HAPPY BIRTHDAY SCORPIOS

                                                Scorpio October 23rd - November 21st

Scorpios are the detectives and the prosecutors of the zodiac. They are as observant, intuitive, intelligent and as calculating as a Sherlock Holmes. If found in the wrong, they will follow you to the end, pursue you with fierce and focused determination until justice has been served to their satisfaction, even if they have to take matters into their own hands. Their ruthless lack of mercy toward wrongdoers is infamous. These natural grudge holders never forget and they are the most patient with the serving of justice so long as they are confident that their culprits will receive their due come-uppings in the worst way.

Still waters run deep. Scorpios are the fixed water sign under the influence of Mars (Roman god of war) and Pluto (Roman god of the afterlife, mysticism and the paranormal). Those influenced by the element of water are emotionally led beings. A lot of their decisions are based on large part on what they feel and whatever a Scorpio feels, they feel it intensely. Because water is expressed in Scorpio as fixed, their emotions appear like ice to the onlooker, cold, emotionless and stolid, all the while passionate emotions are surging just beneath their icy poker face. They are often recognized by their very serious and intense demeanor. They have a tendency toward being emotionally heavy which makes them very profound and deep when engaging in the arts. When emotions do emerge to the surface, be it anger, joy, sadness or sexual drives, it breaks through suddenly with startling volatility. Outside of these outbreaks, these are very reserved and dignified individuals and the classic closet freaks on the flipside. Don't let their prudish demeanor fool you. Behind that librarian front, thoughts of leather whips and chains excite their dirty and kinky minds. Their passionate sexual drives are often unmatched.

Scorpios carry an alluring aura of mystery and magnetism and they like it that way. Should you ever be caught in their piercing gaze, you might feel put under a spell. You would be drawn to them but at the same time unnerved that they seem to be able to look right through you with almost psychic precision into the depths of the core or everything you are, everything you have been and everything you're thinking to your deepest hopes and fears as if you have just been caught naked. While they love to solve puzzles and mysteries with keen interest, one of their greatest fears is being discovered and found out themselves. They will mix it up and do whatever they can to throw an equally discerning person off their tracks. They don't want to be truly known by most people. What are they hiding? While being one of the most courageous and determined people of the zodiac, they are also equally vulnerable and highly sensitive to hurtful insults and the mean-spirited intentions of others. The reason they must be tough is to protect their soft spots. They are both lovers and fighters and they do both very intensely. They love hard and they fight hard. Contrary to the incidences of their well-reasoned mean-streak, Scorpios also prove to be very thoughtful, kind, loyal and devoted friends and lovers who will stick in the corners of those they care for with die-hard commitment. Scorpios are your true and genuine die-hard friends. If they so much as like and respect you, they would force you to wear the shirt off their backs if you were cold. Just as much as they remember the mean actions of others, they remember kindness as well. While they are tremendously loyal and devoted to those they love, they demand the same in return. These high expectations lends them to the worst cases of possessiveness, clinginess and jealousy. When it comes to matters of reciprocating the love they lavish so strongly upon others, they often get their feelings hurt and it is very painful to them. So painful that they spiral down into deep depression. But don't worry, they'll survive. Surviving is what they do best. The resilient Scorpio is the true comeback kid, rising from the flames and ashes of defeat like the Phoenix renewed and stronger than before to then soar like an eagle. And when they pass through a period of  this renewal, it is like a rebirth or like someone has hit the reset button. If the person who has dealt them this pain is lucky enough to not be in their cross-hairs for revenge, they are completely done with them and they move on never to return again, almost quite coldly as if they had never loved the person so strongly in the first place.

Scorpios are gifted as decribed earlier in careers involving detective work and the sciences and are intrigued by paranormal activity and mysticism. They also make fine attorneys. Their crafty knack for stealth, strategy, focus, determination, patience and well-timed ambushes will make them successful snipers or under cover cops. Their talent for resourcefulness and order makes them effective managers too of operations large or small especially if it is in survival mode. These cunning and wiley coyotes are known for often snatching upset victories out of the jaws of defeat, mainly attributed to their keen wits in trickery and deception, manipulating and exploiting the weaknesses of their opponents and the sensing of opportunities and then seizing them with swift audacity.

Scorpios are most compatible with the stability and security of Taurus. Scorpios desire patterns they can track and plan by and are unpleasantly thrown off by surprises and spontaneity. Note, Scorpios do not enjoy surprises, unless they're pulling them.It's quite difficult to surprise a Scorpio anyway, for they watch, listen, remember, study and analyze everything down to their finest details with added almost psychic intuitiveness and then they automatically begin calculating an appropriate response. What they admire most is strength, stability, security, devotion and order from their mates. Taurus will serve them all of these things best. Cancer will give them devotion, stability and security. Virgo will give them orderliness. Capricorn would serve all of their needs except for in the affectionate arena. Pisces will steal a Scorpio's heart and be just as smitten by them. Only Pisces is likely to fail them in the area of devotion, stability and security by Pisces being quite fickled individuals.

Famous Scorpios: Hillary Clinton, Mahalia Jackson, Winona Ryder, Roseanne Barr, Whoopi Goldberg, Sally Field, Bonnie Raitt, Demi Moore, Rock Hudson, Ted Turner, Robert Kennedy, Joe Biden, Ryan Reynolds, Monica (R&B singer), Ciara (hip-hop/R&B entertainer), Bill Gates, Julia Roberts, Katy Perry, Gabrielle Union, Nelly (rapper), K.D. Lang, Sean Combs (P. Diddy), Matthew McConaughey

LOVE FORECAST:

This year 2013, would see much adventure in your love life. A better positive aspect of relationship shall come for you. There would be much constructive thoughts with a positive bend. You would be able to express yourself in a better way to your partner during this year. Perfect harmony is forecast and you would not encounter any embarrassing situations as far as your relationships are concerned. You need to put in more intimacy and romance in your relationship in order to woo your partner to your track. -findyourfate.com

Cohabitation is very comfortable and enjoyable. You will become more attractive and appealing. People around you as well as your lover want to live with you because they want to be closer to you. This thing will help you solve your problems that make you worry for a long time before.

-newhoroscope2013.com

Neptune is touring through your love sector, and he’s making you wish for a love that has a kharmic, poetic feeling to it. You’re not looking for any Joe-schmoe, you’re looking for your soul mate. You want to feel like you’ve known them for lifetimes, and you’ll continue to be with them again and again in future lives.

-thedarkpixieastrology.com

The Scorpio Theme Song:

TO BE ANGRY OR NOT TO BE?

Q: Is it ever wrong to get angry?

A: No. It's not right either. Feeling anger is nothing you need to judge one way or the other any more than you should judge the way the color blue looks to you. What is up for judgement is how you use it, for anger has its purposes and its misuses can be dangerous.

To drive at my point, whenever you are feeling angry, simply say just that, "I feel anger." Never say "I'm angry." for you are not anger and anger is not who you are. To back it up, what is really going on in your body when you are feeling anger or any sort of emotion for that matter is all chemical. Your brain releases them in accordance with stimuli from the external world. The one for anger is a hormone by the name of epinephrine, more commonly known as adrenaline. When your nerve centers taste these chemicals, they taste angry, or happy or frightened, or lovey-dovey or horny, or sad or any of the full range of emotions your body is capable of experiencing in much the same way your palate is capable of tasting salty, sour, spicey or sweet. Just like tastes in the mouth, emotional feelings in the body can either be pleasant or unpleasant. For most people, anger is an unpleasant emotional experience, so many of us get upset at the fact that we got upset on top of the original upsettedness, which then makes us even more angry at the person or thing we believe caused our anger in the first place. DAMN THEM ALL TO HELL!

I'd like to help change this paradigm for you. No one causes your anger. No one can log into your brain and push the buttons which will release the angry chemicals into your body, as we black folks like to say,"You're working on my nerves." What is really happening is that the circular realm of things of which you are able to peacefully allow and accept has just bumped into a patience boundary you may not have known was there. So like blindly bumping your knee into a wall you didn't see there and then feeling pain, when you bump into your patience boundaries, you in turn feel anger as a natural response. If you bumped your knee and you feel pain, are you wrong for feeling pain? No, it's the wall's fault for being where you didn't expect to be. Well, who put that wall there? (Possible AHA moment). However, if you had not gotten angry or felt the pain of a bruised knee, you might not have known that the wall existed there anyway, and the pain or the anger only caught your attention to it.

So now that anger has helped you discover your own patience boundaries, you can now let that go and then deal with your boundaries with a clear mind. Does it need to be there? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. If it doesn't, then knock it down with laughter, because it's silly. If it does need to be there, who or what does it serve by being there? If it serves only you, how does it help you grow as a person? If it doesn't, so you like being small? Being small works for you? I know true personal growth is not comfortable for it comes with its growing pains, but who needs you to be bigger? Maybe your kids, maybe your family, maybe your community or even your nation. Or do you feel that the world is already full enough of big people that it won't matter if you stay at the comfortable level of a 3 yr old? You might very well believe this, but I'll tell you, you're in for a lot more painful knee bangings as you interact with the world. So, unless you enjoy anger, its time to enlarge your boundaries, stretch yourself and give yourself a bigger pen to play in.

Let's say that you enjoy anger. Why? I have heard from a few people that when they get angry, it is the only time they feel alive. So anger for them is a pulse check. So in a sense to sense the world, they go around looking for opportunities to get angry like a drug-fiend. You and I know that in this world, if that's what they're looking for, they don't need to venture far. They don't need to go outside their own house for that matter. You have my sympathies if you are in a relationship with such a person. Their search will come in the form of nagging, drudging up old dramas or picking a fight with you. They'll say things to get you to react to say something that will bump their knees against their patience boundaries and serve them the anger high they were looking for. They'll watch the nightly news if they have to. Yes, people do get addicted to the anger chemicals of their body. It happens to be pleasantly unpleasant for them. They're not much different than thrill seekers. My belief is that these people have not experienced the lasting emotions of joy and happiness in such a long time that they have forgotten what these lighter more, pleasant emotions feel like or have forgotten that these emotional experiences are options for them as well as easily as anger is. If they realized this, why would they ever look for anger? Just as easily as you don't have to venture far for anger, you don't have to venture far for joy and happiness either. All this requires is an attitude of gratitude and things to get happy and joyful about would pop out at you from every turn. Take in a deep breath and be grateful to be able to do that. Get up with the sun and feel the warm beams of its rays on your face. Feel the absence of pain in your body. Taste your good food and be grateful to be eating. Laugh at the squirrels in wirey action. Opportunities for Joy and Happiness are all around you, all the time.

So, to come full circle, if you prefer joy and happiness, acknowledge it and look for it if you have to. You'll find it. Anger and happiness are like oil and water. They don't mix, so choose. Do you want to be angry or do you want to be happy? This is what it all comes down to. If you don't want anger intruding and messing up your happiness, expand your patience boundaries. If it is a matter which you feel that for the greater good, you should not have any patience for like abuse or social injustices, then transmute that anger into some form of constructive action. There is something called righteous indignation or some spiritual people call "holy wrath" which is just as passionate if not more than destructive anger which often gets expressed through violence and damaging words. The difference is that righteous indignation wakes people up to their better consciences and intentions. It is their conscience which then corrects them with guilt. Righteous indignation builds up and does not tear down, it wakes up and enlightens people to the better way things can be and does not justify the darkness of hatred and ignorance. It's called "Love". Just like GOD appeared to Moses as a burning bush which was not consumed by the fire, Love is a powerful force though it may get expressed through fiery passions does not destroy anyone. It only utterly destroys things which are not rooted in truth by glaring its light on its then apparent falsehoods. It makes people feel better about themselves, about life and what it means to be human in this world. It causes people to want to be better, do better and have better in this life. It illuminates and lights up the world in such a way people will gravitate to it like moths to a flame or like flowers to sun rays because your example of forthright justice and loving-kindness have caught fire within them and awakened a truth that had long since been dormant. So even if you need to be impatient or non-accepting of something, choose Love. It will get the job done in a more powerful, meaningful and lasting way. If you're going to get angry, make it worth something.

10 GREAT GEORGIA DATING AND FAMILY OUTING IDEAS FROM LOVE UNDER FIRE: October

1. Go to a Haunted House. Real ones are the best.

2. Visit Fort Pulaski, Tybee Island, GA. Explore the stunning, coastal Fort Pulaski. See the technological surprise that helped Union forces seize the fort from Confederates during the Civil War. It's a tale of how clever thinking trumped old assumptions to influence the course of the battle ... and the war.

3. Visit a Pumpkin Patch, to gather pumpkins to make pumpkin pies and Jackolanterns.

4. Visit Historic Barrington Hall in Roswell, GA, just minutes North of Atlanta. Located on the bluffs overlooking the creeks of the Chattahoochee River, you'll find this quaint, typical pre-Civil War Greek Revival mansion situated at the highest point in Roswell. Travel to a region that the Cherokee Indians once called the Enchanted Land. Located on the northern banks of the Chattahoochee River is historic Roswell, Georgia. Visit stunning antebellum homes, Bulloch Hall, Archibald and Smith Plantation as you learn of Roswell’s rich history.

5. Gather old pictures of each other from childhood to the present and make a scrap book together or video montage.

6. Visit the beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah, GA. Explore the peaceful grounds of this popular tourist destination that charms both history lovers and Hollywood. This beautiful cemetery situated along the scenic bluffs of the Wilmington River in Savannah is the final resting place for many of the region’s most notable residents.

7. Put a love sac (inflatable matress + 1 sleeping bag for two) in the back of a truck and head up a mountain or out in the open under the stars in the middle of nowhere, removed away from city lights or civilization--watch a movie on laptop, or just stare at the stars. Don't have a truck? Rent one. Want some added privacy after you've had enough of the stars and not enough of your partner? Pitch a tent small enough to fit in the bed of the truck.

8. Visit historic Macon, GA. Living History means exactly what it says in Macon. An unmatched presence of ante-bellum homes, mansions and theaters that has presented everyone from Harry Houdini to Little Richard and is home to musicians such as the Allman Brothers and classical violinist Robert McDuffie. Unlike so many other cities that tear down their old buildings, Macon protects and preserves the evidence of its centuries as a center of commerce and culture, on the banks of the Ocmulgee River.

9. Go house or apartment hunting together. Look in the paper for open houses where you can blend in amongst many shopping prospective buyers, and look the part. Realtors can be some of the most judgmental people I've come accross. Everything else I'm about to say next is a CYA for me. Ahem...I do have friends who are realtors who might get upset with me if I put any of you up to house hunting just because. So do this only when you are truly in a position to seriously look for a home within the next 3-6 months. And don't peak mansions which are far outside your budget just to dream. It is not fair to those who are giving you their prescious time in hopes of making a sale. If you've ever been in sales, you know how annoying and a waste of time looky-lous can be. Not ready to buy just yet? Find a friend who is and offer to come along for a second opinion. That could be your date or your excuse to go house-hunting with a date without the guilt of wasting anyone's time or finding yourself under uncomfortable sales pressure when you never intended to buy anything anyway. If the realtor turns on you, you can always say, "I'm with her or him" or whoever it is who is truly shopping as in "Leave me alone, do your job and sell to them and allow me to just dream in peace, why don't you? If you don't piss me off too much, I might just come back to you in 5 years. Humph!"

10. Visit Oktoberfest in Helen, GA. It’s the most genuine Oktoberfest celebration this side of the Atlantic. Visit this Alpine Bavarian village where this 41 year old festival runs from mid-September through October, making it the longest Oktoberfest in the South.

Please send us your Georgia dating ideas. To make clarifications, Love Under Fire is FOR LOVERS ONLY, regardless of your gender, age, sexuality, spirituality, political persuasion or current relationship status.

Tough Skin or Tough Heart?

A friend has recently asked me, "How do you find the balance between toughening your skin, but NOT your heart?"

This was my response to him: You should practice more allowing instead of defensiveness. Toughening of the heart is a natural form or self-defense and self-preservation against that which you deem as hurtful. Allowing melts away your resistance to what it is and less bothers you as a result. Is it possible for you to allow people to be ignorant, mean, selfish and deceiving without disturbing your inner peace or changing the core goodness of who you are? Is it fair to the unspoiled fruit out there to have to deal with a fruit that used to be good until it got infected and changed by hurt? This is what it comes down to. I always feel sorry for jerks anyway, for it must be tough to live 24/7 with the annoyance I only had to endure for a few moments. I'm also thankful to occasionally run into jerks, because they help broaden the pool of things I am able to allow by stretching my patience and thus giving me a better chance at peace. Every major prick I run into helps me to deal with more tolerable pricks with ease.

Whenever someone gets me angry or hurts my feelings, I tell myself that I'm growing and these are just its growing pains. After that I don't stay angry or hurt for long. I hate to liken it to sex, but don't practice preemptive resistance and defensiveness or high expectations and not expect to be served pain and disappointment. Just relax and enjoy each moment as it comes to you in the present moment. Keep enjoying each moment as it comes to you in the present moment without concern at all for the future one way or the other. It doesn't matter in the present. Keep doing that until it is no longer enjoyable or helping you grow as a person. Once the relationship is taking more away from you then it is giving to you and helping neither of you grow, it is time to pull out and move on without resentment. The relationship has served its purpose. Not every relationship is meant to last as long as you two shall live. Many of them come only teach you lessons about yourself and about love you could not have learned otherwise from anyone else. Learn to be okay with this. Life comes to you only through the present moment. It does not exist in the past, because that is done and cannot be changed. You only have the choice of accepting the past for what it was if you want peace. Life does not exist in the future because it has not happened yet and depends in large part on what you do with the present moment. Yes, plan and prepare for the future, but there's no reason to feel one way or the other about it. Take all of the energy of those anxious concerns or feelings of high hopes and bring it all into the present moment so that you can fully experience these fleeting moments of right now in all its richness and not miss it being concerned about the future. Do this and the future will take care of itself.

SMELL YA LATER

If you ask me, I'll tell you nothing hooks me and keeps me thinking about a man who has all the other necessary ingredients, looks and personality than a nice-smelling man. It can help enhance my mood in his presence and stimulate naughty thoughts. I'm a very busy man with the condition of ADD, so it takes skill to steal and keep my attention for long, and if a whiff of you causes me to look up from my laptop or a book to look around for "who is that?" and then my eyes lands on you and makes me say under my breath, "DAMN!", I'm interested. Back that up with a funny, warm and compassionate personality capable of intelligent conversation and a soft, easy smile and he'll have me hooked and swooning like a giddy school girl. Now what was I doing 5 minutes ago? It doesn't matter, can I hang around you all day and just smell you? Or better yet, rub some of it off on a cloth to keep with me until I can see you again. I imagine I'm not the only one with this olfactory weakness for good pheromones, so here's today's pic for men and for women.

FOR HIM:

Encounter by Calvin Klein
Price: $62 Buy it here.

Calvin Klein fragrances have been a bit hit or miss since the brand’s heyday in the '90s. While Encounter doesn’t reach the sensual heights of Obsession, it does take a good stab at bottling sex (a mission achieved, largely, by employing Alexander Skarsgard as the scent’s face). Expect an opening infused with mandarin and cardamom as well as a slight menthol and mint undertone. The mid notes of jasmine and patchouli are synthetic, but that is swiftly eclipsed by the almost flammable onslaught of what appears to be cognac. There are also some sensual woods in the base. Rich and heady, but in a completely synthetic and obvious sort of way. -- AskMen.com

FOR HER:

Nicole by Nicole Richie,  $55

"It smells like coconut mixed with warm sunscreen. Like you've just spent the day at the beach." -- Sarah Carrillo, Senior Editor

"It is sticky sweet and reminds me of being at a bee farm, surrounded by lots of honeycombs." -- Salazar

"I think it's very summery, like breathing in the air inside of a beach resort cabana." -- Popp