Sometimes I’d stay inside a store for its Muzak, not necessarily for its merchandise, which I’d only pretend to be interested in—I was really there for the background music.
When I ask about the Muzak, staff usually trace it back to the store's main office, YouTube, or Spotify.
I do have my own Spotify playlists, and I’ve subscribed to my brother’s and nephew’s playlists. Still, it’s nice to discover other songs I want to dance to or sing along with.
“Project Hail Mary” has Sandra Hüller (as Eva Stratt) singing Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times”: “Just stop your crying / Have the time of your life / Breaking through the atmosphere / And things are pretty good from here / Remember everything will be alright / We can meet again somewhere / Somewhere far away from here / We never learn, we been here before / Why are we always stuck and running from / The bullets?”
That’s the song that makes me want to watch the movie again—I slept through much of it and missed many scenes. At least I was lucky enough to be awake for Hüller’s karaoke part, which made me wonder: “Why is she singing that? What were the previous—and most probably precious—sequences that led to this?”
The lyrics feel painfully timely as the world confronts its current challenges: 'Why are we always stuck and running from the bullets?' Today, that question feels even more urgent—drones and missiles have replaced the bullets.
Here is the irony: while scientists in Project Hail Mary hunt for cosmic cures, Middle East tensions multiply our own. As if Earth didn't have enough troubles already. The U.S., meanwhile, seems to think it’s essential to meddle. Fuel prices and the U.S. dollar exchange rate have risen, and commodity prices are climbing as well. A classic case of oil-producing countries sneezing and the rest of the world catching a cold.
Cagayan de Oro had a transport strike on Monday. A strike is one way to press demands: approve them—or else.
Or else more transport strikes?
More reasons to stay home, then. As if Cagayanons didn’t already have enough of that during the pandemic lockdowns.
The anticipation of higher fuel prices should have electric vehicles like BYD selling like hotcakes by now. A friend said electric cars are the future. Current Middle East tensions are a good reason to think twice—and a million times—about relying on oil as fuel. The sun has always been there, providing Vitamin D and other perks. Many homes, buildings, and malls in Cagayan de Oro have already adopted solar energy—a sustainable power source that can easily charge electric vehicles.
Unless the “Project Hail Mary” plot—the sun dying—becomes a possibility. God forbid. But that’s what audiences get out of science-fiction movies. Operative word: fiction.
I think it’s time to read Andy Weir’s 2021 book, on which the film is based. Most of the time, the book is better than the movie, so let’s see if it also makes me sleepy.
