So, I’ve got enough stuff to worry about down here—the chimney needs some attention, that backyard gate still doesn’t hang right, and Giant keeps on running out of the cereal I buy—to have to turn my attention to space. I love outer space, although, unlike some people I’ve never been there. One of the simple pleasures in life is to be outdoors at the lake and watching the night sky where there’s no light interference. Then I learned about space advertising. You see, as an editor you get to read about all kinds of topics, and this came up in a proposal one time. I had no idea that companies had been proposing billboards in space to fly across our nighttime skies. It’s hard enough to use the internet anymore without hacking your way through a jungle of ads, and now they want to clutter our view of the nighttime sky so there’s no escaping capitalism.
“Space, the final frontier.” This is a mantra that many of us grew up with in the sixties. Most of us can’t afford to, and really have no desire to, go into space. Born down here, we’re content to stay down here. That doesn’t mean we can’t look at the sky with wonder. Already you can’t go to the beach or a stadium event without planes flying banners trying to draw your mind back to the commercial world. Even in remote forests you can find litter stamped with some company’s logo, trying to sell you more. It’s enough to make you want to get to space to get away from it all. Now that companies can afford to fly people to space as tourists—this is pretty strictly limited to the top one percent, of course—they feel they have the right to clutter the nighttime skies so that you’ll have that midnight urge to go buy a Tesla.
At this time of year we look to the nighttime sky in hopes of seeing a special star. People with too much money cause so many unnecessary problems for the rest of us. This has been apparent throughout history, but has been brought into sharper focus in the days of late capitalism. Having too much only makes you want more, it seems. And since other people have some you need to flash your company in their faces constantly. From what I’ve read the only reason space advertising hasn’t really taken off is that it costs millions to get your ad up there. Despite inflation it seems that these kinds of costs always come down. And yet you can’t even get a contractor to come out and do something about that deck that’s falling apart. And I do hope that they’ll have my cereal at the store this week.
