So, it’s been a busy month, and I haven’t really been around ye olde blog much lately.  For which, I’m terribly sorry, and can say only in my defense that lately my life has been a parade of angst worthy of Spiderman, and that I have recently been caught up full-time in the struggle to save Pluto, a battle which, alas, has now been downgraded from planet to “Trans-Neptunian Object” which is, in my professional opinion as a guy who once spent a week as a physics major, unremittingly lame.  So yes, according to science, Pluto is in fact not a planet, but rather a cartoon dog who hangs around with Mickey Mouse.

            And what about that song we all learned in grade school about the nine planets?  This is as bad as the time the Soviet Union fell apart the week after I learned the “All the Countries in Eurasia” Song.  You can’t just take the ending off and think it’s still going to work.  No, we’re going to have to write an entirely new song about our celestial hood.  I would recommend putting it to the tune of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” or possibly that song by that guy who’s way too hung up on the idea of having a nameless horse.

            Really, I think I feel for a lot of people here when I say that I feel like Captain Picard did in that episode where the Cardassian asked him how many lights there were.  Because, you know, if they really wanted to get rid of Pluto, they’d just build a Death Star and blow it up like civilized people, but instead, they’re taking the sissy way out and calling in the lawyers.

            The thing that really makes me so angry about the whole “demoting Pluto” thing is how many people seem to be taking it as a major success against the forces of evil.  “Finally,” they say in the papers, “Pluto never deserved to be a planet in the first place!”  Like they used to lie awake at night fretting about it, “Noooo, Pluto, you’re not a planet, damn you!”  before going out beneath the cold and terrible night sky to shake their myriad astronomer fists and gnash their many pointed teeth at the erstwhile planet.  I know, what with its eccentric orbit and binary moon of death, Pluto is kind of the black sheep of the solar system, but hey, who among us isn’t a little bit eccentric themselves, venturing now and then from the plane of the solar elliptic which so many others rigidly adhere to?

            The other possible option going into all this, of course, was to promote the other three things larger than Pluto to full planet status.  Though astronomers want us to believe that this was shot down because it would have resulted in a total of twelve planets (Oh Noes!) the truth is that they couldn’t live with the fact that one of them was already named Xena, and if there’s one thing your scientifical types can’t stand, its planets named after warrior princesses (this is, incidentally, why Planet She-Ra and Planet Wonder Woman never really made the cut either).

            I guess the thing that makes me mad about the whole tawdry affair is that Pluto is simply so totally freakin’ sweet.  I mean, I could understand wanting to demote it if its name was Planet Goofy, but Pluto?  Dude, he was the god of the underworld, and the last thing you want to do is incur his wrath.  In other languages, it gets even better; in Japan, Pluto is called “The Star King of the Dead” while in Vietnam, it is known as “The Guardian of Hell” which is totally sweet.

            Personally, I think that if we were going to get rid of a planet, we ought to have gone with Uranus, because for one thing, I always got in trouble in science class for laughing about it when we studied the solar system, and also because really, do we need to have an entire world named after the Roman god of the butt anyway?  What about in like, 500 years when people live on planets?  Telling people you live on Pluto would be totally sweet, telling people you’re from Uranus would just be embarrassing.

            Also, if it is indeed true as many scientists believe, that Pluto is home to a race of funguous crustacean interdimensional death beasts, and they get word of what we’ve done to their world, I for one am not going to be the one to call them on it when they come to Earth looking for answers.

            I wanted to get a job at the Amish stuff emporium, but when I went by to apply, they said that they only took applications online.  The Amish have so totally sold out ever since Harrison Ford made them cool.

            If you happen to be one of those mildly deific immortal forces of evil about whom the prophecy states that no man shall slay you, you probably ought to look out, because not only are there are lot more women out smiting mildly deific immortal forces of evil, but you’re also leaving yourself open to say, Mr. Peanut.  And he don’t take no prisoners.

            Why is it that when you go to a moderately nice restaurant, they always leave to top of your straw wrapper on?  Is there really that much asbestos and fly ash floating around the kitchen at Applebee’s?  Or are they just trying to make it easier for you to use it as a tiny projectile against your sister?  What’s the right thing to say when the waitress does this anyway?  Whoa, thanks for leaving that on!  Last time I came here I got fiery lava of doom in my Dr. Pepper and had to send it back; you’re definitely getting 15%!

            I saw a sign whilst I was out driving that said, “Our name has changed, but our quality is as high as ever!  Shepherd University” The problem was that they neglected to mention what their old name was, so I was left wondering whether Harvard had just run into copyright issues with Manny Harvard’s Muffler Repair, or if this was just another case of Ye Olde Online Universitie trying to gussy itself up.  Also, this sign happened to be on the back of a Pepsi truck in the middle of West Virginia, so it failed to impress me on a number of accounts concerning its rigorous academic badassitude.

            I want to start a beverage company, and sell a drink called, “Shut Up Juice”  and when people I know get all worked up about stuff, I can be all like, “Hey, why don’t you just sit down and have a nice cold glass of Shut Up Juice?”  And they’ll get all angry and stuff, but then I’ll explain that it’s made from only the finest Shut Up Berries that grow high in the mountains of Venezuela, hand picked and sorted by only the most studious of agriculturally-inclined flying monkeys and that it contains an entire day’s allotment of Vitamin C and many totally funky amino acids.  Then they’ll be all sorry and ask for another glass, and I shall become wealthy indeed.

            I think people are taking this whole Mel Gibson vs. the Jews thing way too seriously.  How do I know this?  Because I happen to play Warcraft with Mel of a regular basis, and he happens to be a total master of what my cyber-homies refer to as “leet-speak”  So, instead of saying “Jews totally suck” he was in fact saying “J00 totally suck”, which, while far from a decent thing to say to an officer of the law, merely marks his status as an u3eR 1337 HaXXoR.

            Seattle has got to be the biggest rip-off ever.  I flew all the way out there in my sweet, sweet, hovermobile/truckasuarus just to see the Space Needle, and it was not even remotely in space.  Did you think I wouldn’t notice your pathetic attempts at trickery, Seattle?  Or are you merely so consumed with your own evil that you no longer care about naming things accurately?  Either way, rest assured that soon all the world shall know of your treachery, just as they learned after I spread the horrible truth about the Air and Space Museum actually being full of stuff.

            If you met Elmer Fudd in a pith helmet and carrying a high-powered rifle, and he told you that he’s just spent the day hunting winos, you would never know if he had just come back form a safari or if he was just embarking upon a murderous rampage against alcoholics.

            If you’re like me, than probably about 87% of your worrying involves werewolves and the job that those who protect us from them are doing.  I know, werewolves are sort of like fire and cholesterol, where really, the most of the work to be done is preventative, and may be accomplished through the judicious application of things like werewolf-retardant attic insulation, werewolf detectors with fresh batteries in every large room of the house, a regular exercise program, and a diet of foods low in werewolfoflavin.  After all that is said and done though, the task of protecting you and yours from werewolves comes down to professionals, like Oliver North, Green Lantern, and The Statue of Liberty.  At least they’re the ones you always hear about and see on TV doing all those sappy public service announcements about not taking candy from werewolves and never giving them your credit card number.  Above and beyond them all though, there is a man who probably does more to keep our great nation werewolf-free than even Batman, Skeletor, and avid Bowie combined: The Lone Ranger.

            Now, odds are that you haven’t heard of him, but doubt me not, for he is merely the behind the scenes sort of a werewolf hunter that shuns the spotlight of public fame and celebrity, but rather prefers to fight his werewolves in the inky and inchoate realm of undulating darkness and burbling chaos, New Jersey, where eldritch gibberings rend the ebon skies and the high priest Zurgaloth reigns upon a throne of chalcedony from a city carven from a single titanic piece of walrus ivory.  Because you know, werewolves are really into things like that.  But how did the Lone Ranger get into werewolf fighting in the first place?  That, my friends, is the tale which I am about to relate unto you this day.

            The Lone Ranger, you see, was originally part of a greater autonomous collective of rangers, one of whom may have been Chuck Norris’s mom, who all wandered around Texas shooting bandits and hogtying cattle wrestlers (these being men who wrestled with the cattle, rather than cattle who were simply in the business of body-slamming people, which was actually kind of encouraged there for a while back in the 30s).  One day however, one of his posse sold them all out to a gang of werewolves, who shot them all and left them for dead.  Fortunately, Tonto, who was all bummed out because his hunting grounds had been turned into a casino, found him, gave him a silly Indian nickname and nursed him back to health.  Upon recovering, the Lone Ranger discovered that not only had the werewolves killed all his homies, but they had also taken the little eye mask he used to wear when catching his afternoon nap and cut hole in it, thereby preventing him from ever again enjoying a siesta.  He swore to wear it forever after though, as a reminder to him that, like justice, he must never nap in his pursuit of evil.

            Now werewolves, as you may know, can only be killed by a silver bullet, and by happy coincidence, The Lone Ranger (who quickly discarded his original title of “The Really Popular Ranger) happened to find his old mentor, Mr. Miyagi, who lived in a haunted silver mine in the middle of the gumdrop forest.  He used the silver from the mine to make a magical flying unicorn for the Lone Ranger, and cast him all the silver bullets he needed, so that whenever the Lone Ranger shot someone, he could immediately tell if they were a werewolf (he originally experimented with the idea of having Mr. Miyagi cast him a silver mullet instead, but that looked really silly, weighed like, 173 pounds, and for it to be any good at all, he first had to chase down the werewolf in question and hit him in the face with it, which was not only grossly impractical, but difficult to accurately relate over the radio).  Thus attired, he then ran into young William Tell, who had been gored by a beefalo.  To him The Lone Ranger gave his surplus silver mullet, and out of gratitude to the masked man, William Tell composed for him an overture to play whenever he was out riding around after werewolves and needed to sound dashing and dramatic.

            Eventually, after killing off all of the werewolves in Texas, the Lone Ranger fell on hard times, and not long ago got into trouble for trying to shoot Chewbacca in a Houston 7-11.  In search of metaphorically greener pastures, he then departed for New Jersey, where owing to the large number toxic waste plants and the fact that the New Jersey Supreme Court recently allowed them to form civil unions, werewolves and flocking like sheep to a monster truck rally.  There he remains to this day, keeping to the shadows, shooting werewolves, and speaking of the pompatus of love, and occasionally accidentally busting a cap in an 80s hair band.  And remember, there's no "I" in team, but there is a "We" in werewolf.