I just had more sleep than I’ve had a Loooooooong time.  And I’m pretty darned tired.  Does that happen to you?  Does that mean I got too much sleep?  Or is it a sign of addiction?

Astrological Get-Together - “Texas Retreat 2008″

For those of you who don’t know, I’m a founding board member of the Austin chapter of NCGR - National Center for Geocosmic Research, one of the largest non-profit associations of Astrologers in the US.  Our local chapter is called Astrological Society of Austin (ASA for short) and I maintain our website, http://www.astrologyaustin.org along with being Secretary.  I’m an NCGR Level 1 Certified Astrologer.

I guess in other words, I could have said “Hello, My name’s Wayne, and I’m an Astrologer” (your part is to say “Hi Wayne” and show me acceptance)

Our chapter co-hosted Texas Retreat 2008: Weekend of Hellenistic Astrology with author Joseph Crane over this past weekend.  Originally I was just going so that my wife could enjoy her time with the retreat and I planned on taking the time to rest, sleep, watch movies, play with my computer and basically be free of all obligations for a day or two.  But as fate would have it, I had dinner with the group and as I prepared my wife’s area for comfort (she still has a hard time walking due to the injury 1.5 months ago) I listened to the author’s introduction and overview of the weekend.  That was a mistake.  I got sufficiently hooked enough to want to stick around for the rest.

The speaker 

Joseph Crane has a wealth of knowledge of Ptolemy, Vettius Valens, Antiochus, Paulus Alexandrinus and tons of historical significators of astrology such as the Babylonians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and he knows how to tie them all together.  It was amazing.  We obtained some very worthwhile content on Hellenistic astrology (aka “traditional” vs modern astrology).  We also picked up a signed copy of his new book (we already have another of his books, A Practical Guide to Traditional Astrology, which we got signed as well)

The food

So the speaker’s content was great.  But even better than that was the food.  Catered by none other than “The Gumbo Girl” Elizabeth Rojas herself, it was truly superb.  This person has experience catering huge events of more than a thousand and here we were, 13 or 14 of us, getting some of the most scrumptious organic and vegetarian and vegan-friendly food I’ve ever had.  Fortunately for me, not everything was vegetarian - it was “friendly” to the vegetarians because it was easy to pick what you wanted.  The breakfasts, lunches and dinners were all fabulous.  One of my favorites was the “adult mac and cheese”.  Elizabeth also told us of some of her work on Richie Sowa’s Spiral Island, a floating island made out of 250,000 soda pop bottles.

The place

Topping even the food and the speaker was the retreat center itself, the Margaret Austin Center.  A big 40-acre commune-style former vacation home of Margaret Austin, it can support 30+ folks, has a professional kitchen, a comfortable zendo as the teaching area, tons of campground area if interested, bamboo forests, a labyrinth, pleasant walkways, a 1 mile trail, good tap/well water, a sweat lodge for spiritual ceremonies, and great wide-open skies with very little light pollution so you can actually see the stars.

We had a great campfire and stargazing session Saturday night.  It was not without it’s political discussion (you can imagine how it went, with one Republican and 13 liberal astrologers) but it stayed civil.  Guess who the Republican was?  It’s important that people be able to debate politics and remain friends afterwards, and we had that kind of debate.  Politics shouldn’t permanently polarize people, and fortunately we all agreed on that point.

Everyone did their own dishes after each meal, and I half-jokingly daydreamed to myself starting off Friday night announcing that I would be glad to be the designated dishwasher for the weekend (I don’t mind doing dishes, especially if I have my favorite music to accompany me) and let everyone else have a more relaxing time. Of course, this was actually an extremely selfish act, because my goal in offering the help was to potentially cause some of them to go back to their homes Sunday night and be able to say “You know what, the strangest thing happened… I met the nicest Republican over the weekend… he wasn’t hardly evil at all!”

Dallas is just alright with me…

No, it’s not a new Texas rendition of the Doobie Brothers song about Our Lord and Savior, it’s the announcement from Bossy herself that although she can’t make it to Austin Proper, she is going to make a Texas stop in Dallas.  This comes as mixed bitter sweet news for a lot of Austinites - mixed because we don’t know how to feel about it (are we not important enough? *sniff*), bitter because it’s a 4hr drive (why do you taunt us so? *sniffle*), and sweet because well, it’s BOSSY!  IN TEXAS! (we’re so glad you’re in our area of the US *hugs*).

Clearly I didn’t donate enough or pimp out the donation jar enough to help fund the trip to make Bossy feel like she needed an Austin stop.  Maybe Bossy doesn’t see how much easier it is to drive from Baton Rouge to Austin than from Baton Rouge straight to Dallas.  She’d have a place to stay in Austin, could knock out seeing a few more bloggers who can’t make it to Dallas, and she could gamble in Lake Charles along the way.  Heck, she could even hit Planet Houston mid-day to knock out a few more there.

So here’s my plan.    LISTEN UP PEOPLE!

I bet if a bunch of people sent some money Bossy’s way ($3, $5, something small that you wouldn’t miss much but would mean a big deal to Bossy if done in large numbers) and tagged the donation “think about Austin whydoncha”, then she might change her mind!  You can witness the paypalathon of wordsmithing on my post about her coming down here and then click the donation link.

Come on people.  Vote for change.  And send your extra change to Bossy to change her road trip plans.  We can try to make her feel both awkward AND loved at the same time!

Best of LOLcats

Which are your favorites?

I did some Pay It Forward craziness this past week.  I combined a Guess The Movie theme with the PiF theme and then threw in some astrology, numerology, 11:11 phenomenon (unintentionally), Mr T-ology (unintentionally, Fool!) and comicbookology, all in one post!  I’m like the alchemist of the blogging era.  A blogchemist, if you will.

So here’s how it went down.  I asked the Universe a question, and that question was

Who should win the prizes from my Pay It Forward post?

And the winners are…. well, you’ll have to read it and scroll down (evil grin).

I’ve put all the interesting details below in the extended entry - click to read it all!  You know you want to!  (hint: there are pretty colors, fancy pictures and words that sound funny).

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Politics
pahl-uh-tiks : from Latin; “poly” meaning many, and “tics” meaning blood-sucking parasites.

I don’t know why I have politics on the brain so much lately. One of the surest ways to lose reader interest would be to blog about politics. The only way to help stave off reader abandonment would be to A) make something about the post unique, B) create controversy, and C) point out ahead of time that you risk losing readers due to the topic and that you have a plan to avoid it.

The cool thing about controversy is you not only get interest from people who agree (heck YEAH! Man, youtellitbruthah!), you also get the dissenters and people who vehemently disagree (you pusillanimous piece of putrid pediddledom how could you think that?!?!). I call that a win-win.

Now onto the predictions. You’ve probably heard of certain ‘facts’ about presidential elections. “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation” is one of them, in that no President has ever been elected that didn’t first secure a nomination from Ohio. Another is a common rule that the taller candidate wins, although Bush/Gore in 2004 was a notable (and somewhat emotional) exception.   Another indicator is approval ratings, which also took a hit in the last election, but still has a strong track record.

So are we really deciding?  Or are fates decided beforehand, based on other factors? 

These kinds of ‘fact figures’ are extremely common in sports, and millions of people not only trust them inherently, they also strive to memorize as many as possible. People go monkey-bonkers over seemingly over-the-top stats such as ‘this running back ran for over 100 yards in any home game on a pre-season sunday that also had an odd number date and when it rained the previous two Saturdays’. Just listening to the commentators rattle off these things is mind-blowing when you think about the computational power and database it must take to keep track of the stuff. And what gets me is — people care about them!

Some stats are definitely worthwhile. After enough time, a stat gains strength and starts to become a trend.  A trend, if it is nurtured and weathers the hard times, can grow up and become worthy of prediction.

The trick is to identify which stats and trends are an actual sign of probabilty and not just errant data points.

I invite you to read the extended entry (below) for more interesting facts that might help us predict the next president based on astrological data.  Hint: Romney loses.

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You’ve probably heard of divination.  It might not be known by that name to you, but if you’ve heard of Tarot cards, Runes, reading tea leaves, dowsing, horary astrology or a Ouija board, you know divination. 

Maybe in elementary school, you had one of those paper fortune tellers that told you who you were going to marry and how many kids you were going to have.  Remember being horrified that Bobby Henderson was going to be your husband and you were going to have three kids with him?  (I particularly hated that prediction).

Divination is the act of using some particular method to determine either answers, the future, the past or some information you want to know by making a physical action at the time you request the information, and then interpreting the answers. 

I’ll also wager that some or most of you have heard of memes.  And here I mean the questionnaire type (aka “blog meme”)and not the real Internet Meme definition or examples.  Recently I’ve been seeing ipod-based memes where they have a series of questions and you use your mp3 player or itunes list or whatever, put it on random, and then whatever the song title is, you use it as the answer to that question.

Now I’ve decided to invent my own meme.  This meme combines the two concepts described above, taking seemingly random at-the-moment information and data and facilitating a meaningful analysis.  The idea is that the subconscious works with universal energies to actually create the answer so that it suits you individually, for that specific moment.   It’s pretty freaky how accurate the other forms of divination can be, so maybe this will be equally freaky.

I’ll take the easy way out and map the song titles into the 12 houses in traditional astrology, since I know them pretty well.  So question one is based on the 1st house, question two is the 2nd house, etc.

Instructions:

• Fire up your MP3 player or iPod or computer-based music browser. 
• Turn on the Shuffle or Random feature.
• Press play.  The title of the song that plays is your first answer.
• You can listen to the song or press “next” to go on
• The title of the next song is your second answer, and so on
• Important: you need to READ and UNDERSTAND the question BEFORE you click “next”.   It’s even better if you read the question aloud.  Ask any astrologer or tarot card reader.
• Post your results here or on your own blog.  Link to this post if you please.

Divination Meme

1. How do I present myself to the world? 
2. What do I value the most?
3. How do I communicate with others?
4. Where do I come from?
5. How do I creatively express myself (or how do I have fun)?
6. How does my work environment contribute to my overall well-being?
7. What kind of person am I attracted to?
8. How do I view death/transformation?
9. What are my beliefs?
10. What do I want to be known for / what is my calling?
11. What kinds of friends do I have?
12. What are my dreams *really* about?

My answers, if you’re interested, are in the extended entry.  Feel free to post your answers in the comment, or if you do the meme on your blog, let us know here.

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Narrator:

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogramming* to bring you this special news bulletin.

Story:

After months of laborious study, several bribes to key officials and well-timed animal sacrifices, Wayne is now a certified astrologer.   If he didn’t have the high morals and unmatched esteem for his fellow blog colleagues, he would totally rip off the picture seen here and replace the lottery ticket with his certification plaque.  And he would add a star and moon and a couple cool zodiac symbols in the hairdo.

Details:

You read that right - I’m of the stars, for the stars, by the stars, baby!  The confirmation and certificate came in the mail just this week (click to enlarge)

Oh this is so cool.  The entire package came wrapped in gold star.  If anyone wants a custom humor-laced horoscope as interpreted by me, just let me know.  At the very least, I can get you a nice colorful PDF of your natal chart, along with some of my thoughts on it.  (POST UPDATE: note that for a natal chart, you need to provide birth date, time of birth and place of birth.  If you’re not comfortable giving me this information, NOCHARTFORYOU!  I understand if you want to keep that info private.  Note also that I would never share your birth information, or even your chart or any info FROM your chart without your permission.  Unless, of course, I see in your chart that you’re gullible and naive)

You may be wondering why a technical person such as myself has an interest in astrology.  I would be wondering it too.  First, I’d have to explain that you should probably try to forget whatever it is you think astrology is, especially if you consider pop culture horoscopes in Cosmo real astrology.  Sure, it’s influenced by real astrology, but that’s like saying a fortune cookie is as good as sound financial advice from a CPA.  The astrologer by profession is more like the CPA - trained, practiced and honed in their skill.  In the case of the astrologer, the skill is chart interpretation.  It’s actually more akin to actuarial studies - the meticulous review of tons of data and finding patterns and then applying those patterns and common sense to everyday decisions.

I haven’t decided yet whether or not I’m going to pursue the other levels - hey, maybe I should look at my chart?

Question: have you ever been to an astrologer?  Would you consider seeing one?

* blogramming seemed so right a word, but then I sounded it out and it just seems offensive.  But I’m using it anyway.  Evidently I don’t care about my readers.  Either one of them.