The Comfort of Strangers

Rob Brezny’s Freewill Astrology appears in The Coast every week. The Coast is the must-read weekly in Halifax because it’s a really good free paper – the best I’ve ever read. They’re looking for a news editor at the moment, if anyone’s interested in a great job.

It has the right mix of politics, music, art and interesting columns to make Thursdays extra special. On the way into work, I head for one of the red Coast street bins and grab a copy to read with my morning coffee. Then I plan my weekend.

I always leave Rob’s astrology column till second-last (Dan Savage’s Savage Love advice column has to be last – it is priceless), because it always seems to know what kind of mood I'm in and gently pricks a hole in it, whether it is over-exaggerated self-importance, or self-indulgent misery. In fact, in true Cancerian fashion, I truly believe it is written just for me each week. Apart from that, I love Rob for two reasons:

• His Prayer for You is a really articulate and funny stab at an alternative Credo


• Rob has a Menstrual Hut on his website. The Menstrual Hut is a letter written the night Bush was re-elected, exhorting us all to continue to fight the good fight. That’s the kind of thing that should be in a Menstrual Hut

Anyways, I was feeling a bit sorry for myself today, what with having taken up residence in my own little menstrual shebeen, but when I read Rob’s horoscope this week, I burst out laughing on the ferry (I was on my way back from a trip to Dartmouth to buy a Christmas present). Then I looked up and out and saw the lights of my beloved Halifax shining in the night sky across the bay, just sitting there being all chilled out and cool and I thought, to hell with it, Christmas starts tonight.

So I nipped into Remedy spa’s customer party night and got a free paraffin hand treatment, oooh my hands smell lovely and they’re sooooo soft, and then I banged on the window when I saw Terry in Sam’s Records and he came out and gave me a free ticket to Bedouin Soundclash in the Marquee tonight. Which was sold out. So now I’m going to put on Confessions on a DanceFloor, get ready to go out and have a most excellent night in Halifax’s coolest nightspot.

I get comfort from the strangest places - thanks Rob.

By the way, it said:

Dear Rob: Whenever I'm beset by fear, I sleep with the shield I made for myself. It's a hubcap on which I've glued a bunch of protective symbols, like a million dollars in Monopoly money, the fragment of a mirror I stole from the hospital where I was born, the toothbrush of an ex-lover I'm still good friends with, 20 Tamiflu pills arranged in the shape of a peace sign, a notebook page on which I wrote my best dream ever (in which my mom and dad were Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama), a library card from Princeton with both my name and Einstein's on it, a painting of a mutant butterfly dive-bombing a rainbow that's on fire, and a bumper sticker that reads 'Adrenaline is my drug of choice.' -Laughing at My Anxieties." Dear Laughing: I love your shield idea so much I'm recommending it for my Cancerian readers while they're in their "I Love to Worry" season.

I love the idea of the Tamiflu pills - that's so Cancerian.