Shadows And Reflections On Mercury Retrograde And Mike Leach’s Strange Exit

Bizarre Love Quadrangle.

I love Mercury Retrograde’s in a weird way. I usually try to keep a low profile during MR, but occasionally, I push the river as they say, just to test the gravity of the planets backwards sway. I even got married on Mercury Retrograde. I would not recommend this. Recently, I embarked no home computer project with MR. I had a PC laying around (I’m a Mac guy) and I decided to put into service by hooking it up to my plasma TV and record video onto it. Sounded easy enough. I hooked up the slick looking PC, went out and bought a few goodies. First, I bought a USB wireless device so I can get on my network. Worked fine. Great. Then I bought a copy of Madden 08. Yeah, I like playing video football. I also got a logitech game device to play it. The Madden game was deeply flawed and I couldn’t boot it, then the DVD/CD Rom Drive died. Great. That means I had to go out and get a new DVD Drive to install my TV software interface. So off I went to Fry’s and bought all my goodies. I got it all, brought it home, hooked up the new DVD Drive. Fine, worked great, then I hooked up the TV/USB connect, uploaded their software and it failed miserably. Then the system began crashing. That was it. Project junked. I didn’t have the patience to call support, download drivers, etc. I figure that pushing against a MR gives me some idea as to what it might be like to be an Aries, but then I quickly melted into a Cancer and retreated.

I took most of the stuff back, unplugged the PC, sold a surfboard and used the money to buy another Mac, where I am doing it all over again, with a system that I trust and use. MR helped me recalibrate my needs, while selling something off that I wasn’t using to buy something that I would. It doesn’t stop there

In order to complete my Mac to DVR transition, I had to find the right hardware/software to implement it. After lots of research, I found that a company called Elgato that provides an end-to-end solution for TV to Mac. Then I found that the Eyetv (their brand) 200 was considered best of breed, using fire wire instead of USB. I found one on eBay for $19.99. I wrote Elgato about software for this product and it was readily available and the rep said that it was, “the best analog tuner they had developed, before or after.” And, I bought it on eBay, used, recycled aka retrograded. More to come.

Leach Gets Removed

I always love catching up with MR when it comes to sports. For those of you that are uninformed, Mike Leach “was” the head coach at Texas Tech. During Leach’s run, he led Tech out of obscurity to perennial contender in The Big 12. Last year, Mike Leach was named “Coach Of The Year” in that conference. He is widely considered an offensive mastermind, devising wide open, spread formations that score upwards of 30 points per game. Last year, the lower caste from Lubbock, actually beat the mighty Longhorns of Texas. This was a banner moment for the Tech program. But Mike Leach’s genius was also tied to a difficult personality. This happens in college football, as most coaches are little more than the heads of their own banana republics. If they win, they are virtually accountable to no one. Earlier in the month, Kansas fired Mark Mangino for using psychological rhetoric that would make Donald Cameron proud. Mangino was psychically driving his players to the point of humiliation, threatening their return to homes without father’s and neighborhoods littered with crime and and despair if their play did not improve. Kansas paid Mark Mangino $3 million to walk away. Mike Leach should have been so lucky.

Leach is a Pisces, 3/9/61. One of Leach’s strong suits is his imagination. He brought a whole new experience to offense in a conference that was 2 to three dimensional at best. Leach created a program that competed with the best teams in his conference, often with lesser talent. It was his Piscean imagination and innovation that added complexity and flair to The Red Raider attack. But it didn’t stop there. Leach is also very into pirates and pirate culture. He promoted it at every turn, raising skull and cross bones, using pirate language with his players, you name it. It was an eccentricity that might play well at Miami or LSU, but the plain folks in Lubbock often found Leach to be bizarre strange and difficult.

In “The Secret Language Of Birthdays” Leach is born on the “Day Of The Space Explorer.” That day is marked by extremely forward thinking and eccentricity. One of the more telling people born on this day is Bobby Fischer, the brilliant and controversial chess player who beat Boris Spasky to claim chess’ greatest crown. But Fischer was not your average egghead. He claimed that The Russians were trying to jam his mind with bystanders strategically placed, bombarding Fischer with negative psychic thoughts. While this might sound a tad paranoid, the match for the ages took place during a time when The USSR was deeply involved in psychic experimentation. Fischer was able to get over the “psychic driving” and eventually defeat Spasky.

In the aftermath of the match, many years later, Fischer began to develop theories of Jewish dominance in culture and that there was even an ancient conspiracy by Jews to to enslave the majority of the planet. His point of view is fascinating in the light of the fact that he himself, was Jewish. He turned on his own faith and culture, preferring to live in exile, first in Japan, then Iceland. To say that Fischer was an eccentric was putting it mildly. Yet he and Leach share the same birth date and the penchant for erratic genius. Like Fischer, Leach did not wear well with the locals and he himself has been exiled. How did he get fired? That’s a really good question.

Leach ‘s Sun, as we have discussed is in Pisces, but that’s his only connection to the fishes, though we shall in a minute that it’s a key one when it comes to his dismissal. Leach has Moon in Sag, which gives him that devil-may-care attitude. It’s a philosophical Moon and Sag’s do not like anyone cramping their style, telling them what to do. They can be called to a higher form of service under the guise of some calling, but they’re live and let live, as long as other afford them the same emotional luxury. His Mercury is in Aquarius, which means that Capt. Leach is pretty smart and there’s a reason why he thinks that way–it’s probably because he is. However, his Mercury opposes his natal Uranus in Leo, which makes him both impetuous and contemptuous of authority. Leach is pretty impulsive. Venus is in Aries, which gives him shall we say, a less than diplomatic approach to relating. My way or the highway is the dictum Venus in Aries. His Mars is in moody Cancer where it trines his natal Neptune. The Mars/Neptune trine is much better than the Mars/Neptune square, which is problematic for many reason, but unless the energy of Mars finds itself in the service of service here, it can be psychically tempestuous, razing emotional storms, dusting up spiritual disturbance. Lastly, he has Jupiter/Saturn conjunct in Capricorn, which gives him some real administrative capacities and it’s fairly clear that not only did Leach disrespect the authority at Tech, he saw himself at the very least, as their equals. All of this leads into the final confrontation.

In the weeks leading up to The Alamo Bowl, where Texas Tech would face off against Michigan State, Mike Leach had a growing problem with Adam James, son of former NFL running back and current ESPN announcer, Craig James. The younger James was
apparently dogging it in practices and not following the directions of his coaches. He showed up to practice one day wearing sunglasses. Leach asked him about the sunglasses and young James said he had a concussion and that the doctors verified it. Here is where it gets messy for Leach. Obviously annoyed at his antics, Leach had assistants move James to a darkened room. Now this sounds strange, but given Leach’s like of patience and tact (Venus in Aries) and the fact that Pisces are naturally drawn to dark spaces and places, this matched up for Leach. He gets to punish the little malcontent while in his own, weird mind, provides a solution. James claimed that he was held against his will in an electrical closet without any water. I’ve seen pictures of where James was and he was in rooms that were used for equipment and press conferences. They were far from being the Abu Graibh like facilities that the media initially reported, thanks in part to his father’s association with ESPN.

Once the press got ahold of it, it gave the Tech administrators license to suspend and fire Mike Leach, just days before he was owed over $800,000. Now keep in mind, this was done during a Mercury Retrograde. so it’s likely that when Mike Leach takes this to court, there is a very good chance that he will not only prevail, but Texas Tech will be on the hook for even more money had they simply paid Leach or even negotiated his termination.

When looking at Adam James’ planets there are shall we say, some interesting parallels with Leach’s. James was born on 2/5/88 with Sun in Aquarius, Moon in Virgo and like Leach, Mercury in Aquarius, though for James, unfortunately, it’s retrograde. With his Virgo Moon, James is dealing with a critical parent, in this case, it’s his mother (Moon). Interestingly enough, Adam’s father, Craig, the analyst, ex-pro running back and part of the “Pony Express” backfield along with Eric Dickerson who both accepted money and bribes to play at SMU, where the football program was busted by the NCAA and died a swift death, both share Mars in Cancer, separated by only two degrees. It’s normal for Craig James to be protective of his son with his Mars in the sign of the crab. But both men could be quite touchy and sensitive to criticism.

The younger James has Jupiter in Aries at 24 degrees and Leach has Venus in Aries at 26 degrees. One would think that both people would prosper and benefit from the headstrong energies with this conjunction. Ironically, for Mike Leach, he just might, if he wins his suit against TT. His association with Adam James while negative, will have proven quite fruitful and the keyword, ABUNDANT. I get triangle and get pretty fractal with Leach and James/James, but this post is already long enough and I have more to cover.

In short, based on the Leach/Adam James charts, with overlapping planets in Aquarius, Aries, Sag and Pisces, Adam James is a reflection of Mike Leach. Like Leach, he is rebellious and probably thinks he’s a lot smarter than most people. ice Leach was being confronted with a younger version of himself, that he stashed away in the darkness, hiding his shadow in the shadows. He paid for it with his job and Tech will wind up paying him.