ARE WE TOO GREEDY? . . .

Next week, Shrub is expected to announce an initiative aimed at eventually sending humans to settle on Mars. Is this weird to anyone other than myself?

My gut reaction is that the idea is comical. People bouncing around in big puffy spacesuits, speaking to each other in breathy muffled tones magnified by the echo inside their enormous Plexi-glass helmets, tethered to the ground or their cars (space cars?) by oxygen tubes. Tall, imposing Star Wars-esque structures with landing docks for the floating cars jutting out the sides. The utter lack of produce and fruit, given the barren and infertile nature of the surface of the Red Planet. It's just too bizarre for words, really.

But my next thought is: are we asking for too much? I mean, it seems to me that there's a reason we've settled and evolved here on Earth and not anywhere else. I'm not dismissing the possibility of viable life anywhere else, but it may not be life as we know it, and besides, why do we need to go meddle? Haven't we done enough meddling with the natural resources of this planet and messed it up sufficiently? We're not satisfied with our ability to ravage Earth, so now we have to go to Mars to continue our vacuum-sucking of whatever is there to use and eat up? And poor, misguided Shrub ... if we should discover that perhaps an alien tyrant rules Mars, is His Grand Shrubbery going to wage war on him too? I know I'm being melodramatic -- settling on Mars is the stuff of every child's wild imagination and every Hollywood director's blockbuster summer movie -- but think about it. Is Mars really necessary?

Besides, I kind of like it here. And Mars is ever so long a commute.