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Since all we get these days are data files and images, is it too much to ask to get to know what Mars sounds like....?
Like any self respecting fan of all things celestial, I take great pleasure in reveling in the facts that no matter how self-obsessed or delusional I may get, there is always a place, far from where I dwell, where I can go and marvel at the unmentionable vastness of the known universe.
A few weeks back, in early July, I went camping in the Sierra Nevadas where, as luck would have it, this god fearing, prostate packing, 42 year old's tool, made him get up and take a mid-summer's night piss on the closest evergreen he could see. Not too close to my tent as one might suffer the consequences..... le lendemain.....but not too far either, as to not fall, and off that precipitous cliff he might have imagined. Being that it was the middle of a dark and moonless night, it seemed reasonable to assume that a precipice might be harder to anticipate if your neck is cranked way back, looking up and away.
I like to wonder as much as the next guey**, but plunging to my death while relieving myself, is a stunt I'd rather wait to taste just before I finally take my last steps and kiss The Little Prince's cape...... But when I do, we'll kiss and greet on both cheeks, and I'll finally get to piss on that snake, the one that looks like those hats men used to wear, before JFK caught a bullet with the back of his head (if he had worn a hat, that fateful day in Dallas, instead of baring his head to an assassin's rifled gaze, he might have lived out a more lead free and prosperous presidency).
There's nothing like looking up at the sky and pissing on the ground beneath it. There's still nothing like reminding the forest and the beasts that a man will pay twenty bucks to stay the night, eat a steak and drive home the next day. It's not every day that he gets to piss on a stump beneath the Milky way......Just another way to further remind this here Universe, that free will and a tank of gasoline brought me here, while 'they', will spend the rest of their natural living days trying to open garbage pales or chase down four legged protein shakes....... At the very least, not bothering to treck on over to the latrines, at three o'clock in the morning, feels better than splitting open my chin on the bathroom sink.......and it's good way to keep my feminine side humming.........since whatever estrogen I have coursing through my veins needs as much tending, as the peaches in Voltaire's silk breeches; those same treatises where Buddha meets Plato meets Rousseau meets snow globes or the cold wet steel of a French Guillotine (I have a hard time believing that Voltaire did much gardening and will presume that he meant it metaphorically).
As I stood there, I thought about the fact that there are millions of great images of Mars, Saturn and the Moon***, but that galactic sound files are not that easily found or downloaded on the information super highway. I understand, but regret that because there are no molecules for sound waves to travel within the vacuum of space, that there is no sweet celestial music for us to hear. Nevertheless, Mars has an atmosphere and that ought to be worth at least an MP3.
The only space recording I have ever heard came from what the Cassini/Huygens probe sent back and recorded while descending into Titan's atmosphere. That was sweet... but in the future, can I please listen to other atmospheres.
In other news, landslide and meteor strikes; how on earth are we supposed to get out of the way if there is not a sound to be heard on either side of the Moon.
* Multi-year mission to Saturn and it's moons. ** Guey. That would loosely translate as "dude", in Spanish. *** Hell, as we speak, they are sending a giant camera to Pluto which will reach the icy body in a little more than a decade. # Also commonly known as the Red Eye nebula.