This Week's Horoscope

Cancers can brag. Not as often as an Aries, perhaps, but when you do, it's more, it's ostentatious, it's obnoxious; it's tales of being hand-fed peeled grapes by scantily clad attendants in a bathtub filled with real pearls and rose petals. It's epic descriptions of your solid-gold antique bed frame they had to reinforce the floor to hold up, or the grand adventure where you risked life and limb crossing shaky, fragile, crumbling rope bridges over hot, spitting lava to return a dying culture's most precious talisman. That your gloating isn't quite this extreme is irrelevant; it sounds exactly that lush and extravagant to your exhausted listeners. Stop telling us how amazing you are. If you are that cool, those who need to know will figure it out all on their own.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)

Hachiko was a faithful dog. His friend, Eisenburo Uyeno, was a professor in a different part of Tokyo from where they lived. Still, Hachiko would accompany him daily to Shibaya train station, and invariably be waiting for him when he returned. Unfortunately, Uyeno died. Hachiko kept his vigil at the station for a decade. Regardless of obstacles, he always returned daily to the station to hopefully await his master. When the dog finally died, touched commuters had a statue erected in his honor, a testament to his devotion. It's a dog story for you, since you've been in the dog house lately. To get out, ironically, follow Hachiko's example-for nothing more than a bowl of kibble, show off just how patient and loyal you can be.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

Two hundred and 12 years ago this week, French revolutionaries stormed the Bastille, giving birth to the French Republic. Eighteenth-century philosophers played a large part in this revolution. People learned to question the king's supposedly divine right to rule, and power shifted from its corrupt hereditary seat to the hands of the people themselves. This demonstrates how a shifting of consciousness can make possible what was absolutely unimaginable before. This week, storm the palace (whatever it may actually be) and reclaim power from the royal elite that's held you in contempt.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

Educate yourself. Then raise the bar for everyone you know. So much of governmental and corporate conceit is based on the idea that the general population is generally, idiotically, clueless. That's why Bush barely bothers to mask his global agenda with translucent tissue-thin rhetoric, and companies like Phillip Morris can advance their feel-good "caring" campaign with such ease (according to Adbusters, spending $60 million on helping people, and $108 million advertising that help). They're counting on you to swallow it whole. The obvious solution: cease being such a pushover. If the superficial cover-up schemes of poison-pushing money-mongers blow up in their faces, companies and governments might get a clue that we have a clue: consequently, in order to impress us, they'd need to actually do good and really make a difference, not just pretend to.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

In my trippiest, most delirious moments, I speculate about death. One of my favorite-however improbable-theories is that we don't actually die. Instead, our consciousnesses progress to a parallel dimension where the circumstances of our passing didn't happen, with each new dimension weirder than the last, to allow continued life, despite cataclysmic train wrecks or avalanche burials. My theory's outlandish, but in your case, it's sort of true: this week you have the chance to continue the life (albeit slightly altered) of something you'd given up for dead.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

One of the most physically beautiful people I've ever seen is this homeless guy I met on Queen St. in Toronto. I'd talk to him whenever I saw him. Maybe he saw through my secret agenda of seduction, or at least my lustful curiosity, maybe he was straight, whatever; I couldn't interest him in the slightest. We were on completely different pages. I persisted, convinced that continual undemanding kindness would earn me a friendly rapport eventually. It never did. I finally let it go. Persistence is good, but sometimes you have to recognize that you and your goal are in completely different universes, and give up.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

My Goat friend Chris contends that "The Machine" (Government? Capitalism? Ride-on lawnmower?) is simply too big for any individual or even group to take down effectively. I can hear a history of failed, unheard protests and ineffective activism there. Perhaps your adversary is too large for you to tackle and incapacitate. But that doesn't mean you should just go limp in his arms and cease all resistance. Maintain the struggle. Individuals can cause change, even if it's only in incremental doses. It may take you almost too long to be worth it, but keep wrestling for your freedom.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

What they call the evening news ain't news. Maybe the Canadians or Europeans have it better; the primetime news I've seen in the States has been mostly fluff. In Los Angeles, they have what they call "the news minute." This is a whole 60 seconds of actual news (wars, earthquakes, etc., from around the world) with each topic getting four to 10 seconds. The weather forecast (despite its unreliability) gets covered in detail for five minutes or more, including incremental temperature differences from town to town. Unless they do something incredibly dramatic (and often not even then), local groups, who might be able to do something to seriously improve the station's viewers' lives, never get coverage. Don't let these (or any) idiots waste your time. Demand the information that's relevant to you now, and fuck the weather.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)

In his incredible book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers describes a minor scene in which he goes dancing at a bar called Nickie's in San Francisco's Lower Haight, recounting the incredibly loud bass vividly. I used to live above that bar, used to lie awake six nights a week, pounding my head on the vibrating walls and waiting for my bed to stop shaking so I could sleep. You, too, should eliminate one more thing from your list of Suffering Nobody Noticed so you can stop thinking about it finally, and start paying attention to the delicious new agonies you'll invent for yourself soon enough.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

The best prank caller I know got his wet dream: his new cellphone uses the old number for an obscure local museum. People calling (because the fact of their calling loosens any moral obligations, since they are, after all, calling his number) are subjected to the museum's complicated hours ("We open at 4 a.m., close at 5:45 a.m. for five minutes, reopen at 5:50, then close again at 11:15 for a 15-minute cigarette break?"), detailed, realistic descriptions of the whale carcasses the museum is forced to sell to support itself ("Do you know how hard it is to keep a museum afloat?") and bizarre exhibits ("The History of Lesbian Self-Absorption in California"). You, too, may get a chance to show off one of your more obscure talents this week. Milk it; it's only a matter of time before they change the number and the calls cease rolling in.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

Everyone's heard stories of spontaneous combustion-some fool disappears entirely, leaving behind only a still-smoking booted foot and a pile of ash. This unproven phenomenon is probably more fiction than fact, but it's persisted because there's something romantically dramatic about it, about being incinerated in a flash of heat that mysterious and intense. My friend Jim wants me to tell you about his hypothesis regarding spontaneous combustion (something about overconsumption of hydrogenated oils), but I won't, because you need to ignore the crackpot theories that come your way this week, not listen to them.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

At the risk of being schoolmarmy, I have to tsk-tsk your latest low-blow methods. They're akin to getting pregnant to keep a man in your life, or kidnapping the dog or threatening blackmail with secrets given to you in an intimate moment. Don't stoop so low. You can get what you want without threatening babies or old women, slashing tires or robbing the corner grocery. Don't take hostages this week. They're unnecessary. Just play by the rules for once; you're likely to win the game.

[Caeriel@yahoo.com](mailto:caeriel@yahoo.com)