Spaaaaaace Ghooooooost!

"We stuck a flag in it, it's ours."

-Newt Gingrich

I'm beginning to think that NASA wants to have their budget cut. The shuttles have all been handed out to museums, they're arguing with Congress over the 2013 budget and their only supporter in Washington is Newt Frelling Gingrich and he wants the Moon to be the fifty-first state. Yet every time one of their multi-billion dollar probes spot something interesting in space they're like falling all over themselves to explain how it's not aliens. Look at this crazy smoke monster thing on the surface of Mars. Life on Mars right? Nope. Before you could say 'we come in peace' the space agency dismissed the thing as the martian equivalent of a dust devil. Sigh.

Even Mac knew when to quit
and just use a damned Stargate.

I mean does NASA hate funding? Are they made up entirely of rugged MacGyver-types who enjoy the challenge of exploring space with little more than a Swiss Army Knife, rubber bands and a mullet? I'm not saying that they should lie about Martian vapor-based life forms, I'm just saying that if they left open the possibility that maybe there's something other than rocks and rocks that look like (but aren't) Bigfoot on the red planet they might find themselves on the receiving end of some much needed space credits. Besides, while it's true that the image below does kind of look like a dust storm (or Galacticus mating with Mars), it also looks like it could be one of those dragon puppets from a Chinese New Year parade seen from above. Can we really afford not to check it out?

"It might be a dust storm. It might also be the disembodied spirit of an ancient Martian 
haunting the barren remains of its once verdant world. Maybe we should take a look?"

-What NASA probably should have said

Photo glitch or ancient Mayan teleport?
If you said teleport, you're an idiot. 

Look at that photo! How can they turn down an opportunity like this? People believe in a far more ridiculous things with a lot less evidence. Mayan Doomsday prophecies, Creationism, the rabid-foam nonsense that falls out of Rick Santorum's mouth-it's not like we Americans are hard to put one over on. How many people think Tupac is still alive? Here, a picture of what could easily be a Martian ghost-dragon lands in NASA's lap and what do they do? They chalk it up to a goddamned dust storm. We would have a manned colony on Mars by Tuesday if someone at the space agency had the wherewithal to call this amorphous blob a Martian angel. Tuesday.

"I think it's still a little early, but we're going to go with space angel. Steve, Jeff want to weigh in?"
"Oh, yeah, definitely. Angels on Mars."
"Space angel, all the way. Praise the uh...Jesus."

-Some NASA guys