Your eyes are more powerful than you realize. If you were standing on a mountaintop under a cloudless night sky with no moon, you could see a fire burning 50 miles away. Your imagination is also capable of feats that might surprise you. It can, for example, provide you with an expansive and objective view of your entire life history. I advise you to seek that boost now. Ask your imagination to give you a prolonged look at the big picture of where you have been and where you are going. I think it's essential to your discovery of the key to the next chapter of your life story.
Many is the time when I drive to Sevier County, I curse myself for not bringing my binoculars.
A very long time ago, I received a bunch of built-up 1/72 airplane models--including FIVE F4U Corsairs. (One Airfix, two Heller [now SMER] and two old-production Revell, to be specific.) They were all in bad shape and poorly built to begin with, so I stripped the paint off, carefully disassembled them and started looking for alternative parts.
My search is a little more serious now.
If High Planes did a detailling set for F4U-1(A), F4U-1D, F4U-1C and/or FG-1D, I'd be all over them. As it is, I may just get some F4U-5N sets from them, "impossible variant" be darned.
FP
You can bake your shoes in the oven at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, but that won't turn them into loaves of bread. Know what I'm saying, Sagittarius? Just because a chicken has wings doesn't mean it can fly over the rainbow. Catch my drift? You'll never create a silk purse out of dental floss and dead leaves. That's why I offer you the following advice: In the next two weeks, do your best to avoid paper tigers, red herrings, fool's gold, fake news, Trojan horses, straw men, pink elephants, convincing pretenders, and invisible bridges. There'll be a reward if you do: close encounters with shockingly beautiful honesty and authenticity that will be among your most useful blessings of 2017.
I have a bunch of song lyrics to quote but I won't as a service to you.
A research thread that started with a fellow on Facebook posting the pictures of an old Doyusha car model he'd just bought last week has led me in a bunch of directions that appealed to my weirdness.
One such place was the particulars of my sister's first car, a Datsun 1200 (a.k.a. Nissan Sunny). At the time it was built it was the cheapest new car available in the States...and I sort of wonder what manufacturer and model has that title now.
After that, it led me to the story of Isuzu cars in America--which ended (among other places) with the Impulse and the Geo Storm. For years I saw Storms parked in the backs of people's yards and was weirdly attracted. Now I know why--they're four-fifths of the way to being LOTUSES. I wonder now how much work it would entail to fit a Storm with the same kind of Lotus suspension that was optional on Impulses--and what modern Lotus powerplant would work in the engine bay.
I forget when it was, but I was in a heraldry group with somebody I'm somewhat distantly related to, and we got into a discussion about the symbols on his family coat of arms. They are called pheons and they are arrowheads as they were in the Middle Ages. Because of this being so definitive a weapon of war, the pheon has been a frequent symbol in military insignia, and it led me to look for insignia like these for one of my wargaming armies, in the interest of setting their character traits.
The two images above are courtesy of the Pentagon's Institute of Heraldry. The units are the 128th Aviation Brigade and the 158th Infantry Brigade of the U.S. Army. They are both training formations in the Deep South of the U.S. (Fort Rucker and Camp Shelby, respectively).
Looking through my archives here I realize that I've been a fan of Flames of War for almost ten years now but have only actually PLAYED it ONCE. (It was a demo of Team Yankee last year, as you might recall.)
I'd love to put together an army, but I'm more in sticker shock than I am enthused. That and I tend to think outside the limits of the rulebooks, if history gives me an excuse.
Last year in the After-Holidays Sales, I got a bunch of Phantom jets as "Air Support", and I'll give them a repaint soon. But that "special ingredient" set what I want to do with the companies I want to build:
* U.S. Army Reserve/National Guard Company (I haven't decided on Armor, Airborne or Airmobile, but I wanted them to be less modern than the regular forces--still stuck with battle bowler helmets and Vietnam-era equipment.)
* French D.O.T. [Defense Ops, Territorial Army] Armored Car Company (Found this in an old publication. A second-line, rapid reaction unit that would have been in action if the Warsaw Pact invaded the West.)
* Rest of the West Company (A scratch force of Dutch/Belgian/Luxembourger/Dane units.)
Of all the forbidden fruits that you fantasize about, which one is your favorite? Among the intriguing places you consider to be outside of your comfort zone, which might inspire you to redefine the meaning of "comfort"? The coming weeks will be a favorable time to reconfigure your relationship with these potential catalysts. And while you're out on the frontier dreaming of fun experiments, you might also want to flirt with other wild cards and strange attractors. Life is in the mood to tickle you with useful surprises.
That first sentence reminded me of an entry I wrote in 2008:
Aphorist James Guida contemplates the good results that can come from not imposing expectations on the raw reality that's on its way. "Not to count chickens before they're hatched," he muses, "or eggs before they're laid, chickens who might possibly lay eggs, birds who from afar might be confused with chickens." I recommend this strategy for you in the coming weeks, Sagittarius. Experiment with the pleasure of being wide open to surprises. Cultivate a mood of welcoming one-of-a-kind people, things, and events. Be so empty you have ample room to accommodate an influx of new dispensations. As James Guida concludes: "Not to count or think of chickens."
Breakfast, lunch and dinner of champions.
Asking you Sagittarians to be patient may be akin to ordering a bonfire to burn more politely. But it's my duty to inform you of the cosmic tendencies, so I will request your forbearance for now. How about some nuances to make it more palatable? Here's a quote from author David G. Allen: "Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind." Novelist Gustave Flaubert: "Talent is a long patience." French playwright Moliere: "Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit." Writer Ann Lamott: "Hope is a revolutionary patience." I've saved the best for last, from Russian novelist Irene Nemirovsky: "Waiting is erotic."
Because Time won't give me Time...
A bottle of Chateau Cheval Blanc wine from 1947 sold for $304,000. Three bottles of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1869 went for $233,000 apiece. The mystique about aged wine provokes crazy behavior like that. But here's a more mundane fact: Most wine deteriorates with age, and should be sold within a few years of being bottled. I'm thinking about these things as I meditate on your long-term future, Sagittarius. My guess is that your current labor of love will reach full maturity in the next 18 to 20 months. This will be a time to bring all your concentration and ingenuity to bear on making it as good as it can be. By September of 2017, you will have ripened it as much as it can be ripened.
My New Year's Resolution is to get some projects going on Amazon Studios. More about that after I recover from my current case of head crud.
In some phases of your life, you have been a wanderer. You've had a fuzzy sense of where you belong. It has been a challenge to know which target you should aim your arrows at. During those times, you may have been forceful but not as productive as you'd like to be; you may have been energetic but a bit too inefficient to accomplish wonders and marvels. From what I can tell, one of those wandering seasons is now coming to a close. In the months ahead, you will have a growing clarity about where your future power spot is located -- and may even find the elusive sanctuary called "home." Here's a good way to prepare for this transition: Spend a few hours telling yourself the story of your origins. Remember all the major events of your life as if you were watching a movie.
Now that I have a copy of the "Save The Cat" model of storytelling perhaps I could apply it to my life history and see what appears. Watch this space.
Sagittarian Matt Stutzman competes in the sport of archery. He's the world's record holder for longest accurate shot, having hit a target 230 yards away. What makes his accomplishment so extraordinary is the fact that he was born without any arms. He holds each arrow in his mouth and grasps the bow with his right foot and the help of a chest harness. In the spirit of this armless archer, and in accordance with your current astrological omens, I invite you to initiate an attempt to triumph over one of your so-called disadvantages.
I actually have a number of Matt Stutzman trading cards.
Italian composer Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) didn't like to work hard, and yet he was also prolific. In fact, his desire to avoid strenuous exertion was an important factor in his abundant output. He got things done fast. His most famous opera, The Barber of Seville, took him just 13 days to finish. Another trick he relied on to reduce his workload was plagiarizing himself. He sometimes recycled passages from his earlier works for use in new compositions. Feeling good was another key element in his approach to discipline. If given a choice, he would tap into his creative energy while lounging in bed or hanging out with his buddies. In the coming weeks, Sagittarius, I recommend you consider strategies like his.
"Looney Tunes", huh? Maybe I ought to find some cartoons to watch.
"The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison." That quote is attributed to both Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Regardless of who said it, I urge you to keep it in mind throughout 2015. Like all of us, you are trapped in an invisible prison: a set of beliefs or conditioned responses or bad habits that limit your freedom to act. That's the bad news. The good news is that in the coming months, you are poised to discover the exact nature of your invisible prison, and then escape it.
I'm sure it's work-related or monetary in nature.
P. G. Wodehouse wrote more than 90 books, as well as numerous plays, musical comedies, and film scripts. When he died at age 93, he was working on another novel. He did not suffer from writer's block. And yet his process was far from effortless. He rarely churned out perfection on his first attempt. "I have never written a novel," he testified, "without doing 40,000 words or more and finding they were all wrong and going back and starting again." The way I see your immediate future, Sagittarius, is that you will be creating your own version of those 40,000 wrong words. And that's OK. It's not a problem. You can't get to the really good stuff without slogging through this practice run.
I didn't even think about NaNoWriMo this time around. But my problem is that my long spans of quietude aren't long enough for actual work. They come to crashing halts when the furnace fires up.
Continuing to imagineer the Gundam RedLegger, and threw myself a hurdle I didn't need. A couple years ago, B-Club had a series of resin Gundam bust kits (as linked in a previous post) and I was particularly interested in the one for the GP04 Gerbera. While Gundam fans know that the GP04 eventually became the Gerbera Tetra in 0083, the bust design appears to have a lot more in common with the Alex Gundam of 0080--with some improvements that aren't seen in other Gundam family designs. So it lent itself very well to my project--if I could get one and if it was hardware compatible with the pieces I already had or could get.
And I can't find one for sale...on any side of the Rim.
My alternatives in the same product line include the Prototype Zeta #1 and the GP00 Blossom, but I'm not as excited about either. The Blossom isn't much different from the Zephranthes/Stamen family which followed it, and the Prototype Zeta just looks too strange and implausible.
My more practical side is trying to tell me to just build what I already have. It may come to that.
FP
I spent another fruitless while yesterday in the Bargain Basement of Books Warehouse in Pigeon Forge yesterday. The place is a shambles with tens of thousands of books in bins or on shelves with very little in the way of organization. It's impossibly difficult to find anything specific.
My thinking there went in this direction: if I had one of those quadcopter drones that could carry a camera, or perhaps carry my smartphone and have it act as a camera, I could photorecon the whole space and then have a computer program determine all the books it saw. Then I could virtually search that data and see if there was anything I wanted or needed.
I feel it's probably a good likelihood that somebody's already thought of something like this.
In Roald Dahl's kids' story James and the Giant Peach, 501 seagulls are needed to carry the giant peach from a spot near the Azores all the way across the Atlantic Ocean to New York City. But physics students at the U.K.'s University of Leicester have determined that such a modest contingent wouldn't be nearly enough to achieve a successful airlift. By their calculations, there'd have to be a minimum of 2,425,907 seagulls involved. I urge you to consider the possibility that you, too, will require more power than you have estimated to accomplish your own magic feat. Certainly not almost 5,000 times more, as in the case of the seagulls. Fifteen percent more should be enough. (P.S. I'm almost positive you can rustle up that extra 15 percent.)
Oddly enough I noticed that the film version of Jonathan Livingston Seagull was available on DVD from Oldies.com and I was rather curious about that. Was it a sign?
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