Review Horoscopes, Part 1 of 3

Partial Horoscopes: The Review Edition

I have a new favorite podcast, The Anthropocene Reviewed.  It's beautiful writing and brilliant ideas and exactly what I want.  So I thought I'd try reviewing a few things myself.  And I've split the horoscopes into three parts, due to the increasingly short attention spans on the planet.  Stay tuned Leo and so on...

Aries (3/21 - 4/19):  Toothpaste.  Toothpaste is pretty variable.  My current favorite is Uncle Harry's, because it comes in a little jar, no pesky tube and is a little salty, but it's not available everywhere so I suffer.  The first mass produced toothpaste arrived in a jar 1873, but tubes came out a few years later, and have stuck. The problem with tubes:  1.  if you squeeze out too much, there's no going back, and 2.  if you leave the cap off, which I often do because jeez, who's got time?  I have the internet to surf, people to stalk, solitaire to play!  I can't be bothered with putting the cap back on every single time.  Anyway, if you leave the cap off, a rubber film of solidified toothpaste forms across the mouth of the tube, making future squeezing difficult.  You have to use a toothpick to create a hole, but it's never quite the same, and the crumbs of weird gummy toothpaste goo falls in and around the sink.  The whole resolution takes way longer than putting the cap on would have, but apparently, I will never learn.  And a weird confession:  I really love a brand new tube of toothpaste, mostly due to the ease of the squeeze.  Occasionally, when I'm feeling really wild, I'll crack open a new tube even though there's plenty of paste in the old tube.   I'll give toothpaste 2.5 stars.

Taurus (4/20 – 5/20):  Cottonwood leaves.  They're huge, almost show-offy big, and in the fall, yellow or brown, never red.  For some reason, we long for red in our autumn leaves.  Yellow is mildly interesting, but not miraculous.  Red means a good sunset at the end of a beautiful summer day, and we want that color to wrap up our seasons too.  The leaves smell sweet, like the inside of a beehive, and if you look at them for a while, you can be reminded of a banana peel, due to those brown splotches that supposedly mean the banana is at it's peak nutrition, because it has something called Tumor Necrosis Factor in it, and if there's one thing the humans hate more than slipping on a banana peel it's cancer, which robs our loved ones too soon.  The more dark brown spots on the banana, the harder it's working to fight abnormal cells in your body.  Truthfully, bananas at that stage really just remind me of being carsick, sitting in the back seat of an unairconditioned staion wagon, driving across the flat part of the country while my sister threw up.  I'll give cottonwood leaves a solid 3 stars.  Bananas will be reviewed at another time.

Gemini (5/21 - 6/21):  Twins.  You knew that was coming, didn't you, Gemini?  Hasn't everyone longed to be a twin at some point?  Having that person who knew you before you were born, who's heartbeat synchronized with yours, and with whom you share a secret language and all the DNA your parents had to offer.  And the capers you could pull off!  No, I'm the other one!  

And yet, our culture values uniqueness so much that we love pigeons and snowflakes.  Well, snowflakes anyway.  Maybe we don't value uniqueness, come to think about it.  Look at the suburbs.  Look at the clothes we wear.  Without having been a twin (as far as I know, although my mother suspects that I was a twin who stole the resources in utero and killed my sister.  Jeez.), or even being close friends with a twin, I'm giving twins 4.5 stars.   

Cancer (6/22 – 7/21):  Bedspreads.  Ok, this thing happened, I think in the late 1990's or so when bedspreads went away and everyone switched to comforters that have their own giant pillowcase type thing that you're supposed to wash regularly.  Although the fluffy puffy comfort is very luxurious and it's easy to fall asleep under a cloud of heavy fluff, which is perfect sleeping conditions, wrestling those things back into their cover is a giant pain in the ass.  Cleaning the cover is something I used to do very occasionally, and I'd do it like a sport.  Every so often, I go curling or wash the comforter cover.  (Truth:  I've never been curling.  But I'd like to go.) . But now that I have this beautiful big hairy dog who sleeps wherever she likes, and where she likes is wherever the humans have been sitting or sleeping, well, I dunno.  I am faced with the choice of further surrendering to the life of a crazy single person, with my track veering farther and farther from the rest of the humans, and now add, "AND, she smells like dog!"  Or I wrestle the unwieldy fluffy thing into the giant pillow case regularly.  Bedspreads, though they're easy, lack the weight, the loft, the sheer comfort of the aptly named comforter.  So I'll give the bedspread 2 stars.