Cancer (June 21 – July 22)
Horoscope for December 2011
By Susan Miller
It can be maddening when the planets send mixed messages. This has been going on since last month, so it is no wonder you may feel anxious and on the horns of a dilemma, unable to see the road ahead clearly. On one hand the eclipse season is upon us, and eclipses push us hard to step with the times and to fix any weaknesses that these lunar and solar events uncover. They certainly make us attend to things with a sense of urgency. On the other hand, Mercury is retrograde, and will remain retrograde until December 13, making the first half of December a very bad time to make big decisions. Push-pull, on off, stop and go. No wonder you are feeling caught in a maze without an idea of what to do next.
As a Cancer, the moon rules your sign, so when the eclipses come by every six months, you feel the full moon eclipses very dramatically and much more than a solar eclipse. Last month we had a new moon solar eclipse in Sagittarius on November 25, and it was friendly. You don’t feel those as strongly, so the big one is coming this month. The sixth house, where that eclipse fell, rules the things you do on a day-to-day basis. Here’s a special surprise Santa has cooked up for you before the year is out! Jupiter has been retrograde since August 30, but on December 25 will turn direct speed. In every way, your life is getting better and better!
The man pictured above—looking like a still from an Alejandro Jodorowsky film—is Ralph Lundsten. Born in 1936, Lundsten is one of Sweden’s most famous composers of electronic music. “For me, I invented electronic music. There were certainly other people who did this at the same time, other places of the earth, but I invented it for myself” (Tidningen Sex, 2004).
The track I bring you today is off of Lundsten’s 1979 album Alpha Ralpha Boulevard, which gets its title from a 1961 story by science fiction author Cordwainer Smith. The story concerns “the opening days of a sudden radical shift from a controlling, benevolent, but sterile society, to one with individuality, danger and excitement” (Wikipedia, n.d.) and the Abba-Dingo, a computer that has reached the status of a God, which can only be reached by a forbidden highway leading into the clouds: Alpha Ralpha Boulevard.
Despite Lundsten’s assertion that “rock and pop is a widespread disease,” (Tidningen Sex, 2004) to my ears the track “Horrorscope” is reminiscent of the intricate funk created by Quincy Jones and Michael Jackson for Off The Wall, but as opposed to being designed to inspire us to dance it has been constructed in order to give one the heebie-jeebies.
“Horrorscope” by Ralph Lundsten And The Andromeda All Stars
Composer, Producer, Synthesizer, Piano By – Ralph Lundsten
Bass – Georg Wadenius
Drums – Peter Sundell
Guitar – Georg Wadenius, Jan Schaffer
Keyboards – Georg Wadenius, Wlodek Gulgowski
Sitar – Jan Schaffer
Ref:
Lundsten, R. (1979). Horrorscope [recorded by Ralph Lundsten And The Andromeda All Stars] On Alpha Ralpha Boulevard [Vinyl] EMI. (1979)
Miller, S. (2011). Cancer Horoscope for December 2011. Astrology Zone. Retrieved December 27th from http://www.astrologyzone.com/forecasts/monthly/cancer_full.php
Tidningen Sex. (2005). Pop is a national disease- interview with Ralph Lundsten. Tidningen Sex # 5. Retrieved December 27th from http://www.monotoni.se/bass/2005/09/pop-ar-en-folksjukdom-intervju-med-ralph-lundsten/
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Alpha Ralpha Boulevard. Wikipedia. Retrieved December 27th from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Ralpha_Boulevard
A Mouthful of Pennies 