"Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies." ~Edward Abbey

Horoscope For Tuesday, January 12, 2010


Aries (March 21 - April 19) -

You need to be as honest as you can be today--someone needs to hear the truth and nothing but. It’s easier than ever for you to tell people what they need to hear, even if they don’t think they’re ready…or even if they don’t particularly care to hear it. Nobody wants to hear about how tired they look or that their baby looks like a monkey but, hey, as far as you’re concerned honesty is the best policy so who cares who gets hurt? Just watch out for violent reactions. Having your foot surgically removed from your mouth is expensive…and painful.

Taurus (April 20 - May 20) -

For once, you’re totally certain you’re heading in the right direction. Let go of your illusions of self-control and just dive headfirst into the madness. Medication is for sissy Mary’s! Go au natural down that rabbit hole and let the chips fall where they may. At some point a friend or family member will have you committed & you’ll get a nice long rest out of it. Aaaahhh…vacation.

Gemini (May 21 - June 21) -

Beware of bossy pals. There’s not much you can do to shut them up so try to just smile and nod your head and wait for them to get bored. If that doesn’t work there’s always duct tape & a baseball bat.

Cancer (June 22 - July 22) -

You can’t make up your mind very easily today, and that may be driving you crazy. You need to get some advice, but deciding between advisors may pose its own little problems as well. Hot cereal or cold? Coke or Pepsi? Meth or Crack? Oh, my sainted aunt, how to choose?! Just lie down with a cool cloth on your head & decide tomorrow.

Leo (July 23 - August 22) -

You’re out on the cutting edge once again, making people wonder how they can keep going on with the same-old same-old. It’s not that you want them to feel bad…much. It’s just that you’re so much better than everybody else. Is it your fault that the lives of the peasants are unforgiving and uncool? We think not. Just slip on your shades and swagger away…you pop-collared fuck.

Virgo (August 23 - September 22) -

You’d love to skip the whole flirtation stage and go right into, say, living together, but this person doesn’t even know you exist yet. It’s probably time to overcome the tension (that exists perhaps solely in your mind) and, you know, say something to them. . . Or you can keep trying to send psychic messages and hoping that your aura will hover above the crowd like a neon arrow. While you’re at it why not try bending spoons with your mind? It’s a nice party trick.

Libra (September 23 - October 22) -

Even someone as balanced as you can feel a little frustrated or blue now and then. Enlist your sweetheart’s aid for a little cheering up -- or tell them to leave you the hell alone for two minutes for the love of God! Seriously! Back up! Can a person get some space? Damn, yo, what is their glitch? Ya’ know what? You may have to cut a bitch. We do not in any way endorse this…but we do understand.

Scorpio (October 23 - November 21) -

Are you still holding onto an old grudge? It’s time to forgive, even if you can’t quite forget. Even if this person is no longer part of your life, you are still letting them affect your current prospects. So, put the voodoo doll down and step away from the cyber stalking. ‘Kay? Take a deep breath. . . You can do it. . . We have faith in you. OK? Now, see? That wasn’t so bad, was it? Good job. Next we’ll work on sleeping with the light off!

Sagittarius (November 22 - December 21) -

It’s time to suit up for the game of love. This isn’t like seventh grade phys ed; here, everyone gets to play, no matter what…well, it might be a little like seventh grade phys ed. Somebody has to be picked last after all. I’m sure it has nothing to do with your hair lip. . . Or that funny, well, let’s call it an odor. No, certainly not. . . It’s your personality. Let’s face facts. It’s not them. It’s you.

Capricorn (December 22 - January 19) -

Despair is too easy to embrace today -- but if you do, expect to hang on to it for quite a while. You’re much better off enforcing optimism in yourself and…oh, who are we kidding. Life is pain. Life is earnest. Life’s a bitch and then you die…what were we saying? Oh, right. Optimism. Sure. Try that. See where it gets you!

Aquarius (January 20 - February 18) -

Help is needed! Hold on, it’s on its way -- if you can get it together enough to ask your partner for it. The stars urge you to do so -- your honey can provide a badly needed reality check. For instance, you will never get out of debt if you keep using one credit card to pa off another. And, listen carefully to this one because it’s key, you don’t look good in skinny jeans and guy liner if you’re a 46 year old gym teacher named Burt.

Pisces (February 19 - March 20) -

You’ve got quite a lot going on right now, so see if you can get your friends and colleagues to help out. And by help out we mean do the whole damn thing. Because, let’s face facts, they’re better at this stuff, whatever it is, than you are. Also, why deprive people of the greatest gift of all? The gift of helping others. It ups their karma quotient and you get to take a nap. It’s win win, by God!

It is easy to get a thousand prescriptions but hard to get one single remedy. ~Chinese Proverb

Fun fact! Did you know that if you take 1 percocet every 4 hours, as prescribed by your physician, for two weeks your body will become, for lack of a better word . . . And because it’s the word that should be used, addicted? Me neither! So, if your physician tells you to take 2 pills every 4 hours for 6 weeks, um, yeah. Don’t do it.

I have been taking percocet off and on for the past 6 weeks. Not at the dosage prescribed by my doctor, thank God. Nope, I’m a little soldier who attempts, if possible, to suck it up. So, I’ve been taking maybe 2 a day. I haven’t had much pain for the past 2 days so I haven’t taken any. And, hence, therefore and thusly I woke up after the 2 hours of sleep (5:30 - 7:30 AM) that I was able to get (you try sleeping in a neck brace and see how well you do) with wicked spasms in my arms. I, being me, went immediately to the bad place and thought that I’d managed to break my neck in my sleep…even though I hadn’t moved. But then I thought about the fact that I wasn’t in much pain so, really, what are the odds that a broken neck wouldn’t hurt? Slim to none. Second bad place I went to? Percocet addiction. DING! DING! We may have a winner. Apparently, when your body is trying to rid itself of the demon opiate it spasms. DT’s, anyone?

Now, after waking up and going to multiple bad places (they don’t call me Dark Fury for nothing, after all) I went and read my prescription hand out for the valium which I was also given in case, and I quote, “you start getting muscle spasms.” How, I have been wondering, would Valium help with that? Well, kids, Valium is used to treat symptoms of detox. So, either I’m supposed to be spasming as part of my regular recovery or they bloody knew that I would need them to get through tossing the Percocet. Great. I feel good about that. Wait…not so much. If they knew I’d be spasming during my recovery should they not have told me why? Or, if they knew I’d need them to get through pitching the opiates should they not have told me that as well? Apparently not. Super.

Let us be clear, I am not in any way a Percocet junkie. Opiates are good for pain management and that’s about it. How people get high off this shit I have yet to figure out. It cuts the pain in half and makes you go to sleep. Woo Hoo! Party time? Nope. Not so much. Sleepy time? You betcha’. And, as an insomniac, I can understand the appeal of that but, seriously, it only put me to sleep for about an hour. Big whoop. Not worth it. Tylenol PM is a better sleep aid. But, I digress! I took the Valium and now the spasms have subsided. Also, I may be able to catch a nap if I’m quick about it. I have a finite window for drug induced sleep as for some reason the drugs don’t work so well for me. I blame my hippie gene pool. My father smoked so much dope, dropped so much acid (even though he always had a bad trip . . . the man ain’t right in the head) and took so many pills (no, so many, seriously, he used to go and pick them out by color combination…as in yellow and blue make green so I’ll take 3 of each…what? We’re artsy people.) that I’m convinced that I have opiates and THC permanently embedded in my DNA making it almost impossible for me to get any sort of wacky effect from pain meds. Go, father, it’s your birthday. Hopefully his other kids have inherited this trait as it makes surgery so much easier. Of course, on the down side, he loved morphine and that crap makes me sick as a dog. Oh, well, we can’t have everything in this life.

So, whether or not you decide to follow your doctors orders, if ever you should , God forbid, have a need for pain management is up to you and, let’s face facts, if it’s a fatal disease or a truly horrific incident you shouldn’t worry about the addictive properties. But, as one pal to another, if you can do without it then I advise you to do so. Thus ends my PSA for the day. . . .

Of course, it may just be that after the surgery my muscles and nerves which were injured by the condition which needed fixing are regenerating or attempting in some way to right themselves….Who knows? But why go to the good place when bad is so much easier and I don’t need GPS to get there?

“Look in a mirror and one thing's sure; what we see is not who we are.” Richard Bach

Brushing your teeth shouldn’t be a mine field. It should, in fact, have no emotion attached to it at all. Tooth paste on the brush. Brush up. Brush down. Brush side to side. Brush the back teeth. Brush the tongue to avoid halitosis. Be thorough because anything worth doing is worth doing well…especially when it helps you keep your teeth. Teeth are important. Important but not an emotional battle ground. No, brushing your teeth shouldn’t make you reevaluate your life. And it wouldn’t either if it weren’t for that damn mirror.

There it is. Morning and night . Every morning and every night of your entire life staring back at you. Showing you every change. Whether you want to see it or not. And, as you get older and your mother starts leaving bridal magazines around the house when you drop by and suggesting names for your future imaginary children while knowing full well that you don’t know, in point of fact have never known, any man you’d like to spend a month with let alone a life, the mirror can be a friend and a foe.

It can be a bastard setting you up for the big fall when you come home at two o’clock in the morning when your face is showing the wear and tear of a good time. Mascara streaks. Lipstick fades. Powder settles. And then, Mr. Demille, you truly think your mother is right. You’re not getting any younger. You are, as it happens, getting older every minute. This minute, this one right now, is the oldest you’ve ever been…until this minute…and then, of course, there’s this one. Well, it may be better than the alternative but it doesn’t feel so hot at the time. The mirror isn’t to blame. It’s just a reflection of what is. But, as every woman knows, there are good mirrors and bad mirrors. Mirrors that flatter and mirrors that solidly tell what may be the truth and may be a grave insult. And none of the good mirrors are on duty at two o’clock. You think the wicked witch in the fairy tale must have had a two o’clock mirror. You brush your teeth and you go to bed.

In the morning a mirror can be magic. It can reassure you that despite the sins of last night or a lifetime that you still look pretty damn good in the morning without makeup or even a hair brush. You wish you could take credit for it but you know that that’s all down to genetics. When do you ever remember to moisturize? You don’t. And, sin of sins, you usually, despite purchasing all manner of expensive facial cleansers, wash your face with regular soap. The horror! The only contribution you make is SPF protection on a semi-regular basis. So, clearly, the good moments have nothing to do with you and may, now that you think about it, be the mirror giving not you but your mother a compliment since she’s the one who gave you the good genes to begin with. But a compliment is a compliment and you’ll take it. And, after the two o’clock mirror of the night before when you thought that you would have to immediately check yourself into an upscale “spa” in Mexico City for a quick “freshening up” the eleven o’clock mirror is your pal and your coconspirator. It assures you that no matter what anybody might say, including yourself, you are not in fact the hag of the western world. That there are still good times to come and to be had. And that, if the Lord be willin’ and the crick don’t rise, you’ll have the face you see staring back at you for a good five more years at least. You believe in genetics and SPF. You can face the world. But first you brush your teeth because fresh breath is important.

"Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.” Hubert Humphrey

"“In Obama’s worldview, our trust is in government not in God. A denial of how God designed and created our economic and social systems to actually work in the real world."
Minnesota Family Council PresidentTom Prichard

Why is universal health care such a scary concept? Is it because it’s sometimes called socialized medicine? Why is that frightening? Because it contains the word social which makes people think of Socialism which, in turn, makes them think of Communism…which is dumb.

If people without access to health care are given access that doesn't mean that somebody is going to goose step into your home and start taking your stuff…unless they’re a National Socialist*. . . in which case you have bigger problems than who’s taking your TV. So, calm down and start thinking of ways to fake a Prussian family tree. But! I digress. Universal health care, at it’s core, is a very Judeo/Christian concept. The strong take care of the weak in order to hopefully turn the weak into the strong some day. It’s a do unto others kind of a deal.

And this is why the "religious right" are wrong. They stand there in their two thousand dollar suits and pumps and talk about family values and Christian ethics while proudly fingering their WWJD? bracelets and, basically, flip the bird to the poor. Hell, to the middle class! And if, God forbid, you’re gay? Get right outta’ town!

No.

Seriously.

Go.

They don’t want you in their town. Unless, of course, you’ve been to a “reprogramming” camp or seminar and men /women no longer hold any sway over you…except for in public bathroom stalls…and then they’ll elect you to congress. I digress. Again. Sorry.

How can people say they abide by and have no faith in any teaching but those of Jesus Christ (Yeshua Bar Yoseph…look it up.) behave in this way? It maddens me. They quote and they quote and they spout their hate for every kind but our kind till their faces turn red. And, the funny part, if there is a funny part, is that these people have, in fact, studied the bible. All of their quotes come from the bible. But they skipped some important stuff.

Blessed are the peace makers: for they shall be called sons of God.

If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Love thy neighbor as thyself.

These are the rocks of the faith as I understand it. let’s face facts, if Jesus was alive today they’d want him deloused before being allowed into their eminent presences. And then, after he gave the sermon on the mount, they’d call him a dirty, hippie, commie Jew…well, they’d leave out the Jew bit. . . But, come on, they’d think it.

My point, if I may be permitted to believe I have one, is that a true person of God, any God, doesn’t turn their back on the infirm. They don’t pull themselves above the muck and then kick the people down who are trying to pull themselves up as well. They try to help those people. Why? Because that’s what a person does. Anything else makes you a schmuck.

So, the question is simple, my fellow Americans, do you want to help your fellow man? Or do you want to be a schmuck? And if you, just for a minute, look down at that shiny little bracelet of yours and actually think about the question I think you’ll find the right answer.


*FYI - not Socialists but Fascists

15 Books in 15 Minutes

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.

1. To Kill a Mockingbird
2. Good Omens
3. A Christmas Carol
4. The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker
5. Without Feathers
6. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale
7. The Selected Poems of Federico Garcia-Lorca Bilingual Edition
8. The Scarlet Letter
9. War & Peace (because I hate it so much)
10. Pride & Prejudice
11. Persuasion
12. The Color Purple
13. Daughters of Decadence: Women Writers of The Fin De Siecle
14. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
15. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture

And, because you know I can’t just list 15 books…

Bonus Round!

16. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
17. The Handmaid’s Tale
18. The Ode Less Traveled: Unlocking the Poet Within
19. Right Ho, Jeeves
20. I, Claudius

What Heaven Might Smell Like

First, you should know that I took pictures for this post. 9 pictures. From mise en place to finished product! Sadly, I can’t find the damn cord to connect my I-Phone to my laptop. Damn. Damn. That’s right, double damn! Oh, well.

I found this recipe on NPR. I haven’t tasted it yet but if Heaven has a smell it smells like this cake. Make it. Now.

Lemon Pound Cake With Rose Water Glaze

CAKE:

1 ¾ Cups All-Purpose Flour
1 Teaspoon Baking Powder
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
1 Cup Unsalted Butter At Room Temperature
1 Cup Sugar
3 Large Eggs At Room Temperature
1 Tablespoon Grated Lemon Zest
2 Teaspoons Lemon Extract
1 Cup Sour Cream

Preheat oven to 350.

Grease & flour a 12 cup bundt pan.

Sift the flower, baking powder & baking soda together into a small bowl.
Set it aside.

In a medium bowl beat the butter & sugar together until light and fluffy. If you have a stand mixer (it’s the only way to fly!) put it on medium high, set a timer for 1 minute & let it rip. After 1 minute scrape down the sides. Set the timer for 3 minutes & let it rip again. Golden.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add the lemon zest, rind and eggs. Beat for 2 minutes.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Add half the flower & beat on low speed just till combined.

Add half the sour cream & beat till combined.

Scrape down the bowl.

Add the rest of the flour & beat on low speed just till combined.

Add the rest of the sour cream & beat till combined.

Scrape down the sides.

Spoon (the batter is way too thick to pour) the batter into the prepared bundt pan. Smooth it out and make it as even as possible.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes.

Test cake with cake tester/tooth pick/uncooked piece of spaghetti (what? It’s what my grandfather used…of course, we had a lot of spaghetti in the house.). If it comes out clean it’s done.

Let it rest for 10 minutes in the pan then turn it out onto the plate or stand you’ll be using. The plate or stand must, I repeat must, have lip.

GLAZE:

2 Tablespoons Rose Water
6 Tablespoons Fresh Lemon Juice
1 ½ Cups Powdered Sugar

Sift the powdered sugar into a medium size bowl.
Add the juice & rose water.
Whisk until there are no lumps & the glaze has come together.

Poke holes in the warm cake with a cake tester/tooth pick/uncooked piece of spaghetti (agin, what?!).

Spoon or pour all of the glaze over the cake.

It will look like it’s entirely too much but the cake will absorb it, I swear.

Leave it for 5 minutes.

Go back to spoon the glaze that’s left on the plate & in the center over the cake again.

Leave it for 5 minutes.

You thought there would be glaze to spoon over it again didn’t you? Wrong! It’s all basically absorbed.

Done, chief!

Let the cake cool completely.

Sift some more powdered sugar over the cake.

Serve

Eat.

The Play's The Thing

As you all know (you do keep up with my life religously, don't you?!)
I've been doing some community theatre lately. I'm really quite
pleased to have gotten back into it. I am...big but coming in 5 4 3 2

But! Being on stage, even a community theatre stage, makes it
extraordinarily hard for me to care about my job. I know. I know!
Everybody has to get the bills paid & I'm lucky to have a job where I
get to help people. Hell! I'm lucky to have a job! I get that. I do.
And, as long as I had absolutely nothing to do with the theatre in any
way, shape or form, I was content with that. Now? I'm a malcontent. I
don't want to be but, sadly, I am.

There's only one thing I ever wanted to do (OK, fine, when I was 3 I
wanted to be a paleontologist. So, sue me!). But, due to a long
boring, daft story, I, for lack of a better term, crapped out & let it
go. But here's the thing - I'm over all that boring daft idiot crap.
The past, as somebody once said, is prologue. I'm concentrating on the
next act. The kid is trying to get back on track...I don't know how
yet but I'm inching my way forward, feeling my way along in the
dark...and other cliched phrases as well!

So, let's make a deal! If you catch me back sliding give me a kick in
the ass (it's quite close to the ground so this shouldn't be
strenuous) and, in return, I'll try to give a crap about my day job.
Because, if this isn't love it'll have to do until the real thing
comes along. Sound fair? Keen.

Yours In Christ,
Dark Furt