Primrose Road

Via Shakespeare Geek: an astrologer blogs about Kenneth Branagh's chart and links us to another blog post that asks whether or not the character Hamlet is "Saturnian." This probably would have interested me a whole lot in my drippier days, and would have most likely inspired me to write a paper speculating about Hamlet's astrology chart. You'll notice that Branagh's Saturn is between the seventh and eighth houses. ;) Though astrology is bunk and there's no mechanism by which planets and asteroids can influence human behavior, I will offer this critique of Branagh's Hamlet film: Branagh -- probably because he casts *himself* as Hamlet -- doesn't acknowledge the possibility that our buddy the Dane has Saturn in the eighth house in his chart. :) (Explanation: the eighth house is the house of sex and death. Saturn is a planet of limitations, usually limitations imposed on oneself, but it can relate to physical limitations too.) (Also: astrology is fun mythology, but it's at best a protoscience and at worst crap.)

I received an email from Amazon.com saying that they needed me to update my tax information for my Associates account so that they could pay me what I'd earned last year. Since I don't sell books through my site (if I link to something on Amazon here, I'm not earning money from it), I automatically figured it was just another instance of phishing. Later, when I was on Amazon's website, I saw the same message. So, I logged in to see if there had indeed been a mixup. Apparently some years ago I had an astrology website called "Star Gazing." Do I remember this? No. Is it highly plausible that I had an astrology website? Absolutely. I tried the Internet Archive to search for remnants of the site, but to no avail (though the site address does include a screenname I used around eight years ago, so it's definitely mine all the way). Which is why I'm baffled as to how someone was able to click through a link on a nonexistent page. In any case, I'm 54 cents richer now. The best part of this: the book purchased was Astronomy for Dummies.

Searches for variants on "Saturn in the eighth house" make up 17% of all traffic to this blog for the month of November so far. Maybe I should use a time machine to return to my formerly woo-tastic self circa 2000 and change this into an astrology blog and make lots and lots of money off of it. $60 for a natal chart, $400 for me to replace Saturn in your eighth house with Jupiter in your eighth house. (Those TV commercials about the guy named Bob purport to do something similar.) OK, no more filthy astrology jokes. I'm also seeing a significant number of searches for "copysquash," a word I made up in reference to the Dozier Internet Law cease-and-desist ridiculousness. This can only mean that copysquash, along with awesometacular, pathetisad, and spectricipant will soon become part of the common vernacular.

Hilariously, a significant percentage of traffic to this blog for the month of October has resulted from Google searches for "saturn eighth house," "saturn in the eighth house," "saturn in your eighth house," and "saturn eighth house astrology." (Last month, I titled a post about a possibly "accreditable" bachelor's in astrology "Saturn's in Your Eighth House, Buddy".) So this message is for those who came to Primrose Road seeking answers about their astrological charts: The horoscope's eighth house deals with matters of sex. Back in the day (from about 1996-2002) when I was actually so into astrology that I studied it, an astrologer once joked that "delineating" the eighth house is like that fortune cookie game where everybody adds "in bed" to the end of their fortunes. The planet Saturn, meanwhile, signifies restrictions, boundaries, and limitations. Thus, if you have Saturn in the eighth house in your natal horoscope, astrology suggests that you're impotent or you are not, uh, well-endowed in eighth-house-related areas. I hope that dissuades y'all from believing in astrology. :)