Friday, August 25, 2006

Special Guest Blogger: Pluto



Let me ask you something...How can I be declared "not" a planet? I'm a planet. Done and done. Maybe I want to declare that Earth is no longer a planet. How would you like that, smart guys?

I mean, I'm a huge spherical rock hurtling through our solar system in an orbit around the sun. Sounds like a planet, right? I'm not a star. I'm not a moon. I'm not an asteroid. I'm not a comet. I don't even know what the fuck a "nebula" is. What's even left?

The problem is these young hipster scientists. They have no sense of history. I've been a planet since the '30s, man. I have planet tenure. You can't just go around declaring celestial objects members of a solar system and then throw them away just because they're a little smaller than everyone else and their orbits are non-traditional.

You know, there was another guy who travelled in some radical, different orbits, and he didn't always behave the way he was expected to. And you stupid humans did the same thing to that legendary hero, comedian Gallagher, that you're doing to me. Embrace me for a few years, call me a part of your system, and then throw me away when you're through having your kicks.

I mean, yes, there's a Disney character named after me, but it's the dog who doesn't even talk. And did you ever notice that Pluto and Goofy are both dogs, but Goofy walks around on his hind legs and wears clothes and even has a house and a wife and child, but the dog named after me was just some stupid dog? Clearly, in the Disney universe, dogs are conscious, sentient and self-aware beings, meaning that Pluto was Mickey's slave!

See? You guys are just prejudiced against small planets. Just look at the new name they're giving me. "Dwarf planet." I prefer the term "Little Planet," thank you very much. It's all so immature. Is this a schoolyard or a goddamn universe?

Pluto and objects like it will be known as "dwarf planets," which raised some thorny questions about semantics: If a raincoat is still a coat, and a cell phone is still a phone, why isn't a dwarf planet still a planet?

Yeah, see? Stop oppressing and deplanetizing me, International Astronomical Union!

Under the new rules, two of the three objects that came tantalizingly close to planethood will join Pluto as dwarfs: the asteroid Ceres, which was a planet in the 1800s before it got demoted, and 2003 UB313, an icy object slightly larger than Pluto whose discoverer, Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology, has nicknamed "Xena." The third object, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, isn't in line for any special designation.

Dude, I totally don't want to live in the ghetto with Ceres and Xena. That bitch crazy. And Charon doesn't get any distinction at all? How can it continue to be my moon if I'm not a planet? Let me ask you that? If I'm a dwarf planet, what is he? A mini-moon? A speck satellite? A lunar Lilliputian?

I can't believe your Earth scientists even have the time to worry about this stuff. Why not just let me keep being a planet and work on that cancer cure that continues to elude you guys? Or if the scientists want to keep their same disciplines, perhaps a device that will keep your planet from being decimated one day in the future by an enormous meteor? I'm just saying...It's something to think about before you willy-nilly start revoking Planet passes.

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