Interplanetary Rant

This rant has been stored up somewhere in my head (or ass, if there’s any difference) for years, and it recently just occurred to me after I read some news story about the piles of scattered shit the Sun keeps way out on the edges of the Solar System like old cars at the edges of a Redneck property. So I guess this one has been coming since 2006.

What I have the red-hot ass about today is a cold-ass rock way the fuck out in Bumfuck, Solar System. In other words, Pluto. Up until 2006, Pluto had been a planet, plain and simple. It was an admittedly eccentric one to be sure, but a bona-fide planet nonetheless. Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, all hell breaks loose and a collection of uberNerds decide they’ve just got to be famous and bam! – no more planet status. So sorry, Pluto. Sad-face.

Which leaves me to say, “What the fuck, man?” I really think it’s highly unfair to have someone grow up knowing there are nine planets and then tell them, “Okay, stop thinking that. Now there’s eight. Sorry.” I don’t really care if there is another lump of shit out there nearly the same size and has a moon too. I’d been cruising along for 37 years believing – no, knowing – there were nine planets.

I mean, if we want to do that silly kind of revisionist fuckery, how about the gectors (gector: a geek who has both magnitude and direction) who specialize in continents have a big-ass meeting and decide that now on second thought, Australia is really only an island. Granted, it’s a pretty epic-size island, but forget what you learned about seven continents, *poof* now there’s six. This is sort of like that trend way back to look at Europe and Asia as one continent. Sure, you can’t even give it the benefit of the isthmus, but find someone these days who seriously refers to it as ‘Eurasia.’  Beats the hell out of ‘Asope,’ though.

Back to planets and planetoids. Call me crazy, but if you you have balls enough to capture four moons and have solid nitrogen ice on your surface, you’re bad-ass enough to be a planet in my book. Yeah, in case you hadn’t heard, Pluto’s up to at least four moons. Shit, Mars has only two. Venus has none. Maybe Venus ought to be voted off the planet island. Come to think of it, Mercury too. Fucking moonless wonders. We’ve only got one, but ours has a face.

I’m not saying reductionism is bad. Fucking with what people learned is. I mentioned that there’s another shitball out there the same size as Pluto that has a moon – Eris. Hell, if that’s the case, let’s make it a planet too, then we’d be up to a nice, even, metric ten. That kind of revision is okay to me. Then I merely look like I’m just behind on my reading if I say, “….blah blah blah, and the nine planets too!” No, then I’m set up for epic failure: “…yadda yadda, Australia, my favorite continent…” as the party slams to a silenced halt at my bigoted utterance, at which point I am shunned.

Fuck you astrometric revisionists. Pluto is a planet. Stop hatin’ on the little dude.