Unless you grow your own or buy the heirloom variety at farmer's markets, you probably eat a lot of tasteless tomatoes. Blame it on industrial-scale farming and supermarket chains. They've bred tomatoes to be homogenous and bland -- easy to ship and pretty to look at. But there's a sign of hope: A team of scientists at the University of Florida is researching what makes tomatoes taste delicious, and is working to bring those types back into mainstream availability. I think the task you have ahead of you in the coming weeks is metaphorically similar, Taurus. You should see what you can to do restore lost flavor, color, and soulfulness. Opt for earthy idiosyncrasies over fake and boring perfection.

Here's a gathering of all the Big-Picture horoscopes I've written for you this year. Check to see if they're relevant to the way your destiny has been evolving. You can also still hear a LONG-RANGE AUDIO PREVIEW for the REST of 2012 and beyond. Sign up and/or log in here, then click on "Long-Term Forecast for Second Half of 2012." If you'd just like a report for the short-term, click on "This week (July 17, 2012)."

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SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
There was an indignant uproar after revelations in 2006 that James Frey's best-selling "memoir" A Million Little Pieces contains fabrications. He hadn't actually lived all of the experiences he depicted therein.

Hearing about it prompted me to ruminate on whether there's any such thing as a completely accurate account of any person's life. My conclusion: no.

In every autobiography and biography ever written, the author imaginatively strings together selectively chosen details to conjure up artificially coherent narratives rather than depicting the crazy-quilt ambiguity that actually characterizes everyone's journey.

If you and nine writers set out to tell your life story, you'd produce 10 wildly different tales, each rife with subjective interpretation, misplaced emphasis, unintentional distortions, and exorbitant extrapolations from insufficient data.

Celebrate the malleability of reality. Regale listeners with stories about the time you worked as a pirate in the Indian Ocean, or rode the rails through Kansas as a hobo, or gave a down-on-his-luck CIA agent sage advice in an elevator. When you call to get pizza delivered and the clerk who takes your order asks your name, say you're Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton. When someone you're meeting is annoyed because you're late, say you couldn't help it because you were smoking crack in the bus station bathroom with your mom's guru and lost track of time. If asked how much education you have, say you have three PhDs, one each in astrobiology, Russian literature, and whale songs.
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The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.