Posthuman Blues

The following is not a paid ad: Half Price Books is one of my favorite places to go. The selection is great and the prices are fantastic. (Again, this isn't a paid ad.) Yesterday I picked up "The Science of UFOs" -- new, in hardback -- and "Patrick Moore on Mars" (also new and in hardback) for a grand total of something like $9.

What's in my CD player?

1.) "Parallel Life" by The Starseeds (ambient trance)
2.) "Entwined and Entranced" by Govinda (techno)
3.) "World of Morrissey" (probably Morrissey's second-best collection after "My Early Burglary Years," although I really wish it had the studio version of "Jack the Ripper")
4.) "Greatest Hits" by Bjork (I can't get "Human Behavior" out of my mind . . .)
5.) "Galore" by The Cure (contains a few of my favorite Cure songs, including "A Letter to Elise" and "Friday I'm In Love")

In three days, the European Space Agency is launching the Mars Express probe, containing Britain's Beagle 2 lander. A Japanese Mars probe that been busy accelerating for the last four years is already en route to the Red Planet. Meanwhile, NASA is sending two next-generation rovers to Mars. The Red Planet has never been quite this crowded. Assuming, of course, that all of the new missions ultimately make it to their destination, which would be frankly shocking after Russia's Mars '96 effort (which crashed in the ocean) and NASA's last two doomed probes (the Mars Polar Lander and the Mars Climate Orbiter). Anyway, I'm hoping.

This evening I get my new cat. She (he?) is eight weeks old. I really don't know what to expect.