Bleu Moonday, how I hate bleu Moonday

I want to propose a new national holiday. Something to the effect of “whoopee for space day”. I’m thinking July 29th, as that was the day that Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act which established NASA. There are many other notable days related to space stuff. Lots of things occurred in various Aprils. As well as that on May 5 1961 Alan Shepard became the first American in space. But we already have bunches of holidays around that time of year and not nearly enough in July/August. So, maybe set it up for the last Friday in July. Then it could also be linked to July 20th, when in 1969 we landed on the moon. As well as July of 1975 when the Apollo-Soyuz test project was launched, and July 25, when in 1984 Svetlana Savitskaya was the first woman to perform an EVA (Extravehicular Activity or space walk).

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not at all one of those let’s fuck over this planet and then escape to space people. In fact I’m generally a bit pissed about the whole let’s shove a big metal machine into the inviting, dark, folds of space and/or shoot for the moon weird, hard to ignore, phallic symbolism of it all. Especially the idea of taking and plopping that energy onto the belly of my girl Luna, who I prefer as a thing of mystery and some kind of cool, yin, purity.

So then why would I encourage them in those activities at all you ask? Well, because I have to admit it is pretty awe-inspiring these things they do. And really, if we were to pull back a little, out of our business as usual in the 21st century modality, what is going on out there is nigh unto miraculous. If only we were to view this from any other perspective removed from the jade of the last 50 years. Say it’s 1908 instead of 2008. It would be terrifying, miraculous, or possibly an affront to God. Think about it now. Something we almost never even stop to think of, in going about the course of our everyday living is that, so are 10 or 20 or so people out there way beyond our perception and normal range of thought. Living in space. That is just, so, weird.

Additionally, I have this hope that much like every other stupid holiday, the marketers would freak out and start bombarding us with space stuff beginning a couple months ahead of it, that most TV stations would dig out all kinds of squidly sci-fi stuff to run all month long and that we could get away with dressing up all futuristic and/or space retro that whole week.