March 17

Aries: You're all set to heat up your love life -- though you may not know what's happening until you're right in the middle of it! You often prefer it that way anyway, so get set for a wild ride!

Just when I’d given up hope on my fickle, non-updatatory horoscope on facebook, just when I’d decided to can the Aries Experiment and move on to the chili-cheese fries experiment, just when I’d already gotten chili-cheese fries for said experiment from Carl’s Jr., just when I’d decided that it only got another half star to add to the one it came with on the bag, just when I was ready to describe the poor presentation (a relative term when dealing with chili-cheese fries) of the blobby cheese and chili on the mediocre fries, just when I was searching for fine chili-cheese pictures on the internet for said post, facebook finally updates its horoscope. And what can I say about it? Well, not much. I guess I’ll have to wait and see, but perhaps this chili-cheese fries tour of Utah County will help me get ready get set for the forecasted “wild ride” coming up in my love life. I’m not much of an exhibitionist, but in the interest of the experiment, I may allude to whether it seemed true or not by my next post. Depending on how true it ends up being and how demure I feel when I post.

Not all astrological omens lend themselves to immediate analysis. It’s surprising even that I’ve gotten this far without having to leave things in suspense.

Also, if anyone knows of places to get Chili cheese fries in Utah Valley, let me know.

March 4: Special Tuesday Post

Aries: Today sees you pretty much right where you want to be and your recent activities have paid off in a big way. Now might be a good time to re-evaluate your long-term goals in light of recent successes.

The Aries Experiment exists for these days. The first sentence seems right on. I mean, after a lunch at Chuck-a-rama with great friends and the curmudgeonly father of one, how can I not say I’m where I want to be? Besides that I’ve reached page 40 on my thesis—a fine milestone in a 60 page project—and other areas of life seem to be going great. So, a point to the dubious-at-best facebook horoscope and another point for updating on Tuesday instead of every Friday. Oh, Horoscope, you do keep me guessing.

As for the second part, re-evaluating long-term goals, that’s always kind of hard. Maybe this is a reminder to get working on my writing again as I’m getting a handle on other parts of my life. Not that I could say any of my recent successes make me think of my long-term goals any differently thus necessitating a re-evaluation. Though maybe this takes me back to Chuck-a-rama where my friend had the idea of getting a job with the British tourist something or other mapping and creating an online database of GPSed hikes with picture and audio recordings. So, that would definitely be a re-evaluation of my future goals. Send me down a different but very enjoyable path. That’s not necessarily a re-evaluation in light of recent successes though, and since the ol’ horoscope’s doing so well today, I don’t feel like cutting it any slack, not when it’s bringing it’s A game. Though, my thesis is on a similar subject… so in light of recent successes/milestones on my thesis, I may be thinking about a big, long project in England. Better check their website….

Thought: is part of this experiment to go so far as to really act on these interpretations?

Feb 29, 2008

Aries: You like to keep a brisk pace in your daily activities, but today demands care and attention, so go slow. If you start to get frustrated, take a breather and remind yourself of what's important.

I'm feeling this leap-day horoscope is a little anti-climactic. Is that just me liking a "brisk" or more exciting pace? Slow down it tells me. Enjoy me in my banality.

Sometimes I do like a brisk pace. The days when I don’t sleep in until noon—very rare these days—or get up and putter around my room “cleaning” and shuffling papers into various piles, I do like a brisk pace though it may be closer to the truth to say that I don’t like a slow pace. But that’s what I need today evidently. I don’t know if sleeping in a half hour and being awakened by a phone call to find out my library teaching time was 10 instead of 2 counts as taking it slow because it’s the opposite of attention. Though I was being nagged by something in my mind to check the exact time last night. Just didn’t. My day was looking fairly easy-going, but now that I’m cautioned against frustration, I remember that I need to type up and print a worksheet for my GRE class tomorrow. That might make things hectic. But what’s important? Writing three pages on my thesis. Getting it done. And making sure I see/hear Billy Collins here at BYU. Speaking of which, if I’m going to have a slow walk with care and attention over to the JFSB, I better go.

Later the same day:
So, my day was largely a very brisk affair. Didn't really things down except once in the afternoon and in the evening. But it occurred to me that had I done as planned I may have been able to show the illustrious Billy Collins to the bathroom as I was able to do for Derek Walcott. Perhaps with a little more care and attention the importance of showing famous people to the nearest urinal would have been remembered... and enjoyed. Sigh.

Feb 22, 2008

Aries: You're feeling a bit of pressure at home or at work to take care of responsibilities that are boring but vital. It's a good day to get them out of the way -- there's not much happening to distract you.

Note: This activity is being less scientific than perhaps it could be. Because I only write on horoscopes I have a response to, this experiment is flawed in that it isn’t representative of all horoscopes. Though perhaps one could note the dates and assume that those were the noteworthy journals and thus infer how often an accurate—or somehow applicable—horoscope occurred.

Well, I guess this was technically yesterday and, that being the case, it may not have been too far off. So, I’m always feeling pressure at work/school to take core of responsibilities/thesis and it is boring/tedious but vital/my life-is-on-pause-until-I’m-done. All these slashes make me wonder how concrete these terms are. Are the substitutions I’m making viable? When does authorial intent come into the scene? There are rarely stated authors for horoscopes, so the author, I think, can really and truly be said to be dead. So, the words do mean anything they can. In fact, I think the author has to be dead for any of these things to mean anything. What is “a bit of pressure” anyway. That can be felt almost at any time about anything. It nearly stretches my mind to think of a time when I wasn’t feeling even “a bit of pressure.” I’ve experienced it once in my adult life. It was a day spent on the couch watching MTV’s the Real World with New Zealand’s number two delegate to the UN in Vienna. Didn’t feel even a bit of pressure—except perhaps on the inner bladder every now and then.

Jan 23, 2008

Aries: Your family issues are at the forefront today and you may find that your people are a bit easier to deal with than usual. That doesn't mean that everything will go smoothly -- just that now is the time to act.

Wow, this one seems right on the money. Today I talked about my past with my counselor. Before we got to that I mentioned how I was foolishly feeling shame and guilt about having less than favorable things to report to my counselor which I thought was ridiculous because he’s my counselor. He said he felt like I was putting him in a father-type role and to maybe talk about my feelings about my father. So I did. Without going into too much detail, I considered emailing and telling my father what I would tell him if he were there. Then I leave, read this horoscope and think "So, now is the time to act?" Which leaves the question, am I actually going to be spurred to action by a horoscope??!! That sounds like a disaster in the making even though I have two horoscopes I follow now. Still, do I want to be that kind of person?

Well, I did.

Didn't work too well...

Jan 17, 2008

Aries:
Today is perfect for taking stock of your possessions or other assets. Not only will you uncover some forgotten treasures, you'll also reassure yourself that things are okay in deeper ways.

I sort of did this a couple days ago when I itemized all the things the universe had dropped into my lap including a laptop, three trips to Europe, a trip to Japan teaching English for a summer, and a lucky white bandanna (since lost). I don’t know if I uncovered any forgotten treasures, but I was reassured that the universe does seem to have my best interests in mind which is comforting ultimately, but there’s always that fear that—at some point—my best interests will be on the far side of some hellish times.

The Premise

The purpose of this blog is to see how accurate my horoscope on facebook is. I'm an Aries, and my horoscope updates every Friday when I will read it and comment on how accurate, relevant it is to my life and whatever else it makes me think of. I guess I'll do it for a year and see what happens. It would be nice if this was a good look at how much the stars do influence my life, but it's probably more of a look at how well I can interpret some faceless person's predictions to my life. Which brings up a really good question I've never thought of--how do the writers of horoscopes get their info? What kind of astronomical omens are they interpreting to give me my horoscope? Can I get a hold of these star charts and do my own thing? Or is personal astrological revelation simply not done? We'll see.