【Kurt Meinicke】

It's 2017,Kurt Meinicke and the lamestream media is officially in the hands of big space.

For months now, I and others like me have been forced to feign enthusiasm about the upcoming solar? lunar? who gives a f*ck? eclipse. Everywhere we go, we're forced to swallow pro-eclipse propaganda. You can't safely gossip in a work slackroom any more without someone dropping in "this awesome eclipse map!!" or discussing their eclipse plans or offering to give you their extra pair of shitty sunglasses so you don't go blind.

This feeling isn't new. And this eclipse isn't special. Space hype is an American tradition going back decades, and -- screw your animated explainers -- I'm no longer buying it.

As long as I can remember, people have been pushing these "once-in-a-lifetime" space events down my throat. They're underwhelming and far too frequent. Think the eclipse is any different? You're wrong.

One week, you're being asked to look up at the sky because some rando meteors are putting on a middle school talent show. The next, everyone's forcing you to stare into some dirty telescope for your ONE and ONLY chance to look into Jupiter's asshole.

Folks promote these events like they're producing some end-of the-world everything-must-go sale: Today is always the last chance for you to see Saturn do the dab or some stars put on a light show or watch the moon do something truly boring.

I can't keep up. And I don't want to. Be honest with yourself: how many times have you seen "that moon tonight!" and been *that* impressed? I'm tired of being forced to pretend that that giant blob of milk pus morphing into a fungal yellow crescent is some of kind of celestial milestone.

And forget about those discount rack constellations. Ancient man looked at the night sky and all he could see was a giant soup ladle? And I'm supposed to be excited about that?!

Spare me.

Some of these events are undoubtedly noteworthy. But they shouldn't all be treated equally, with the same level of of emotional investment and cultural production. It's like when someone has a birthday party and they invite you to fifteen different shitty Facebook events instead of focusing on just one.

Face it: Space is overbooked. And we still sign up, every time.

I have suffered through so many nocturnal bug bites and strained my neck so many times just to see some generic space show and please the space purists in my life. I've left my bed in the middle of the night. My house in the middle of the evening. A Netflix special during the good sex parts. I'm a 33-year-old woman. I'm not going to live forever. My body just can't take it anymore.

I can't be who everyone wants me to be: a person who gives a f*ck about space.

Hold your Facebook commentary. It's possible that you, too, are indifferent about Monday's eclipse and have been forced to suppress that impulse or risk humiliation. Pro-space purists don't have any room for your emotional ambiguity. They'll call you ignorant. Lazy. Anti-space.

Acknowledging that you're indifferent about the sun's amateur drag show is considered to be some kind of anti-intellectual treason. For many people, it's worse than admitting you voted for Gary Johnson.

So forgive me, reader, if I -- and maybe thousands of others like me -- don't show up to Monday's eclipse. We may not want to drag our tired, exploited bodies to workplace roofs and make pro-space chit chat with the interns.

Maybe we'll go on Twitter instead. Or order paper towels on Amazon. If we do take a look, it will be because we care, not because we're slavish pawns in the space-industrial complex.

Please don't look down on us if we choose not to look up at the sky. Despite what you may think, you aren't that different from us. We're all just petty humans living under the same overblown moon.