Mercury Must Be In Retrograde

Mercury Must Be In Retrograde

by Joe Shaboo

I wonder if Mercury being in retrograde can explain the anxiety I’ve been feeling recently. I can’t seem to make up my mind, speak in complete sentences or hold a simple conversation about the weather with a total stranger.  That’s why I appreciate the cashier at Stop & Shop not asking me if I want my milk in a bag anymore.  I like the new “Don’t Ask, Don’t Bag” policy.  It helps limit human conversation to beeps and nods (which is trendy) and it also saves the environment ‘one bag at a time.’

Remember when the amount of plastic shopping bags on the planet was the biggest threat to human survival?  Ah, the good ol’ days of Yesteryear!  It sure beats checking my food with a Geiger counter and picking up a ‘Quake Kit’ for $19.99 before going to the local park for a family vacation.  I don’t know about you but vacationing at the park is about all my middle-class family of four can afford these days.  My wife and I are still recovering from going through “Nursery-School-Tuition-Shock-Syndrome” and I’m afraid my second little freeloader’s pre-K graduation isn’t until the end of five more paychecks.

At least the park is the most peaceful place to vacation with the family where I don’t have to worry about shark bites, deadly tsunamis, radiated seawater, advancing Libyan troops, the disfigured and shrunken testicles of Barry Bonds, or whether or not plutonium was inside my hamburger today at lunchtime.  These current “End of the World” scenarios are enough to worry about when I return home to my daily dose of media grazing.  It’s amazing how much news is accessible to anyone at anytime as it happens, especially on those super phones where CNN doomsday dribble and related information is sometimes shared faster than it actually happens.  Ha Ha.  Take that Mayan Civilization.  And we have Tetris to play with, too. 

With all due respect to the “End of the World,” if it is, indeed, lurking around the corner shouldn’t we at least be living the Life of Riley until our destiny meets its fate?  Or should we still be asking whether or not Prince William is going to wear a wedding band?  Should overweight people be ridiculed and bullied by stand-up comics and talk-show hosts?  Somehow, it all comes back to the ’milk-in-a-bag’ policy. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Bag.”  At least Mercury in retrograde can’t explain everything…like Kirstie Alley’s killer quick-step on Dancing with the Stars.

Maybe, it’s time we make a conscious effort to modernize constellations by connecting the stars in the sky to form a new astrological map for our future.  Instead of the traditional zodiac symbols how about some new constellations to shed a modern Renaissance of sorts in the heavens?  If the Mayans were smart enough to predict the end of the world, the question remains …are we smart enough to change it?

Changing the entire Zodiac calendar would surely upset the apple cart, but as much as we’d like to laugh it all off, it seems the Mayans have our number and I think saving the Earth through social change is well beyond asking if we want our milk in a bag.  I feel like for every plastic bag I’ve “saved” at the supermarket there’s a penguin that’s watching its ice-shelf melt away or a baby dolphin that never really had a chance, nor a choice, to answer the milk-in-the-bag question in the first place.  I imagine most sea life would choose “no” to “yes” if given the same question, or buy a 99-cent burlap re-usable bag to stash their sardines until they got home, or buy a solar powered motor to help with all that swimming.

It is comforting to know, however, that Mercury isn’t the only planet that appears to be moving backwards until April 11.  As planet Earth charts its own course through the universe, I’m beginning to realize how lucky I am just to have milk to buy never mind trying to decide if I need a bag to put it in. Someone needs to continue answering these questions for me instead of asking them.  That’s why “Don’t Ask, Don’t Bag” works just fine for me.  Being married makes it easy being told what to do. I just hope nobody asks my kids one day, “Mars or the Moon?” for their primary place of residence.