Mars: Who gives a fuck?

Apparently everyone. In fact, now that the big red waste of time has found a spot in its ‘busy’ schedule to come the closest it has been to Earth in the past six billion years, it has inspired many to soil their unmentionables. If you are currently angry that it was 60,000 years ago that Mars was this close, then please take a few calming puffs from your inhaler and resume your masturbatory fantasy of Jeri Ryan going down on Princess Leia.

Hey – when is the last time Mars did anything for any of us? Like give your professor a heart attack in the middle of saying ‘attendance is mandatory.’ It seems like the only thing we get out of that piece of orbiting shit are lost NASA rovers and tritely overwritten action-adventure dramadies.

Although, this visit has brought a few wackos out of their crawl spaces long enough to get media attention. Meet Andy Reiss, an alien expert from Los Angeles, who through painstaking research has come to the conclusion that every time Mars comes this close, there is an increase in half-Martian, half-human impregnation. Finally, an unexplained pregnancy that won’t end with me writing child support checks.

Reiss even goes so far as to say that most of these miraculous conceptions are going to be done through ‘spiritual impregnation,’ where an unsuspecting nubile co-ed will only need to experience a vivid dream of sweaty alien action to have a bun in the oven.

What a liar.

Let me be the first to say that this is complete bunk. Ever since I saw ‘Species,’ most of my dreams are best described as erotic extraterrestrial entertainment and I have yet to get even mild morning sickness.

So what are we to do? The way I see it, we have two options: Return to a society of worshiping solar patterns and becoming frightened and confused every time something like this happens – resorting to violence and virgin sacrifice. Or we could just stop paying attention to the damn planet. Seriously, we are only encouraging it.

And besides, the last time I dusted off the telescope to view a heavenly body so close that I could see craters I was led out of my dorm in handcuffs.

Justin Young is a junior newspaper major. E-mail him at jryoun02@syr.edu.

Published on August 27, 2003 at 12:00 pm