Cranky Large Medium reading, 28 August

Go away.

Why won't you go away? What is it about this mountaintop that holds you here, against all others' wishes? All right, since we're alone, then I'm all others here today, so I'm permitted hyperbole. All the rest of us want you to leave. And yet you stay. Why is that? Oh, we see. You want something from us. And that something, that we all can give you solo, is...? No, no, let us guess... you want my secret tomato-onion marinade recipe. No? My 2009 presidential campaign souvenir tire gauge? Hmmm... I can't imagine what else we might have that you must take from us. Oh, but you came for a reading! Naturally, we should have known, shouldn't we all? If we give you this, will you hie yourself away? 'Od's buttons, but that works for us! Here you are:

You are a plodder, slower than a tortoise, dimmer than the spark of a band-aid wrapper being opened. At least you take your time to think things over before acting. That makes you accurate more often than some, so you can finish what you start. If you live so long. You will find your mate under the sign of Virgo. Your mate will find true love under the sign of "free beer".

Are you happy, now? Of course not. But who cares? It will take you a while before you decide whether or not you wasted your climb. In the meantime, consider yourself lucky. At least you have the opportunity to consider your state. That puts you well ahead of the game, as compared with and contrasted to these people, all of whom, on this date in history, found a state of total ecological balance: Magnus Maximus, Emmett Till, William Smith, Giulio Racah, Giulio Racah, Esther Szekeres, George Szekeres, Melvin Schwartz, Paul B. MacCready, Jr., Augustine of Hippo, Hugo Grotius, David Hartley, Alexander Carlyle, Henry Sidgwick, William Stafford, Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, Frederick Law Olmsted, Robert Shaw, John Huston, Helen Dunbar, Anissa Jones, Ruth Gordon, Manolete, Earl Bascom, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, Andrew Ellicott,

and Hilly Kristal.

Okay, they're none of them Hilly, but they'd have gotten nowhere without him... kind of like where you seem to be going. Now, scram.
Happy birthday, anyway.