The age of Aquarius

Saturday afternoon I went to an Astrology Meetup at Withrow Park.  The organizer asked us why we got into it, and while everyone else gave complicated answers, I said: "I'm into astrology because I'm a kook." They were interested in my chart because I was born at the time of the big Aquarian stellium and solar eclipse in 1962 that had some East Indians predicting the end of the world! (Other astrologers called it the start of the Age of Aquarius after 2000 years of the Age of Pisces.)

Sunday afternoon the Classic Book Club discussed Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.  Our next event will be at Dora Keogh in September to discuss Heart of Darkness.

Today I was at the comics store The Beguiling again, and bought the translated first volume of the manga of Sailor Moon.  I was into the TV anime twenty years ago, the one about a junior high school girl who fights super-villains dressed as a fashion model: miniskirt, opera gloves and go-go boots, along with a tiara she throws as a weapon. (I'm tempted to buy Shigeru Mizuki's manga biography of Hitler, but still haven't got up the nerve!)

We've started watching a library DVD of Ken Burns' Vietnam War documentary.  Fascinating, though it seems disingenuous to say that the United States became involved in the conflict in "good faith." (If the Cold War was seen as lacking "moral complexity," as one interviewee says, that reflects the Washington consensus' intolerance for dissent.)

Last week there was a big clan battle in the Vikings computer game and I kept getting cleaned out because I'd run out of treaty shields and didn't have the gold to buy more. But I've already made a recovery.

The latest Classics Illustrated comic I've read is about Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. (They say his memoir has some fibs!)