“Mark the encounter: if he love her not,
And be not from his reason fall’n thereon”

Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet 2.2.181

Horoscopes for 8-8-2023

7/23/23 Venus goes retrograde at 28° Leo
8/4/23 Mercury at 8° Virgo

Questions about the Lion’s Portal, or want to beat the heat? Two options:

Live — astrofish.net/travel
Over the wires: astrofish.net/shop

The Leo

I clicked through to a recipe for the best, moistest, most flavorful brownies in the world. The secret ingredient was zucchini. That’s just wrong on so many levels. Chocolate brownies should be variations on a theme, but eggs, flour, coco powder, maybe milk, grease, oils, and other ingredients, but the basic components are chocolate, sugars, and flour. Zucchini? That’s a vegetable, and often used to add a relatively healthy filler for various diet scams. Even shredded? It’s still a green vegetable and has no place in brownies. Here’s the Majestic Leo birthday tip: don’t fall for the headline. And? As soon as you realize it’s a fake? Stop. Don’t go any further. Healthy, shredded vegetables in something like brownies? Just ruins everything. Me? I’d blame sneaky recipe industry, and Venus.

Virgo

Beware of the shortcut. Can a few week’s of data be that simple to understand? It can. Beware of the shortcut, the lazy person’s workaround, the amazing way you’ve found that cuts the travel time in half, and yet, seems longer. See the problems that start to pop up?

To me, this kind of shortcut is less about, well, less about the road less traveled, and more along the lines of skipping a few steps in a particular process. Or figuring if we just jump from where we’re at, to where we want to be, without the hard work in between? That’s exactly the kind of shortcut I’m suggesting won’t work. Fun fact: works, at first. Works for a few days. Works until all this starts to unravel, which it will, in the next seven to ten days. So, if you only need this for a few days, like, less than a work-week, and that is about three or four days? Fine, take the shortcut, but if you need it any longer than that? I suggested you follow all the instructions.

Libra

There always comes a time when it looks like you should’ve done something, but didn’t. What this week looks like, that accusatory eye, from other places, like, “You should’ve warned me about that!” Or, “You knew this was going to happen and just stood there!” The other side of this kind of accusation? If you try and rebut or refute that argument that you did nothing? To be honest? You didn’t know. If you’d known out was going to turn out that way, you would’ve been kind enough to warn them, ahead of the action, before they made that mistake. Deal is: you didn’t know. There’s an extra pregnant pause built into this next week, and for gentle Libra, it looks like you know something that is about to happen, a worst-case scenario, and then it looks like you don’t do anything. Just stand, off to the side, uninvolved. Still makes you look tacitly complicit. Don’t want to look guilty? Pretend to be busy. “I’m checking online, even now.”

(What does Kramer say?)

Scorpio

Just stop already. Agitation avails aught. Naught. Slightly archaic, sure, but agitation gets your nominally sweet Scorpio self nowhere in big hurry. There’s a long litany of crimes against Scorpio, real, or perceived, and there’s a long list of wrongs that should be set right, but again, agitating about this, right now? Gets nowhere in big hurry. There are forces beyond your ken at work, and those outside influences will just thwart any attempt at retribution, revenge, or similar “getting even” scenarios. Don’t do it. Not now. There will be a time, and place, for good Scorpio watch the wheels of justice turn, and that “Karma is a bitch” thing? Yeah, we know this works out. Maybe you don’t know this works out, but this week? You’re not required to help that “Karma is a bitch” thing along. Tempting? Sure. Falls in your Scorpio purview? No. Sit back with no visible agitation, and see what happens.

Sagittarius

All those years, in the shade of a great BBQ joint, I never realized how spoiled I was with exceptional smoked meats. Not good, and while not award winning or media heralded, it was some of the finest in the world. It’s where I learned to test brisket by not using BBQ sauce. Really good smoked goodness like that? Requires no sauce. Tender, moist, meaty, anyway, for Sagittarius, this is about BBQ sauce. Most places have a forgettable sauce, but some places? The sauce is too sweet. That’s a sign that the BBQ isn’t that good, when the sauce is too sweet? They are covering up a cooking mistake — hiding a smoking gun. What to watch out for, as we make our way forward? Be cautious of place that has a too-sweet BBQ sauce. It’s trying to hide something. Good BBQ can stand on its own, and a sauce that is too sweet? Surely they are trying to cover a mistake.

Capricorn

There’s a local BBQ joint that has the most amazing cherry-cola smoked pork ribs. Their regular beef ribs are good, too, but the cherry-cola flavored ones are just amazing. I can’t indulge too often but sometimes, it’s really, really good. Just a few ribs. Stick to salad most of the time. The problem? At that one place? The brisket is kind of peppery, and none too delicious. Not bad brisket, just not awe-inspiring. Friend of a friend used to work there, “Know what the problem is? They use the same rub on the regular ribs as they use on the brisket.” There are two Capricorn lessons here. One? Use the correct rub on the meat. Or the best seasoning, like not using a pork rub on beef brisket. But following that advice? In that place? Get the cherry-cola whatever pork ribs, skip the regular ones, and pass on their brisket. It’s simple, really. Couple of options, and all of them work.

Aquarius

There is always one. Don’t be that one. Seriously, Aquarius, don’t be that one. There are easy ways to avoid being that one, too. Look down. Avert your eyes. Don’t volunteer. Maybe that’s the best way to approach this, “Don’t volunteer.” Aquarius comes at me with a barrage of questions, asking what I mean about “don’t volunteer,” and sadly, that’s it exactly. The barrage of questions, belligerent and bellicose, which, in turn, makes you the one. Don’t be that one. Not this week; not now, please?

Pisces

There was an intriguing study done, some years back. It looked at the connection and result from a certain ability of athletes and their eyesight. Rarefied air, really, as this was a select group of professional sports people and their abilities were measured by success as individual wins, and then, correlated to their eyesight. Turned out, the eyes were the most important part of their abilities. It was uncorrected vision, and it was a group of mostly young males. I’m not sure it’s any surprise, either. To see where we’re going? The guys with the best eyes should be out front, almost like a natural selection thing, am I right? The deal is, right now, no good Pisces can see quite clearly. There’s a confusing array of incoming data, and a great deal of the input, mostly visual? Most of that input is incorrect. See the problem?

Aries

When I retired the old software, I was close to 30K in charts. That’s a pretty good, not quite random, sampling. Out of all those charts? One, exactly one Aries can do well with what’s happening. Out of all of those charts, there is one who can face the odds, surmount the obstacles, beat down the challengers, and win. Win big. (I would like 1% of that win, honey.) The rest of the usually better quipped Aries? Now is not the time to attack. Now is not the time to run headlong into that challenge, not is it the time to try and crawl over that obstacle that’s bothering you. Now isn’t the time. Next week doesn’t look a lot better, either. Doesn’t mean that there isn’t some notable material floating freely in Aries, just means the attack-mode isn’t the best way to deal with this. Except for that one. Out of 30K, do you think you’re that one?

Taurus

There’s a simple adjustment for Taurus to make. It’s really simple. It’s so simple, this might not translate. There’s a foundation element that needs adjustment. I lived in trailer park and in that trailer park, most of the portable, originally mobile, dwelling units were on some kind of foundation. Think my old place was shorn up by cinderblocks, and few slivers of two-by-four. Got an mage of this, now? So when I speak of “foundation,” while this is main form of support, it might not be a permanent slab of concrete, it could be cinderblocks and a sliver of wood, wedged under one end of a trailer. Are we clear on this direction? So an adjustment to the trailer’s foundation, an adjustment to the Taurus foundation elements, this doesn’t involve, or doesn’t have to involve, jacks and concrete trucks. A simple car jack, and a little know-how can adjust that Taurus trailer’s foundation with relative ease. Doesn’t take much, and this is a simple, quick, and most important? Not a permanent fix. Fixed, but just for now. Tapping a wood shim into place one time? The underlying concrete block shattered, or the top portion chipped off, but the rest of the support held until I could shove another brick into place. It’s a simple adjustment, but might take some fiddling with, to make it work best for Taurus.

Gemini

While I have an ephemeris, the book version of planet locations and times? My long-time astrology software would generate that data, as a page, adjusted for my time zone and location. I tend to be five or six hours behind GMT, the default standard. I was timing the lunar phase, and I’ve been using an updated version of software, and it allows timing to the minute. So I’ll pop in an approximate time, then roll the chart forward at day long interval, then backwards an hour at a time, then forwards at ten minutes, and finally backwards at one minute. Looking at previous batches of data, doing this while I was out of town, I got a time of 23 minutes past the hour. At home, performing the same routine, I got 21 minutes past the hour. The difference is longitude and latitude, as adjusted by the software. I might be miscalculating, too, there is always room for operator error, but I’ve learned to trust my software. While we can time this to the minute, and the second? Think, in broad, Sagittarius terms, not exacting Virgo minutiae. In other words, “Today” means today, yesterday, or maybe tomorrow. Which explains why there seems to be minor inconsistencies, but the overall data is sound. Location matters to Gemini.

Cancer

“How can you tell a boy likes you?” Innocent question from a buddy’s teenage daughter. My obvious answer? He does stupid stuff. Begs the follow up quiz, “How is that different?” Kid is bright. And right. Purely from her empirical point, yeah, she has a handle on the world as we all know it, now.

The conclusion? “Boys are dumb.” She’s not wrong, you know. It is a time of trial, error, travail, and more error. Some think this is love. I think it’s just being stupider than usual. Look: romance is stupid. “Boys are dumb,” out of the mouths of children. Simplest guideline? Don’t be stupid. Trail and error, it plan on more error than success.