In Defense of Astrology

Full disclosure: today, June 30, is my birthday. This puts me close to the middle of Cancer “aka The Crab” in the Zodiacal Astrological Universe, a subdomain of the Marvel Universe, inhabited by ultra-intelligent Florida Stone Crabs like the one in the Featured Image.

Putting any reference to Astrology in print will drive my buddy, whom I’ll call “Bob” for the sake of argument, completely bonkers, as he thinks Astrology is utter horseshit. I beg to differ. Also, being that it’s my birthday, I don’t really care what Bob thinks. Here’s why I think Astrology is NOT utter horseshit.

Point #1

I love animals and am fascinated by them. If you’ve been foolish enough to read what I’ve written over the last seven years or so, you’ll have noticed this. In fact, the following creatures, listed in no particular order, have all had air time in the LTD blog:

Exhibit A

Alligators, Batfish, Beavers, Bernese Mountain Dogs,Border Collies, Brahma Chickens, Burrowing Owls, Cane Toads, Cassowaries, Cats, Chinchillas, Cows, Crows, Dovekies, Eyelash Mites, Feral Pigs, Fish Owls, Florida Wood Rats, Goats, Honey Badgers, Iguanas, Komodo Dragons, Ladybird Beetles, Leopard Seals, Magpies, Marine Iguanas, New Guinea Singing Dogs, Octopodes, Parrots, Penguins, Porcupines, Pythons, Quokkas, Raccoon Dogs, Raccoons, Sasquatch Tigers, Sea Cucumbers, Sea Monkeys, Secretariat the Horse, Secretariat’s brother Larry, Shoebill Cranes, Spiders, Therapy Bees, Trichoplaxes, Turkeys, Voles, Wombats, Woodpeckers.

Turns out that the love of animals is definitely a Cancerian trait according to Roya Backlund, noted astrologer and part-time quantum physicist. She is the author of a piece entitled: “These 3 Zodiac Signs Are The Biggest Animal Lovers.” The three signs are, in no particular order, Cancer, Leo and Taurus.

Coincidence? I think not. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Bob.

And just to drive home my point about animals and Cancerians, some interesting news has recently come my way pertaining to wildebeests, dingoes, a Florida Swamp-Owl, an alligator, a wild boar with an impressively large bladder and a kangaroo. I didn’t go looking for any of that. For clarification, the owl, the alligator and the wild boar were featured in Dave Barry’s new book: Swamp Story, which takes place in the Florida Everglades.

Point #2

Dave Barry is, unsurprisingly, a Floridian, a Pulitzer Prize winner, a hugely popular syndicated humor columnist, an author of fiction and non-fiction books, a psychic, a tuba player, a part-time quantum physicist and friend to hugely successful author Stephen King, Dave also had his own TV series from 1993 to 1997. Basically, Mr. Barry is wildly creative and funny as hell. I lied about the tuba.

His birthday is July 3rd and that also puts him into the Cancerian Sector of the Zodiacal Astrological Universe: pretty much right in the flippin’ middle of it, truth be told. I swear on Orion’s Belted Adult Incontinence Undergarment that I am not making that up.

I am definitely not trying to place myself anywhere in Dave’s playing field either: I would be in the locker room cleaning toilets with a toothbrush whereas he is out there consistently hitting homers like Swamp Story-which just came out in May 2023. Very impressive considering that Dave’s brain (and the Earth) have made ten more trips around the Sun, relative to my brain-Sun orbital tally.

We just happen to share the same offbeat sense of humor and this is another Cancerian trait according to Madame Constella, noted astrologer and former Olympic pole-vaulting champion. She is not a part-time quantum physicist. Anyway, Madame says this about Cancerian humor:

“Cancer (June 21-July 22)

Cancer has a fluid personality, and a sense of humor to match. There is no right or wrong way to laugh about something with this zodiac sign. Deep down they just want to make you laugh or at least get a grin out of you…”

Lisa Stardust, yet another noted astrologer who oddly-enough, IS a part-time quantum physicist, has also weighed in on the topic of how Cancers think about the world in general and about jokes in particular:

“The symbol of the crab offers a key to understanding Cancers’ preternatural ability to know things without knowing how they know them. Crabs wander about at night, crawling sideways. They have the ability to observe and see life from a different viewpoint than others, due to their sideways march. In the sign, this translates to creative, artistic and intuitive minds, with the power of (sometimes psychic) perception. They also have a predilection for running jokes about quantum physicists.”

I myself rarely wander about at night, crawling sideways. I can’t speak for Dave though. He IS a Floridian. We definitely take different viewpoints on life compared to most people. I’m just not sure about Kamala:

“Now is the time for us to know that now is the time to not know how we know the things we shouldn’t know but in some way do know on a deeply intuitive level: IF, and this a big IF, we could just stay on our meds for more than two days running and also stop talking about yellow school buses.”

Enough about Astrology. Let’s talk more about Swamp Story. Here’s my brief review:

1. This book is fabulously kooky with multiple plot lines that eventually converge in a way that only Dave Barry could come up with.
2. The characters are terrific. Some of them might be Cancerians. You never know. I’m for sure that none of them are part-time quantum physicists. Stoners? Yes. Quantum physicists? No.
3. There are a couple of running jokes that, as running jokes usually do, will make you laugh every time they recur.
4. There are several hilarious, albeit somewhat muddled conversations that will catapult some of us back to similarly hilarious, muddled conversations from our own teenage years. On this particular matter, I plead the Fifth.

All narratives have to end, and there are always loose ends that need to be tied up. Now is my time for loose-end tying. The loose ends are, in no particular order, the dingoes, the kangaroo and the wildebeests.

K’Gari, the island formerly known as Fraser, is the largest sand island in the world and lies 200 kilometres north of Brisbane, off the East Coast of Queensland, Australia. It has some unique features, one of them being that it is infested with dingoes. These are not just your average dingoes though. These are the most genetically pure dingoes on Earth. Even so, they will still come and nip you in the buttock with their genetically pure teeth if your buttock is laying there on the beach, exposed and unguarded.

Another buddy of mine sent me a video of a guy and his girlfriend driving through a rainstorm but stopping to put a raincoat on a sodden kangaroo lying in the middle of the road. They are both Cancerians. The kangaroo’s astrological standing isn’t disclosed. The kangaroo gets up and hops away rapidly, still wearing the raincoat, as the guy realizes that his car keys are in the pocket of the coat! He and his girlfriend stare at each other in dismay. This is probably yet another fake kangaroo cautionary video. They’re everywhere these days.

That leads me to Sam, another friend of mine. Sam was born on February 26th. This makes him a Pisces:

“Those born on 26 February are persons of great ambition and power. They are intelligent and unpredictable. They like to hunt wildebeests.”

I’m not kidding. My wife and I went out to dinner with Sam and his wife (not a Pisces) last week and he proudly showed me a photo of two knives he had commissioned to be made for him and his son (also not a Pisces). I swear on the Tooth Fairy’s wand that the objects embedded in the handles of these knives are the teeth of a wildebeest that succumbed to Sam’s steely nerves and eagle eye.

Actually, the wildebeest thing could easily have been submitted into the record as Point #3 but I think I had you at Point #2.

Go get yourself a copy of Swamp Story. If you’re reading this you will love that book. And remember this animal-related piece of Cancerian wisdom:

“If you need to fight, fight like you’re the third monkey on the ramp to Noah’s Ark.”