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Mars Aspects, Mailing Lists, Mack Trucks and Stuff (Vintage Astrology Blogging)
Astrology in real life
This is for Jessica in response to her comment regarding Mercury on the Different Speeds of Planets Beginner Post.
I wrote this in 2003. I am going to leave it completely as was. I liked my writing from back then… before Saturn got hold of me…
So I posted to this new board last night… Two posts and someone assumed that I was a man. It reminded me of this story from awhile back…
~~
Early days online I used to write on one of the astrology mailing lists. It was an incredible time. An opportunity for astrologers all over the world to communicate. Things have changed now. There is much less sharing. Most of the strong writers from the list have established prominent websites now and more than a few of them have published books. Anyway, like many others back then, I used to write and write and write on one of these lists.
I wrote at least daily for a year or more and I had my detractors but by and large, I was well respected which was a thrill for me. See, for the first time in my life, I was judged by what I knew and my ability to communicate it, as opposed to what I looked like and it was heady stuff for me, having spent a lifetime being dismissed an exotic piece of ass. In fact, the day this hit me, I wound up sobbing on the keyboard. Yep. I was being taken seriously for the first time in my life, that’s why. Anyway, here is what happened.
After a year and some 500 posts written to this list, a core group decided to post pictures on the list web site. This was back when digital cameras were scarce, but I did have a pic someone scanned for me and I sent it in to be posted to an extreme reaction.
Lots of people wrote me. 20 people at least, and they all said the same thing in their own way. One gal said it best. “I always assumed that you looked like a Mack truck.” Hearing that, I freaked.
“Huh? Why would you think that?” I asked, and this is when several people copped to discussing me off-list.
They told me that I wrote with such blunt force, that this is the picture my voice conjured up. They thought I was this chick with a crew cut and a body like a refrigerator swinging numchuks. They actually called me Mike Tyson behind my back. Mike fucking Tyson, can you believe that? I couldn’t. I was floored. They wrote “knockout punch” and I think it was kind of a compliment, but I didn’t take it that way. Instead, I had my stomach in my throat.
Yeah. This hit me like a brick. And Leo Venus went nuts. She’s so vain, you know, but once past the shock, I could see how this could be.
I had sent in this sweet little picture, too. Very demure, and I had just written a piece “Vomiting Virgo Tree Killer” about Pluto and Virgo. It was really raunchy and funny and I wish I had still had it, but when I re-read it next to my picture, I was able to see how this mistake could be made. That *voice really didn’t look like it could come out of me. Whoever wrote that had balls, you know?
So thing is, people were thinking I was some kind of bad ass and in reality, I was sobbing in gratitude over the keyboard… And who’d have thought that of Mike Tyson? Well, nobody.
It was a real education. Mercury is writing, how you communicate. In this circumstance, the writing was all that people could “see”. If you’ve been reading awhile, then you know I have Mars conjunct Mercury. This is a masculine and aggressive signature. I have Mercury in a positive (male) sign in a positive house, conjunct MARS to exasperate the situation and there you go. Plain and simple, that’s what you call a hard-on.
Epilogue -
Since this occurred, I generally put my picture with my writing because Venus in Ego, I mean Leo just cannot handle being thought of as a Mack truck.
15 Responses to “Mars Aspects, Mailing Lists, Mack Trucks and Stuff (Vintage Astrology Blogging)”
And why do people’s “voices” tell us about what they look like? Hmmmm. I’m as susceptible as anyone else, but I wonder why this is.
I had a similar experience. When I was a lot younger (and so was the internet), I participated in a lot of social justice issue discussion. Before people could see my picture, they thought I was this deep-voiced older woman (My screenname was actually quite feminine). Most were surprised when they discovered the writing was from a twenty-one year old Asian girl (who looks fifteen) with a cute bubbly voice. heh. 
Perhaps now is a good time to tell you - I recommended you to a friend last year and you did an email consultation for her. I showed her your website and her reaction was, ‘wow, is that Elsa? She’s so pretty!’
Food for your Leo venus…
every time I’m presented with a new picture of you I’m always astounded by your beauty. uranus in the seventh?
Yeah Elsa, I think you’re really pretty.
Beautiful.
Well I am not vain (like people think) but MIKE TYSON!
I mean, I can’t be vain, I wear no make up, I leave the house askew at least half the time, my clothes don;t fit.,.. I mean wtf?
I have glasses and I think your hologram is gorgeous 
that’s an interesting question, too, jessica. i know it goes the other way.
people look at me and pay no attention (talking about _all_ my life, pre the pink hair/weird clothes phase). but when i open my mouth and speak, they suddenly “get” that i have a fully functioning brain. it’s like a switch is tripped.
i’ve come to realize from reading here some of this is probably neptune opposing my midheaven. i used to attribute it to being fat, and after i wasn’t so fat anymore, to my odd presentation. but it’s been consistent.
I’ve also got Merc/Pluto stuff, so I guess maybe my communications can impart more of a punch than my visual presentation. 
elsa, i’ve also noticed that pictures of you look _very different_ often from one to the other. i assume that’s the neptune thing, too. you are very pretty, with or without my old-lady glasses on.
I used to write a lot more than I do now, and the first time I put a picture of myself on my Xanga blog a couple of people told me I looked exactly how they had pictured me! I thought it was odd.
“elsa, i’ve also noticed that pictures of you look _very different_ often from one to the other.”
ha ha, thanks for telling me, goddess. I mutate, it’s a fact. Just like my writing, it’s one of the things that pisses people off.
Is she nice? Or mean? As if I could answer that.
I can’t answer that because the projections are so intense, I’ve no idea what is real to be quite candid, I take virtually everything virtually everyone says with a grain of salt because I figure they just mean the thing in the moment.
It is a well known fact (to my inner circle) the soldier has to remind me he loves me every day or so because left to my own devices, I will figure that was yesterday, who knows about today.
it is the disappearing gifts (love, Venus) thing. Remember the gal who sent me cookies and then decided I sucked? Or the gal who bought me the book off my wish list and then canceled it?
I try to get married and I disappear into the ground. What the hell - I am drawn this way.
ha, elsa, i recently quoted jessica rabbit on my facebook page — ‘i’m not bad, i’m just drawn this way’ — guess she must have venus in leo too
This is why I am so glad I never had to deal with the whole “online” dating thing. Who even knows if the picture someone uses is real, or hell, even if they are the actual sex that they say they are!! This might sound silly to adults, but my daughter and I went to see Nim’s Island a while back. Jody Foster plays an author who writes Indiana Jones kind of books, and uses a man’s name, when in fact she is a female writer who has such bad agoraphobia she can barely reach out her front door to get the mail. I loved the movie so much I bought it for us - and whenever I get to meet an author, I spend so much time studying their face, because it is so wonderful to see the face behind the words.
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Holy crap! That is pretty damn funny piece and all I can say is wow, but I can see how that could happen. I know that you’re a pretty woman, but even I subconsciously respond to the Mars-Mercury masculine voice. On the last Venus-Neptune blog about your wedding I realized I was forgetting you’re all woman (in-love)!
Thank you for the re-post!
Okay, now I can’t help wondering…. does my Mercury-Pluto make my voice sound totally creepy? Hahaha. Er. Don’t answer that.
Thank God I’m not the blog author.