Those who haven’t been holding their breath must not know that the fourth installment of the Terminator series will be released this week. Here are the trailers:

• Trailer One
• Trailer Two
• Trailer Three

This Tarot Tuesday reads the cards for the summer blockbuster Terminator:Salvation.

The Cards

Here are the cards in a standard past-present-future layout.

• Eight of Wands
• Two of Swords
• Ace of Wands  (Inverted)

Analyzing the Spread

Eight of Wands implies positive results through the use of speed or efficiency. Here, the Eight of Wands occurs in the past position.

The present position contains the Two of Swords, implying a decision.

Inverted Ace of Wands means failure big-time. The Inverted Ace of Wands occurs in the future position.

Interpretation

I’m not sure if the “past” here is pertaining to the movie franchise or specifically to the fourth installment. Since the subject of the question is only the one movie, I’ll run with that. Not a lot of intuition here, it seems the movie was successfully completed in a fast and efficient manner.  (Although the movie was bumped out one week from the initially-listed release date, possibly so as not to compete with the release of “Demons and Angels”)

The Two of Swords points out a decision to be made. This could be the decision of the audience to see the movie or not, or a decision that the producers of the movie made. In other words, “reply hazy, ask again later.”

The inverted Ace of Wands spells trouble in the future position. Tough to say whether this means the movie will suck (technical failure) or if it simply won’t make enough money to break even (financial failure). It’s difficult for a movie to NOT break even now-a-days. Even those that flop at the box office still clean up in pay-per-view and DVD rental/sales.

The overall feeling I get is that the movie will be good, but won’t do well at the box office, or at least it won’t do as well as expected. Perhaps people are being more frugal and actually *considering* seeing the movie, and it’s success will depend on the reviews which will sway their decisions.

-Zero

PS – If you have a different interpretation of this tarot spread or other useful wisdom to share, drop it in the comments below. If you want to perform your own tarot readings, just link them up on twitter.com with the #tarottuesday hashtag. Don’t have a tarot deck? No problem. Go to www.ifate.com and use the free online tarot spread generator.

When looking for Tarot Tuesday’s Subject of the Week, I found my usual sources of ‘buzzworthy topics’ jammed with spam. One-hundred percent of the spam was of the subcategory: porn. I’m calling it Sporn.

I don’t have a problem with porn myself, but I understand why some people do. I have to admit I learned more about sex from Playboy and Hustler than I ever did from Sex Education in High School.

I do however, have a problem with Spam. I read a report recently that something like 3 out of every million people actually buy things advertised through spam, which is enough to keep it a sustainable business model.

I say we kill those three people. A small price to pay for spam-free inboxes.

This week’s Tarot Tuesday (#tarottuesday) reads the cards for the future of Sporn on the internet, despite the very real danger of this blog getting blacklisted for including the words “Porn”, “Spam”, “Pix” “Position”, “Spread”, “Layout” and “Peanut Butter and Chocolate”.  [Note to Self: Double check for any misspellings of the word "Deck" in this post...]

The Cards

During the shuffling, the Two of Hearts fell out of the deck.  It’s often thought that when cards fall out of the deck while being shuffled it has an important meaning. the Two of Hearts means Love, Sharing, Caring, and Bonding between two people or  things. I’ll come back to this later.

I’ll add the picture later when I have access to my camera.  Meanwhile, here are the cards in a standard past-present-future layout.

Seven of Wands

King of Wands

King of Pentacles (Inverted)

Analyzing the Spread

The Seven of Wands implies standing against some force or fighting back. This card occurs in the Past position.

The King of Wands implies a person, someone wise or learned.

King of Pentacles would be a lovely card to see in the future postion…Right-side UP that is. Unfortunately, it occurs upside-down, implying an AIC (Asshole in Charge) A shifty, underhanded person who is really just in it for themselves, and doesn’t care how their actions/decisions affect others.

Interpretation

Like my Uncle Deck says, it kinda makes me want to stop reading the Tarot when I get spreads like this.

The Seven of Wands representation of struggle is obvious. We all get Sporn in our inboxes. We all fight against it daily. Three people  are supporting it in the struggle to keep it in existance.

The King of Wands in the center position? We all know better. We all sit around and agree that Sporn is bad, and that Someone ought to do Something. And we all sit back and wait.

The problem with the future postion  isn’t that we have in Inverted King of Pentacles, it’s that we Dont have an Upright one.  The simple (sounding) solution is for someone to step up and fix this for us.  But Sporn makes money, and it isn’t illegal in some countries, therefore the problem needs a bigger solution. A One World Government perhaps? A discussion for another day, and certainly not worth doing just to kill Sporn.

So going back to the Two of Cups that jumped out of the deck…  At first blush, the Two of Cups probably popped the thought of sex into your mind. Meh. It could also be the bond of Porn and Spam that makes them work well together like Peanut Butter and Chocolate.

But I think it might be a more subtle clue. The success of Sporn is tied to the way the internet works for the whole world, because there isn’t a One World Power to control it. It’s not so much of a ‘problem’ as it is a ‘side-effect’ of the way we do business.

If we have a system of cooking where we leave food out on the counter, we will get pests. The pests aren’t going to go away until we do things differently.  Unless we are willing/able to do things differently, we have to add “killing pests” to our process. Which we already have. The two simply go together.

In other words, the Two of Cups was a reminder that the ‘problem’ implied in my question wasn’t so much of a problem as an aspect of the existing process, and therefore there is no ‘solution’.

-Zero

PS – If you have a different interpretation of this tarot spread or other useful wisdom to share, drop it in the comments below. If you want to perform your own tarot readings, just link them up on twitter.com with the #tarottuesday hashtag. Don’t have a tarot deck? No problem. Go to www.ifate.com and use the free online tarot spread generator.

First, I suspect many of you are wondering what the hell #followfriday is. It’s a hashtag for twitter (and if you don’t know what twitter is, check this out and if you don’t know what a hashtag is, look here.)

Follow Friday was started by this guy as a way to expand your twitter network. People recommend other people on twitter as ‘followable’ by posting a tweet with a link to their profile, and the hashtag #followfriday.

For example, if you really really loved me and wanted the whole twitterverse to follow me you would tweet:

I loves @conradzero and so should you! #followfriday

You can read about the rise of Follow Friday at this mashable.com post: The Anatomy of a Twitter Trend.  The popularity of the Follow Friday Phenomenon  has resulted in a spin-off website: followfridays.com.

[Full Disclosure] And of course, #followfriday was part of the inspiration for my #tarottuesday posts!

This week Tarot Tuesday (#tarottuesday) reads the cards for the über-popular twitter trend of Follow Friday (#followfriday).

The Cards

I’ll add the picture later when I have access to my camera.  Meanwhile, here are the cards in a past-present-future layout.

Strength (Inverted)

The Queen of Swords

The Sun

Analyzing the Spread

People are quick to read the ‘opposite’ of a card when it plays upside-down. For Tarot readings, this is not usually the case. In this case, an inverted Strength implies a drawback due to strength, not the lack of it. Here the Strength cards falls in the Past position.

The court cards are traditionally thought to represent people. In this case, the Queen of Swords could be an intellectually clever person, a leader of sorts. A bitch perhaps, but also a courageous decision-maker. This card in the present position means the person’s influence is here already, but perhaps not yet recognized.

The Sun is about as happy a card as you’re likely to find in the Tarot.  Positive growth. Positive change. Positive positivity. Basically pissing rainbows here.

Interpretation

Ah #followfriday! I see love in the cards! Smoochy smoochy!

Seriously, what I get from this is that the idea behind #followfridays is a strong one, but it’s Strength is not in its Strength, if that makes sense. For the moment, most people are just bowled over with what a great idea #followfriday is, and not thinking beyond it.

But there is an untapped potential here. Something that, once realized, people will go “Wow! Why didn’t I think of that?” Well, someone is thinking of that. Someone clever and creative. Probably female, although this could be a group of people.

Most likely, this clever and creative thing has already been done. Some interesting use of #followfriday that just hasn’t risen through the twitter hubub yet. Or perhaps someone used it as a catalyst for something else. Perhaps the #followfriday tags get ported to other social network system like facebook, myspace or linkedin.

Whatever it is, it’s going to let people piss rainbows be amazing.

-Zero

PS – If you have a different interpretation of this tarot spread or other useful wisdom to share, drop it in the comments below. If you want to perform your own tarot readings, just link them up on twitter.com with the #tarottuesday hashtag. Don’t have a tarot deck? No problem. Go to www.ifate.com and use the free online tarot spread generator.

The death toll from the swine flu is 113 worldwide, Mexico City is nearly quarantined, and something that sounds like the plot of a Stephen King novel is now the top story on every media outlet known to man.

This picture making the rounds on the internet is NOT helping.

My mother sent me an e-mail saying I’m supposed to wash my hands for at least 45 seconds with VERY HOT WATER, and I should wash them every 30 seconds. Furthermore, I’m to stand at least 6-feet away from everyone when I talk to them, and carry a 5.5 foot cattle prod just in case anyone gets too close.  I kid you not. My mom does not screw around about personal hygiene.

So for my very first Tarot Tuesday reading for planet Earth, the Swine Flu seems to be a pretty worthwhile subject.

The Tarot Spread

I wanted to start simple, and so I went with the simplest (and most general) of the tarot spreads, the 3-card ‘Life Reading’ or ‘Past, Present and Future’ Spread. Three cards are laid out in order left to right, the leftmost card representing the past or influence of the situation, the middle card representing the present and the rightmost card representing the future or potential outcome.

The spread falls as-such:

1. Temperance (Inverted)
2. Four of cups
3. The Moon (Inverted)

Analysis

I approach interpretation on two levels; both analytical and intuitive.  Some people favor their gut instinct when reading Tarot, others like to look the meanings up in a book. Neither way is ‘wrong’, but I like to take a balanced approach and get both halves of the brain involved.

Inverted Temperance in the Past position screams “Out Of Balance”. It’s almost self-explanatory on both intuitive and analytical levels.

The Four of Cups in the Present position represents confusion and indecision on an emotional level. Again, you don’t have to be psychic to figure this one out.

The Moon normally concerns dreams, intuition and creativity. Inverted, it reminds us that these aspects can cloud matters and get in the way of clear thinking. Here it occurs in the Future position.

Interpretation

Now is not the time to hide in the basement and drink Hand Sanitizer. It’s a time to be rational, not reactionary.

It’s obvious what has led us to this sad state of affairs. Human beings put their tongues where they clearly don’t belong. We don’t wash our hands often enough, and we stand too close together when we talk.

Far worse than our physical hygiene issues, we have intellectual hygiene issues. We digest a lot of crappy, sugar-coated, unsanitized, sensationalized news – far more dangerous than licking a pig’s nose, if you ask me. We can monitor the CDC directly to tell us the nanosecond each and every case of flu breaks out around the globe – a paranoid schizophrenic’s dream/nightmare. Any wonder we’re dazed and confused?

Did you know just how dangerous the standard strain of influenza is? No? Then you don’t have enough information to process the “news” you’re getting.  The flu virus mutates constantly, creating new strains all the time. It kills hundreds of people every day in the US.  Hundreds. Every Day.

Yes, the Swine Flu is new and different. Yes, it kills people. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. But watch the masses freak out as the cases spread out on this map.

Some people are fond of saying, “If you aren’t outraged, then you aren’t paying attention.” (A False Dichotomy by the way) This tarot spread tells us the opposite, “Don’t get upset until you have all the facts.”

Plant Keyboard pic from Gizmodo.com

Now is not the time to hide in the basement and drink Hand Sanitizer. It’s a time to be rational, not reactionary. I hope you don’t need a pandemic as motivation to wash your hands or clean your nasty keyboard.

Keep your nose clean, and I’ll see you next week,

-Zero

PS – If you have a different interpretation of this tarot spread or other useful wisdom to share, drop it in the comments below. If you want to perform your own tarot readings, just link them up on twitter.com with the #tarottuesday hashtag. Don’t have a tarot deck? No problem. Go to www.ifate.com and use the free online tarot spread generator.

The fun pseudo-utility behind #followfriday and #wisdomwed crashed into my occasional tarot reading, and gave me a fabulous idea.

I’ve decided to perform a tarot reading for the entire world every Tuesday.

I know, tall order huh?

A tarot reading is far too ‘big’ to post in a tweet (esp one for the entire planet), so I’ll post the short version on twitter, and a link here to the blog at conradzero.com for the spread and my  interpretation. The posts will have the hashtag #tartotuesday

For subjects, I’ll try to pick timely topics, possibly the hot twitter topic of the week, possibly something related to my writings or maybe Jagged Spiral, because if that isn’t a worldly topic, nothing is.

I’m still working out the details, but for this first week, the topic will be the Swine Flu…

Stay tuned.