Response: My Plutonic Relationship With George Harrison
I, too, was disoriented by Pluto's expulsion from the planetary Eden, Bunky. I couldn't figure what Pluto may have done to the IAU to deserve such stark punishment. It's not like Pluto ever asked to be a planet. It's been out there longer than we have and yet we yank its status before it's even had a chance to make one orbit around the sun as a planet. No farewell tour of the twelve houses for this planet.
And now everything has to be fixed. New textbooks. The tiny styrofoam balls in the nine ball kits at Hobby Lobby are now superfluous. Now Mars has to pull double duty again and rule Aries and Scorpio. Future generations will wonder what Walt Disney was thinking when he named Mickey's pup. The lyrics to "Interplanet Janet" will have to be rewritten. The weird kids will have to find a new planet to serve as their favorite (probably Uranus). And worst of all, now all the mnemonics have to be rewritten. No longer will My Very Excellent Mother Just Serve Us Nine Pizzas.
Of course, the most disturbing thing was realizing the fact that a group of people can just get together and say that the cosmological reality I have known all my life isn't. Space is hard enough to get a handle on and yet you could always count on nine planets. You knew they were there; you could see them. And now you're told you didn't see all of what you thought you were seeing. This is like Roger Maris getting an asterisk or Jim Thorpe being told those shiny things around his neck in Sweden were not gold medals.
I should be used to this. I was an anti-tobacconista and drank the no smoking kool-aid we were served at school until I was about 12. One day I was chastising a guy on our block for smoking and he fired back that my dad smoked and why didn't I go bug him. This was news to me. I always proudly raised my arm when the Lung Cancer people at school asked us if our parents smoked, smug in my superiority to those sickly-secondhand-smoke-afflicted kids across the room. I also had assumed the Berlin Wall and Soviet Russia would be there forever. I always thought Liberace was straight.
But now that I see how easy it is, I'd like to do some reality wranglin' myself. I would really like to wake up tomorrow and discover that Florida is no longer one of these United States. I admit I'm afraid to type what I really think about Florida, but the thing is, I don't really see what benefit we get out of Florida. The hurricane bail-outs (that goes for both the weather phenomenon and the Miami football team), the stolen elections, the cavernous divide between haves and havenots, the ecological devastation, and the pervasive decadence of the place outweigh any affection for the once-prisitine beaches and crumbling Spanish forts. I realize we can't physically detach it or turn it into a nature preserve and I'm not even saying anyone should have to move. Let's just make it like Puerto Rico. It can still be a vacation spot, it can still be a moral morass, we'll still bail them out, but it will be a more authentic relationship. Then we'll have 49 states - a nice square root. The stars will line up seven by seven on the flag and all will be right with the world. Welcome to the sunny Unincorporated Organized Territory of Florida!
Sticking with geography, I think the Southern Ocean is way past due for plutonization. Do we really need a fifth ocean? They tried for years to have an Antarctic Ocean and it never caught on. I spent most of my youth confused about how many oceans there were. I'd always heard the term "seven seas" and yet when my teacher asked us how many oceans there were, my hand shot up and I answered, "seven" she said, no, there are four. It's one of those things that are hard to shake once it gets into your head. Like I can never remember if Katherine Hepburn is dead. I thought she was once and then I found out she was alive and then dead again and now I can never remember if she's alive or dead. On top of that my logical brain constantly reminds me that, really, there's only one single ocean since they all connect anyway. So I'm no fan of the Southern Ocean and just because the International Hydrographic Organization says there are five, it doesn't make it so. You have to have a coastline to have a vote in the IHO, so, what, Switzerland and Malawi have no say in how many oceans there are? That's not right. The truth is that Antarctica has an inferiority complex. It's never gotten over the fact that it was named for what it is not - Arctic - and it was neglected by mankind until 1820. It's also insecure about it's continent status. Antarctica doesn't want you to know that underneath all that ice, it's really just a large archipelago and not a continental land mass at all. So now it's not enough that Antarctica is all land and the Arctic is all water; Antarctica wants both. Don't be fooled by this Southern Ocean stuff, it's just the old Antarctic Ocean wearing a new hat.
I have got to stop this long-windedness. Let me just suggest a couple more plutonization candidates:
All movies wherein Timothy Dalton portrayed James Bond are now simply movies entitled The Living Daylights and License to Kill. We can dub over the words 'James Bond' on the DVDs.
There is now no longer a movie called Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. There are no CGI critters at Mos Eisley. It's just Star Wars. That's it. That's all it ever was. All abominations aside, that is simply too much punctuation for a movie title.
Please stop trying to elevate someone to Fifth Beatle status and do the right thing. Plutonize George Harrison and just have three Beatles. He can be listed in the 'thanks' section on the liner notes from now on.
Labels: antarctica, beatles, florida, James Bond, Pluto, Star Wars
posted by St. Fiacre @ 8:00 AM,
2 Comments:
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At Monday, January 22, 2007 6:05:00 PM,
said...
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Plutonize George Harrison? Say it ain't so, St. Fiacre! Heresy!
I never liked geography in school, and you're bringing it all back to me. It's all a purple haze. -
At Saturday, February 03, 2007 9:03:00 AM,
said...
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Yeah, purple haze, that's the answer. Make Jimi Hendrix the fifth Beatle. That guy could sure play that guitfiddle. And while we're cleaning up the act, replace Ringo Starr with Keith Moon. Let's see the Pretty Boy Paul try to keep up with that headbanger. But returning to planet Earth for a moment--Earth is still a planet, right?--George was my favorite Beatle like Entwistle was my favorite Who. I like the quiet ones, the ones who stand off to the side and seem to be getting a kick out of the posturing frontman, and especially when, like Entwistle, they write songs that take you by surprise.
