A Curse Upon the Pluto-Haters!
- The textbook my third grader brought home has dates in “C.E.” rather than “A.D.”
- The board book my other child bought from a bookfair lists all the planets, one per page. It only has eight pages. Pluto is not a planet.
- The illustrated children’s book on dinosaurs does not have a Brontosaurus instead there is a creature called an Apatosaurus.
- The week there was a bombing in “Mumbai” I did not know what city that was. It was not until I consulted my Newspeak to English dictionary that I realized they were talking about Bombay.
Some of this is merely annoying, like the cool kids at school who adopt a new slang merely to exclude the dorks from their circle. Some makes me sad, for I take it as a sign of a culture with no pride in itself, as one would be beholding a beautiful woman whose face was disfigured by disease. Some Some I hate with a blinding, irrational hatred, so much so that I wonder at my own ire, as I might hate the smirking lie of a political hack, utterly insincere, speaking an untruth to a room of sycophant reporters, all whom know it is a lie, and none whom will call him on it.
It is my hope that the Fungi from Yuggoth, a route of Dinosaurs, Othniel Charles Marsh, Dionysius Exiguus (aka ‘Dennis the Small’), heavily-armed Librarians, and all men of good will who speak or love the English language should rise up from their graves, their stacks, or from the darkness beyond the edge of the solar system, rise up in some huge fiery revolt against these people who keep changing names, desecrating calendars, demoting planets, and fall upon and obliterate them.
I miss Pluto!
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
