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According to Chinese astrology, we’re entering the Year of the Water Dragon:
In a Dragon year, everything is magnified tenfold… Commotion, turmoil and general hullabaloo will characterize the Dragon year ahead…
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Think of the Water Dragon year as a 12-month-long, bumpy road with interludes of elaborate and joyful festivity. Fortunes will be made and lost with lightning speed. All events will be charged with a rare intensity. In short, 2012 will be a year of derring-do, hell-raising and exorbitant fun.
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Dragon years are favorable for the enterprising and ambitious. If you want to succeed at something major, start early in the Dragon year. Don’t give up. Express yourself openly. Show no fear. In China, it is said that the Dragon year brings luck to those who dare to speak out, to take charge and even to take over…
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… [T]he months ahead will be tumultuous, stormy and chock-full of rebellion. Dragons may be despotic, but they’re also benevolent and sentimental. In this coming Dragon year, anyone who’s hurting is going to hoot and holler until they get their fair share.
For some reason, I visualize Newt Gingrich air-kissing in the direction of a full-length mirror. I don’t know enough about the Four Pillars system even for joke predictions, but it looks like President Obama is a Metal Ox, Newt is a Water Goat, and Mitt Romney a Fire Pig.
Apart from another GOP debate tonight and the State of the Union Address tomorrow, what’s on the agenda for the new week?
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THE
新
年
快
乐
Xin Nian Kuai Le
Raven
Happy Tet!
Linda Featheringill
Xin Nian Kuai Le or Congratulations and best wishes for a prosperous New Year!
Betty Cracker
I know absolutely nothing about the Four Pillars system, but I intuitively want to classify Gingrich as a Fire Pig.
WereBear
Is there a Slime Lizard in this pantheon? Because otherwise, Newt is unclassifiable.
chopper
@WereBear:
‘chaotic evil’ comes to mind.
R-Jud
Looks like I’m also a goat. That’s about as much as I’m willing to share with Newt Gingrich.
Elizabelle
CBS reports Mitt Romney is going to release his 2010 tax return, and estimates on his 2011.
Period? (And is that a personal return, or returns for all entities related to his income?)
No mention of his releasing a bunch of prior years’ returns, as Barack Obama, Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, and Romney’s own father have done.
What a putz.
I think he’s going to have this drip, drip, drip out.
What’s in those returns?
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle:
My guess is that there is nothing particularly odd in the returns – other than the sheer number of zeros used. If it turns out that I am right, it will be typical of Romney’s tin ear that he allowed this to become an issue. He is as rich a Croesus; everyone knows it already, so just release the damn things. If, on the other hand, there is something embarrassing in them, then Romney is simply an idiot. He basically has been running for president since 2006-2007. His tax returns for those years should have been prepared with the assumption that they would be released.
Schlemizel
I’m surprised he is releasing the 2010 also. He is not very bright & Omnes Omnibus has it right. “You have been running since 2006 WTF is the matter with you that you have not figured out how to make returns since at least then like they are clean”?
I’m a Dragon myself, I guess I should try to have high hopes for this year.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: Yes. I know you have challenges, but YOU WILL TRIUMPH.
deep
gung hay fat choy!
Schlemizel
@WereBear:
Given that I know how this turns out (all life turns out the same way) that might be a triumph.
I had my pre-surgery physical. I have had a little fluid in one ear, assumed it was sinus or something. The Dr. looked in there & said “You probably should get seen by an ENT, something doesn’t look right in there”
So thats now a trifecta of “I ain’t never seen that before” since I finished radiation treatments. I have to laugh, what else can I do?
PhoenixRising
@Schlemizel: Yeah, those words don’t mean what I thought they meant, anyway.
“99.9% of these lesions are benign” ain’t what it used to be.
My kid asked what we had to do to get another New Year today like her Vietnamese-born friend’s family does, so we cleaned up and returned borrowed items all day Saturday before feeding the lion some red envelopes last night.
The monk says I’m going to have a prosperous year because the wife and kid are both dragons and they’re dragging me along. It couldn’t hoit. Gung hay fat choy!
Origuy
Firecrackers have been going off in my neighborhood all night. Actually, they started Saturday night. One or two nights is OK but Lunar New Year goes on for two weeks. I’ve threatened (to friends) to stash away some firecrackers for Guy Fawkes Day and set them off in the middle of the night.
The San Francisco Chinese New Year parade, which ends the celebrations around here, is Feb 11. That’s they day they hold the Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt, which I do every year.
Yutsano
明けましておめでとうございます!
Schlemizel
@PhoenixRising:
From your lips to my ancestors ears!
I keep thinking I should be due to hit the lotto any day now.
I really like a lot of the traditions around Chinese New Year – pay off all your debts, forgive all grievances, start clean. This might be the year to try at least the last two.
trollhattan
Fire up the forklifts! California’s downed piggies can again be skewered and hauled to slaughter alongside their ambulatory cousins.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/
It’s just like those Liberal Californians to try and defend pigs while trampling on precious 2nd Amendment Rights(tm).
trollhattan
@trollhattan:
Oopsie, link fxd.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/01/california-livestock-law-struck-down.html
Brachiator
I missed the first mentions of the passing of the great R&B pioneer Johnny Otis, who was pre post racial, growing up in the black community, embracing it fully, and championing the music and performers.
A nod, and a little Willie and the Hand Jive
A reminder, as with the cool stuff about Year of the Dragon celebrations, of the rich diversity of the human animal.