Heat Wave

If I-10 runs through your town? 90 degrees is not that hot.

Seriously.

Form and Function

It’s a serious question, and I am unwilling to engage in too many invasive ways to answer the question, so we’re left with my own senses. The question, whether it is better to have each sign’s horoscope lumped as a single paragraph, or if it is better to break up the flow of the text with line breaks, carriage returns, pull-quotes, drop caps, and sub-paragraphs. As further questions, addendums, bulleted items, numbered lists, asides, block quotes, sidebars, and footnotes1?

Form and Function

When I’m actively working on the horoscopes themselves, in the unlikely event it isn’t obvious2, I tend to work through each sign’s passage in a single take.

Usually, anyway.

Sometimes I’ll wander off for coffee or bathroom break, on rare occasions when the phone rings I’ll answer it, or the doorbell, there are interruptions, but I tend to work through each sign, in a single moment. Minutes. Hours.

So the idea is originally packaged as a single paragraph, usually between 100 and 200 words, but even then, that varies. The old adage, “Long enough to cover the subject, short enough to keep it interesting.”

Is breaking it up into smaller byte-sized, bite-sized line breaks more important? Or is it better to keep it all together as a single, coherent whole?

Form and Function

The original question that was so similar, many years distant, probably pre-Y2K? In its original format, there was a placeholder for each sign, a distinct template, and container, for each sign. That meant twelve separate files plus an introduction, so thirteen files, which, in turn means at least a dozen — or more — spaces for errors.

From a mileage point of view, or rather, for more “clicks that pay,” the individual signs were good. From my administrative point, though, a single column makes much more sense, as that is just — on an order of ten or more — easier to handle.

So it’s that fine line between ease of administration, room for errors, and what looks best.

Form and Function

From a technical point3, I never did figure out how to break the signs up then have them hold together as an archive, so there is that. The one, long format is way superior, and after 30 years, surely makes more sense.

From a printing point, the single paragraph per sign definitely makes more sense, but the web allows for additional white space, and sometimes, from a literary and philosophical point? It’s not what is said, it is what is left unsaid.

“Fill in the blanks.”

Form and Function

Over the years, and I have no definitive answer, but over the years, I’ve experimented a little with this. Sometimes it works.

There were two Sagittarius that often opined about my material. I would listen to what they had to say, merely because, well, brothers and sisters.

“Family” understands.

astrofish.net/contact

Form and Function

I had an example of this process in action4. When I started and for the first half-dozen years? I published the weekly on Sunday might, so it would roll over on Monday morning. In fact, at one time, early web years, I was one of the highest trafficked sites on that server, on Mondays. Back in the bad old days when “unlimited” meant unlimited. Moved to Thursday publication then, more recently, to a Tuesday date.

Behind the scenes, unbeknownst, I toyed with throwing in the towel, capitulating completely, and going back to just a monthly publication. Dark times during and at the end of the pandemic. But a long period of rest and reflection brought me back to the weekly that I enjoy (mostly).

This is process5, and what I’m alluding to when I’m looking for a way to weight form and function against mere style.

Tuesday, besides the title of my favorite weblog-to-book6, seems to be the day when there is just enough time for rest and reflection.

Form and Function

Form and Function? It’s still experimental and experiential.

Some things just don’t change.

DIY Themes

Notes:
• Own the building.
• Early bullet points.
• Rethinking design.
• Make good choices.

  1. Does anyone read footnotes anymore? ↩
  2. Previously, musing on creation, 2009. ↩
  3. I know how to do it — but makes for needlessly complicated messes. Room for error is multiplied by a factor of 12 or more. ↩
  4. The “process” in action? ↩
  5. It’s all process — in action. ↩
  6. Why, Two-Meat Tuesday, seen here. ↩
Sparkle Faerie Kramer

May 13, at Nature’s Treasures


May 13, 2025: Tuesday Natures Treasures
4103 N IH-35 Service Road
Austin, TX 7872211 AM – 4 PM
512.472.5015

May 13, at Nature’s Treasures

Tuesday in Austin

Say You’ll Remember Me

I stumbled through the online stores and saw Abby Jimenez, and a cursory examination of her backstory engaged me. Her purported genre, romance, turns me off, but I applaud both her word skills, and promotions. There’s that level of authenticity that seeps from her works. I can’t find it now, but I know I recently read one of her shorter pieces, not a full novel, turned out to be a bit of bodice ripper, still, I enjoyed it. The language, the pacing, the description, certainly a novelist’s eye. Still, she was billed as “romance.”

The most recent novel is Say You’ll Remember Me, advertised as a “literary rom-com.” I can use some “happily ever after,” and I know that I have to approach anything new with an open mind. I got a library copy, started reading, and suddenly I was a third of the way through, unable to put it down. Tropes, sure, all the correct elements, almost like a it was from a pre-formatted outline, just fill in the blanks with “meet cute,” but early on, some of the adorning filler material was timely and topical.

Hint: there’s a trigger warning at the beginning. Read that before starting the book.

The yearning, the obstacles, the younger voice of the protagonist, and then? Her hero? There’s a very archetypical format the plot follows, almost straight from The Hero’s Journey: the hero with a thousand faces.

I wasn’t thinking about that, though, when I was compulsively reading the last 100 pages.

“Someone who loves animals, but only tolerates most people?”

Know anyone like that? I do. I’ve found that dogs always tend to be good judges of character.

Say You’ll Remember Me

Perfect contemporary literature that surely transcends its taxonomy.

Fake Accounts

“Keep in mind that right now, at the outset of this paragraph, I don’t completely know the answer—that this writing is as much an effort to better understand myself, the person I can’t help but feel is the most important figure in this narrative (if not, apologies, the most intriguing), as it is an effort to enchant an audience, promote certain principles I feel are lacking in contemporary literature, interpret events both world-historical and interpersonal (perhaps at the same time), etc.” page 24.

Point: “that this writing is as much an effort to better understand myself” end quote.

“I felt my high-level search-engine excavation skills were knavish and petty; they marked me as a member of a generation that grew up watching reality TV, without respect for fundamental principles of functional society and the human soul.” Page 44.

Generation that grew up on reality TV… which one?

Elegiac tone, post-modern, stream of consciousness, stylized, with real-time references.

This is the kind of book I’ll buy, set on the shelf, swear I’m going to read it again, and then silently loathe myself for neither reading it again, or not appreciating the nuanced depth and pointed barbs, commentary on current society, and the world, as we might see it, marveling at the interplay of language and imagery. Clever writing.

Nice twist at the end.

Fake Accounts

Grief and Retribution

What it’s about? Grief and Retribution. Started as a coffee meeting joke, but just ended up as something else. I like it.

Part of this is dealing with current events, part of this love and loss, and part of this is my own humor, such as it is.

Started with the six stages of grief:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance
  6. Retribution

Then, a few days later, chatting with a fishing buddy about love and loss, my comment, “We sure are going to be some weird older people,” he followed with, “we are older people. And you are weird.” Wear it with pride, my friend, wear it with pride. (Sagittarius brother.)

So this started as a joke, but it has a destination. That I’ve grown fond of using both Shakespeare and Marcus Aurelius as source material? Not news. But what I recalled? Marcus Aurelius, in translation, put it best, about revenge.

“6. The best way of avenging thyself is not to do likewise.”
Book 6, No. 6

Earlier, I was carrying on with the six stages of grief, as outlined above, then getting the quizzical look, and question, “Retribution?”

Yes, that’s a part of it.

Don’t get mad; get even.

What’s the best way to get even? How’s that, what Marcus Aurelius succinctly put?

“6. The best revenge is to not be like that.”
Book VI, No. vi.

There it is. The six stages of grief.

Notes on Grief and Retribution

best pierce the ear of grief
Revenge
A Very Private Grief
Revenge
Celebrating Death
Revenge From Marcus Aurelius
revenge me of my persecutors