Horoscopes for 3-12-2024

Horoscopes for 3-12-2024

“How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell:
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”1

Albany in Shakespeare’s King Lear (I.iv.254-5)

Horoscopes for 3-12-2024

Sun conj. Neptune 27°21’ Pis. 3/17 5:17 AM
Sun —> Aries 3/19 9:07 PM

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#shakespeare
#horoscope

  1. > “Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.”

    Shakespeare’s version of, “Don’t fix nuthin ain’t broke.”

Everyone on this Train

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect

Australian. I guess? Like, European, but not?

It’s train ride, a locked room puzzle. With the cream of the Australian Mystery Writers in tow?

“If you’re wondering, writers fall into two categories: plotters, who outline their work before writing it; and pantsers, who sit down at their desk each day with no idea where the work will take them, thus flying by the seat of their pants.” Page 71.

Me? I’m definitely a “pantser,” have been for more than 30 years. Should be obvious. I’m as surprised as the next person. Should be obvious.

Tightly plotted and carefully laid out, painstakingly so? Yet to suggest it was all, “off the cuff” in a breezy narrative form?

Wait, more than halfway through? What title was that, a classic in its own right? Murder on the Orient Express?

Yeah, but let me finish the novel, first.

Oh that was good. Always have to have a twist at the end.

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect

Bit backwards, but now?

Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone

Excerpt From The King James

59:1 Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear:

59:2 But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.

59:3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness.

59:4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

59:5 They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.

The Book of the Prophet Isaiah

From The King James Version of the Bible

#Bible

I’m not weird

I’m not weird
I’m limited edition

  • : iPad Pro (11-inch) (3rd generation)
  • : 9 March, 2024
  • : no
  • : 3mm
  • : 320
  • : 1/39s

Vintage Hard Rock

Vintage Hard Rock?

“No Drugs or Nuclear
Weapons Allowed inside.”

Vintage Hard Rock
  • : iPad Pro (11-inch)
  • : 25 February, 2024
  • : no
  • : 3mm
  • : 80
  • : 1/60s

Baseball and ballpark franks

Baseball and ballpark franks

So far, the hotdogs at the ballparks have been underwhelming, at best. Not bad, but not great. As Bogey noted, “a hotdog at the ball game is better than roast beef at the ritz.” That much is true.

On the way westward, down Indian School Road, I saw an ad and pin drop for hot dog place with distinct local color.

Cheaper than dogs at the ball park, but far better?

Sinola hotdog and we had a moment about pronunciation, my restaurant-border patois mixed with French. So much for any South San Antonio street cred.

I’m not sure, but I think it was crushed up Cheetos as the final topping. A brilliant selection of mayo, pico, hot sauces, and then cheese-like crunch, probably Cheeto dust, liberally applied on top.

Language barrier again, I ordered a bottle of Mexican Coke and wind up with a Big Gulp of regular coke.

No complaints. Great food. After local ballpark prices? Great food at a low price. Flavor, ambience, language barriers, what more could a tourist ask for?

Grilled jalapeño as a garnish?

Baseball and ballpark franks

Baseball and ballpark franks

Baseball and ballpark franks

Hotdog at the ballgame

Hotdog at the ballgame

  • : iPhone 14 Plus
  • : 6 March, 2024
  • : no
  • : 5.7mm
  • : 50
  • : 1/1449s

Phoenix Memories

Phoenix Memories

Falstaff? The fat, errant knight?

“But to stand stain’d with travel, and sweating with desire to see him, thinking of nothing else, putting all affairs else in oblivion, as if there were nothing else to be done but to see him.”

Shakespeare’s 2 Henry 4 (V.v.14)

My favored memory of that passage was in — I think — the Gus Van Sant movie, “My Own Private Idaho.” Also: mentioned elsewhere.

But to stand stain’d with travel

That’s what I was looking for, “stain’d with travel” — notes suggest it could also be “travail.” (Your mileage may vary.)

Phoenix Memories

I saw all of one Shakespeare play on screen in my entirety there, the churlish Henry V. No, wait, Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, kind of a set of bookends. Two plays, in total, on the big screen.

In Albuquerque (NM), Central Avenue runs East-West with a portion of the historic Route 66 part of the appeal. In Phoenix, Central Avenue runs North-South, at one time, bisecting town into a profound cultural division.

I realized, hat tip to Steve (redoubtable Capricorn), that I spent very little time west of Central Avenue, in all the years.

“Every time you pass Central, Stairway to Heaven comes on the radio.”

Half the ball parks are on the west side. My education was mostly the original ASU campus, East Valley — almost exclusively in the whatever they called it — Language Arts building.

Phoenix Memories

There were three bookstores that come to mind. I don’t know the name of two of them, and one was called Changing Hands Books. Changing Hands was on Mill Ave., old town Tempe, and it had a basement filled with used books. Both before and after, my love of Half Price Books.

The other two bookstores, one, all I recall was middle of the suburban blight, sprawling subdivisions, and rank strip centers, but the bookstore had ceiling-high shelves with not just popular lit, but all kinds of hardback. Plus? A knowledgeable staff. Think it was a mystery store.

The other bookstore, and I still have a bookmark at home, was “Books (something1)” and was tucked in a center like an afterthought for the University. I ordered books there because: before Amazon.

Changing Hands has changed locations, and the others I can’t even recall.

See Libra about bookstores.

Phoenix Memories

There is another thought, too, about the land, the shape, the texture of the light, and the soil. The tired, old volcanic cinder cones that punctuate the inner landscape of the city proper, and the ring of mountains loosely knit around the valley?

Roswell notebook

Roswell notebook

I lived in Roswell for two school years, eventually, then Albuquerque for a year, bouncing back to Texas, then pausing long enough in the Phoenix area to earn those degrees.

Add to that, the years, more than two decades, spent in and out of El Paso. Occasional summer forays into Santa Fe? I’ve been in and around the southwest my whole life.

But: I’m not really a desert rat.

I have a distinct recollection of being on foot in the empty lot next to the center where I was a scheduled to present, probably early aughts, Las Cruces (NM). The jagged shards of mountains to east, it was the same desert floor, mountains rising to one side, the variegated hues of the earth, microcosmic worlds contained in sparse, desert dirt.

Scrub cactus of one sort or another, struggling against the searing heat. I understand it. I like it. I can visit, but it’s not my home.

First rodeo

West Texas, then El Paso, both are Chihuahua Desert, northern terminus, but Phoenix, if I caught it right? Sonoran Desert.

Phoenix Memories

Play ball?

  1. The correct title was Books Etc.
  • : iPhone 14 Plus
  • : 6 March, 2024
  • : no
  • : 5.7mm
  • : 250
  • : 1/60s

America the Beautiful

America the Beautiful

Full Title?

America the Beautiful?: One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled

Comedy writer from The Late Show if I read correctly.

”Both were described as “young men”—though as you and I both know, any cis male under the age of thirty-five is not a man but a child.” Page 29.

Generous at best.

Lively writing. That’s what I figured it was, “lively.” Spirited, knowledgeable, and following the footsteps of the masters.

Written with a sharp eye on current conditions, questions, and pointed bites at the hand that feeds us, and timely. Quite timely.

Looks like she’s an online/magazine author, maybe some other stuff, too, but that makes for a breezy, confessional style. Risky, slightly risqué, and funny. Pointed but pointed, barbed humor. Nicely barbed and sprinkled with slight neurosis, for self-deprecating humor.

Very enjoyable. Easy to read.

“Driving anywhere in Texas takes forever, but it especially takes forever when you’re starting in far west Texas and driving northeast. At that point you might as well give up the idea of ever seeing any other states in your lifetime: you’re pretty much in Texas for the duration.” Page 281.

Wraps up passing through Marfa, but not the Marfa I recall from days long gone.

Landed in Phoenix for Spring Training , and the commentary about the cactus stuck with me.

America the Beautiful

  • : iPad Pro (11-inch)
  • : 24 November, 2023
  • : no
  • : 3mm
  • : 64
  • : 1/60s