us off our feed. However, given where the planets are, especially that Mars/Pluto and Sun/Uranus energy?

Names and naming conventions don’t always match up. Look up Eden, TX, for example. Two examples, Burnt Ends, in New Braunfels, and a place called Eden, TX.

Names and naming conventions can easily lead a Sagittarius astray.

Capricorn

I ordered business cards for this one business, and then, folded the business into another one, so the cards were, essentially pointless. I had a box of about 500 cards, business name and address, that sort of stuff on one side, and blank back side. Extras. Those turned into minor canvases upon which I could draft ideas.

2 inches by 3 and half inches, stiff card stock, and now I have a stack of those with various ideas, mostly done with fine-point Sharpies, ideas, images, one has diagram for structure, just notes that I’ve done in pen and ink, to be different.

This week is flavored with Mars — and Pluto — as those two are firmly conjunct at the end of the week. Those two demand action, and they are about change. However, is dramatic change always required?

Sifting through my ideas, I had one mage that was rather large kitchen-aid type of device for helping make coffee. Turns out, I didn’t need it. At all, no need at all — the idea, use Mars — and Pluto — use this energy to sketch out possible Capricorn choices rather than taking too quick of an action. Sketch it out, first.

Draft an idea and use the heat from Mars/Pluto to “bake” the idea — before you execute anything, Capricorn.

Aquarius

Sit tight.

It really can be that simple, just sit tight.

The image I get is from a rock, in a stream, and the water — spring-time run-off — is coursing down the mountain, and the rock? The rock is just sitting there. If you don’t go with the flow, then you don’t get washed downstream, and if you just sit there, nothing changes.

Everything is fluid at the moment, but much of the crap that is changing? Watch. Some people are just changing for the sake of changing, not for any particular reason. Not borne out by necessity, just out of a frustrated need to meddle with some item, that might — or might not — want for changing.

Sit tight.

Yes, if you just sit there, the stream around you, it keeps carrying forward, obeying gravity and sliding downhill, picking up momentum and headed, eventually, out to sea.

Sit tight.

Can’t emphasize that enough, just hold on. When everyone else is so intent on change, is it really necessary? Yes, and no, but yeah, not so much. Instead of headlong rush, with those flowing waters? Tumbling, and cascading downstream?

Sit tight.

Doing something different, merely for the sake of doing something, that might not be in your best Aquarian interest.

Sit tight.

Pisces

Prolonged exposure to military families, common in Texas, means I pick up certain habits. One those habits came from a high-ranking NCO who was deployed a half-dozen times. His family, the kids and wife, would crush water bottles when they were through with the bottles. “Less space,” all the comment I got, “force of habit. Dad taught us. Said it was the way to do it, in the field.” Just a matter-of-fact kind of statement. I don’t know, I’m not active, or passive, military. I do understand the concept, though, of reducing waste. Towards that end, OK, I’ll tell the story later, but I do recycle water bottles, use them over and over, different set of rules on that one, anyway, I was in part of the house, and I heard a noise I could not identify, and I thought I ought to investigate. Think: things that go bump in the night. I set out to see what it was, thinking it sounded like a critter of one form or another. Half our later, after much sleuthing and distracting motions, I finally found it was a crumpled water bottle with a leaky cap. It was slowly regaining its proper shape, and it made little crinkling noises along the way. It’s the little things like that, little things that can set off the off the internal Pisces alarm system, and to me, kind of amusing, except I was a little fearful, at first.

Pisces: Go. Investigate the noise. It’s probably nothing, but you won’t know until you go and look.

Aries

I know very little about sports, other than fishing. Just not my thing. However, I have this one image stuck in my head, for this week’s Aries because nothing speaks to me more than an American pastime called “Baseball.”

I imagine, this week approaches and it looks like you’re not going to make it. Freak play occurs, and at the last minute, you sprint for home base, and Aries slides right in, then the dust clears. Umpire calls it, “Safe!” It’s a run. It’s a score. It’s a post, it’s a whatever they do in baseball, however they count those things. The image itself, though, that sprint, that fear factor, the “All hope is lost,” as the Sun conjuncts Uranus then Mars conjuncts Pluto. Eventually, next week, dust settles, and the umpire, the cosmic umpire calls it “Safe!”

You made it home. You made it to home plate. You beat the odds; the crowd goes wild. You win. However, dust doesn’t settle until next week, maybe even longer, so in the game metaphor? Have to wait. Sit it out. Wait for it.

Not yet.

Wait for it.

Not yet.

I told you, quit asking, have to wait until the dust settles.

Not yet.

Wait for it.