Thud
There's a certain quote that comes to mind at times like these:
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
— Oscar Wilde
I find this quote to be particularly appropriate, as I am currently lying in a gutter staring at the stars. Although this locale is not of my choosing, I am endeavoring to enjoy myself, until such time as my legs feel like working again. In the meantime, I will be Nick
Copernicus. No, not Copernicus,
that doesn't make any sense, I'll be fucking
Tycho Brahe. The only difference between us, in fact, is that I smell and he did not.
There sure are a lot of stars out there. Or at least I'm told so. Bugger it if I can see them, I'm lying in a ditch in the city. But what the city costs one in stars, it more than makes up for with that delightful pollution haze.
Oh, Pluto! The schoolchildren mourn for thee! As do the adults whose knowledge of Astronomy is confined to memories of grammar school! I, for one, have never liked you. I am not the sort of person who likes an underdog. I'm glad the Spartans lost at Thermopylae. Seabiscuit was a chump. And I root for the Yankees. I always thought Jupiter was way cooler than you. You're smaller than the red spot! That being said, the big fancy astronomers who recently demoted you are a bunch of idiots.
First off, there are not eight similar things in the heavens which behave alike and form a group that you do not belong to. There are four big spheres that rock, and there are four big spheres that have gas. Any definition that includes all eight of 'em would probably include you and those other mooks you're stuck with now. Hopefully they'll find seven "dwarf planets" and no more.
It did appear for a while there that the Astronomers were on the verge of being reasonable. For years Planet has meant absolutely nothing. "Something that orbits the Sun and has enough mass for its own gravity to pull itself into a sphere" is short, simple, and allows us to instantly divine whether or not any object we might find in the solar system is a planet. This nonsense about having to "clear the neighborhood" is subjective ad hoc bullshit, and anyone with any sense knows so. You, sir, were the victim of circumstances. You should have been called Hades anyway, the names of Roman Deities are stupid.
I am awoken from my dark astronomical ruminations by the distant sound of singing. I stand, hesitantly, leaning against a fence. A large party of drunken revelers is roaming the streets, singing off-key. My kind of people. I might even know them. It's hard to tell.
They're all wearing masks.