Could I have a moment of your time to talk to you about Pluto?

Okay, first off, this right here is not exactly topical. Pluto’s reclassification from planet to dwarf planet happened last year or something, but I still hear the occasional reference to it, so I can pretend like it wasn’t just my procrastination that has kept me from speaking up.

But anyway, Pluto isn’t a planet any more. It seems like a lot of people had a problem with this. I, personally, didn’t see the problem. The reasons given by the scientists seemed to make plenty of sense to me (basically: If Pluto is a planet, then there’s plenty of other rocks in the system that are also planets). Now I doubt that everyone is just upset that what they were taught isn’t valid any more, but I bet that’s some of it. That, I can almost understand. But there are plenty of people who seem to feel that Pluto has been slighted or devalued.

I disagree. What makes planets so special that any celestial body that isn’t one is a loser? Nothing! I love them all! Comets! Dwarf Planets! Quasars! Nebulae! Moons! Asteroids! It’s ALL Good. You people are astronomical bigots or something.

There’s this graffiti on the sidewalk down the road from my apartment that has been there for as long as I can remember. It reads: “HULK HOGAN”

I have grown to love this bit of vandalism because I am amused by things like the random advertising of a wrestler’s name on a sidewalk for no reason. In fact the graffiti doesn’t even specify anything about the man, just his name. I like that sort of thing.

Years ago, it started fading away, but someone else must have also liked it because they were willing to spray over it again to freshen it up. As good a public service as this is, I do have to fault the artist for changing the slogan to read” “HULK HOGAN PART 2” because instead of simply preserving the original piece, they have instead felt the need to make themselves a part of the work, calling attention to their re-spraying. I felt that was unnecessary. Better to simply keep the piece alive on its own, I thought.

But anyway, the thing is getting faded again and I’m hoping that some civic minded individual might get around to keeping the tag alive, preferably just the original words. After all, this is our heritage I’m talking about.