The Path Ecliptic (or Psychotic)

The eclipse is coming, the eclipse is coming!  It’s Eclipse 2017 Weekend, everyone, the time when the orbits of moon and sun bring them close enough to give each other a wicked high-five.  It’s gonna be cool.  It’s also time for people to completely lose their fucking minds. 

Traffic is already jacked up, and it’s only Sunday.  Grocery stores are wiped clean of bread, milk, toilet paper, and water.  Cops are warning people to keep their pot stashes at home and not to park on the highways.  Aliens are coming.    

Okay, look.  I know it’s been decades since a total eclipse of this magnitude has crossed the U.S.  But thanks to social media, the pilgrimage to “totality cities” around the country makes for laughable fodder.  Consider the following ridiculousness:

• Children won't watch the eclipse; they will instead be kept in classrooms because they Won’t Listen to Directions!  (Read about the attempts to THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN here.)
• Astrologers, those fortune-telling mages that can’t even predict the price of a candy bar correctly, tell us that the eclipse is coming after Donald Trump and the U.S.A. (Read about this celestial kidnapping here.)
• Aliens, Sasquatch, and his buddy "Sunsquatch" will appear out of nowhere.  Also, the planet Nibaru will destroy the Earth after the eclipse.  (Read about this sci-fi awesomeness here.)
• People ask terribly stupid questions, like “Can we reschedule the eclipse, I have plans that day” or “How did Wyoming get picked for totality?”  I've also been told Disney World patrons are asking if there will be a special viewing area.  These people vote.  No wonder the country is screwed.  (Read about this here. The Disney World comment doesn't appear because I was told about it personally.  No, really.)
• There are pages and pages on how to view the eclipse.  There are glasses available everywhere.  Bob’s Grocery Store has eclipse glasses.  And no, you can’t watch the eclipse with 3-D glasses.  (Read about this blindness-inducing stupidity here.)  If people don’t know by now that you can’t look at the sun directly during an eclipse, there is no hope for the human race, and maybe those astrologers are right, after all.
• And my personal favorite:  The 2017 Solar Eclipse is racist because the path is going over Trump voter states only.  The utter unfairness of it all can be read here.  I think this should be on a T-shirt.  

Make Eclipses Great Again!

Personally, I’m staying home and planning my viewing with my husband's little welding glass square, but I’ll watch most of it on TV.  You guys say hi to Elvis and E.T. for me.  

-- Rebecca