Joy Riders, Unite!

For the most part, we should plan for life on Mars the same way we might plan for life after a nuclear apocalypse. That is, we can expect to live in underground burrows, like rabbits or prairie dogs.

http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/oct/09/who-wants-a-one-way-ticket-to-mars-2016/

There must be gold, oil, diamonds, copper, and lithium to even think of something so incredibly dumb. Something must be driving the itch to go there. Something must be messing with the balls of the big boys hoping to get enough lucre up to go. And, except for totally fouling the nest of this place Earth [once] called home, it is no surprise that some wonky South African punk, a generation removed from the Apartheid oscilloscope, is hungry for it.

Sort of like moving out of one shitted up chicken coop into maybe another one? For instance, just imagine anybody going family camping around the ruins of Chernobyl. No takers. But if you’ve got minerals and a way to make money (and, hell, all the externalities blowing upon the vacuous emptiness of space, who cares?!), guess we’ve got a wagon train and folks lookin’ for a new 40 acres and a mule.

Just leave all the tar, and chemicals, and waste, and unsolved nuclear pollution, and post-industrial indestructible indissolvable human debris behind for a new little place to…befoul? No, that c’aint be it! And it ain’t some kind of wanderlust. As for the science angle? Nope. It’s just death, like here. So why, Santa Claus, why? Well, li’l Wendy, iz just anotha opportunity to be lookin’ fer them free raw materials before th’other fella gits ’em first, yee-haw! Ride’m, girl! Ride’m, cowboy! Into the solar system!

Terry Hernshaw

Most of my colleagues had urged me on. They had had belief in me. Others who knew me intimately had sometimes said, upon parting, “You’re a great person, but I felt I was deceived.” That was a silly thing to have said, since I myself could not have known. The great Titanic sank. Machu Picchu is an empty ruin. The Twin Towers have fallen. Busily builders build, climbers climb, workers work, farmers farm. Canoe. Kayak. Row. A, B, C. Alpha, beta, gamma. Blessed by the great guru, I had become at peace with myself. For a minute if not for a day. My spirit I would cast across the lake as rose petals had blown in the wind. My sparkle is eternal, my shine radiant, my mother home.

Staked Green Tomato

All he did one day is putter around the place. He cleaned out the stovepipe by unscrewing its pieces and shoving down a stiff wire brush. He tied up the tomatoes against the wooden stakes with torn up bedsheets. He swept the kitchen floor, and was surprised at how much dirt and hair there were. He folded the music on the piano. He thumbed the wet bristles of his toothbrush. He sat on the back step and heard the crickets and katydids. He sat on the front slab of stone and cursed the cars speeding by in his heart. He thought of rust. And he thought of the density of hematite, how heavy it was in the palm of his hand. And the smell of the cow’s wet hay at the end of road where he ran just after dawn when it was first light enough to see everywhere.