THE MOON IS IN THE 7TH HOUSE

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (10-15-20)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     And if Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars, just like the song says. Unfortunately, that won't happen again for another 32,000 years, so somebody else is going to have to steer the stars for a while. But did you know that Mars is going to be closer to the Earth this month than it will be for the next 15 years? You won't even need your glasses like you did when it was 214 million miles farther away. It will look like a red star in the Southern sky because of its large concentration of what is essentially rust. Mars has been left out in the Solar System for a few billion years too long, it seems.

     In fact, there is a rover from NASA on its way to Mars right now, and when it gets there next year it's going to rove around looking for signs of life. There are a bunch of what used to be lakes on Mars, and scientists think that there could be evidence of microbes there underneath the beds. If it's anything like the evidence of microbes underneath my bed, this should be one of the most successful missions ever. Scientists are probably expecting that microbes on Mars will be a lot like they are here on Earth, not exactly the life of the party, usually the butt of a "how many organisms does it take to unscrew a lightbulb" joke, etc. No one has mentioned the fact that, who the hell really knows what to expect? The rover could run into a an angry mob of genius microbes up there, just waiting for a big hunk of raw material that they can turn into their own spaceship, or even better, a huge espresso maker.

     The probe, dubbed Perseverance, will have a microphone on it, so that if any of the microbes want to get up and make a speech or do a little stand up comedy (no one expects the microbes to have feet though), they can feel free to do so. It has a drill that will go down into the surface and suck out samples to bring back to Earth. If there are any earthworms in there then we'll have to rename earthworms I guess. There is more than one camera on board the Perseverance, so scientists at the command center could conceivably experience a rare simultaneous organism.

     If you're as old as I am, you can remember when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, with that choppy video that even back then was still better than some talk shows I've seen during the coronavirus age. Who didn't imagine themselves as an astronaut, looking down at that cloudy blue planet Earth? You'd cup your hands over your mouth to simulate a static-y radio transmission. "The Eagle has landed!" A chimpanzee flew a space mission in 1961, so how hard could it be? Then I saw this centrifuge contraption that they use for training that spins you around in a giant circle, even worse than the Black Widow ride at the carnival that I threw up after. At the end they scrape you off the side of the simulator with a spatula and hang you from a clothes line until you're back to normal. I used to get car sick when my Mom parallel parked the car, so that was the end of that dream. I went back to imagining myself enjoying a career in consulting, which has been everything I ever dreamed it would be since no one has ever consulted me.

     I fantasize that it's me stepping down from the Lunar Module, balancing my coffee cup in one hand and holding onto the ladder with the other, and I see that my coffee is dispersing into outer space, and It takes seven hours to prepare one cup, and I lose concentration and trip down three rungs of the ladder. Everyone's waiting for me to say something memorable. "That's one small step for man," I say, "and yet I almost killed myself." I take a couple photos of the place, but there are coffee droplets all over the place ruining the photos, and I have no idea that someday people will think the whole thing was a hoax.

     We're making such a mess of this planet that some people are hitching their star to the stars, and maybe someday we can make a mess of someone else's planet. It's mind boggling to think how much there is up there, and how much we'll never know about it. And so we make up a bunch of stuff and it makes us feel better. I know that there are people who put a lot of stock in their horoscope readings, but I'm not going to change my behavior based on whatever's going on Mars, 38,586,816 miles away on a good day. When the Moon is in the 2nd or 3rd house, I'll start paying more attention.

     And I'll keep an eye out for Asteroid 2018 VP1. It's going to pass very close to Earth the day before the United States election. Hopefully there won't be a monumental disaster. I'm talking about the election, the asteroid is only about six feet long, so worst case scenario it might dent somebody's car. But this month I'm keeping the shades to my house closed, because if there is life on Mars, they're closer than they've been in quite a while, and I don't want them peeking into my living room and making fun of the naked eye I'm watching them with.