Sayonara Pluto!

Dr. Filmore de Eclair--Chief Astronomilator for the Fairley-Leakey Telescope at the Mt. Palomine Institute of Mysteries

Story to follow about how in the Erde universe we too managed to eliminate our tag-along pseudo planet, coincidentally also named Pluto (but honoring a belligerent nautical character who was the nemesis of Pompeyes, the Carthaginian sailor man, instead of Michael Mause's woofer).

...and here's the story!

Last week, after three mirth-packed months of fun-filled day-long joy-drenched meetings and discussions, astronomilators from all across Erde, and even from underneath things, finally decided to get rid of the tenth planet, Pluto, for good. This after electro-daguerreotypes wirelessed from the unmanned and unmonkeyed deep space exploration craft, Veeger III, last year revealed that the now former planet was, in fact, an immense gaily-colored inflatable. This leaves nine of what astronomilators are now calling Honest Injun planets, named, from Sol outward: Marjorie, Ishtar, Erde, Thor, Bumblefocke, Wotan, Loki, Ouranis, and Loontoon.

New rules for defining planets are:

(1) It must have enough mass and gravity to gather itself into a ball without either being depressed or feeling a need to be inflated.

(2) It must orbit Sol and not gaily bounce around off other planets.

(3) It must reign supreme in its own orbit, having "cleared the neighborhood" of other competing bodies through threats, jeers, or outright fisticuffs.

(4) It must not under any circumstances be a gigantic beach toy or parade balloon.

Everything else out there worth mentioning will be designated "Phony Baloney" planets, except for the swarms of interplanetary astro-gnats and large random chunks of lichen that we're still wondering about. Plans are being made to remove Pluto from its orbit, deflate it, and store it in a big tin shed on Thor.

[Editor's Note: For "da Urth" readers, while there are many close similarities between our universes, there are also profound differences. Your "moon," for example, lacks an atmosphere and suitable parking, and while we have several other inhabited planets in our solar system, you seem to have only one other (go on, guess). Also, you've been short-changed a planet (call customer service ASAP). You have an asteroid belt between Thor (Mars, for you, although Thor is bigger and better) and Wotan (you call it Jupiter and they're identical), but we have a planet, Bumblefocke rollicking about in that spot, a place we'll write about at some later date. Apparently, your Bumblefocke done blowed up years ago, which might explain everything since we don't have all that dangerous blowed-up planet debris--asteroids and comets and such--rumbling about and crashing into things.]

[Patty Pille Note: Yeah, but we have Bumblefocke.]

The stories of Gargantua and Pantapille

The giant, Pantapille, returned from his seaside snooze, is near about to discover the people of Dreariass preparing the Whimsy-Fisch for their dining.

Readers from Everywhichawhere inquire--what the Helle is ghost cheese?!

Ghost cows forever hauling Ramses XII's funeral barque to Des Madoo... in our dreams and nightmares

Simple--ghost cheese is the "cheese" that is made from the "milk" of ghost cows--ghost cows being the closest approximations to those dopey "Urth" bovine beasts that we have here on Erde. Baluchatheriums generally fill the cow slot, not that this is a slot that pressingly needs filling much ever.

Ghost cheese has a flavor that is, in most ways, utterly indescribable, largely because there is no way, linguistically, to describe it. The sorts of fancy-pants foods snobs that on "da Urth" like to think of their favorite arcane treats as being beyond all verbal characterization have not a notion about such sublime comestibles. Munching a mouthful of ghost cheese is an experience akin to watching a blittered frothingburb cast stinkles at a rollepatating wim-jiblet, if you catch our drift.

Milking a ghost cow is a task no one should ever not miss if one can't not avoid it. It's typically a job for citizen monkeys since peoplepersons lack the appropriate sense of the absurd, and that's saying a lot given how much sense of that the average Erden peopleperson carries about with them. Fizzly Farms--home of Kasper the Ghost Cow (their famed trademark), and Erde's largest producer of ghost cheese (and Baluchatherium milk)--is owned and operated entirely by citizen monkeys. Very rich citizen monkeys.

APOLOGY TO BELOVED SUBSCRIBERS

The previous post should be on the other thing-called-a-blog

I imagine we're all a touch melancholic and not at-our-finest because of this recent news of the success of that, ahem, stunning "I Love Pancakes" video/song that seems to have knocked the planet (your planet I should emphasize) off its perennially cockeyed axis. Additionally, since early this month, nearly everyone at the Planetary Panopticon has been on vacation and it's only myself and a skeleton crew rattling about the empty Institute, along with this new intern fellow, Mr. Punch (who is a shade disturbing, especially in the morning when it's often just myself at my desk and him hrrr-hrrr-ing back and forth in the hallway, often popping his misshapen wooden head up from behind the transom and asking if I need a good rollicking whack in the noggin, which--being a kindly and positive sort--I assume means would I care for a cup of coffee?)

And I probably do need a good whack in the noggin. All this effort expended at creating and running this ornery thing-called-a-blog and all any of us really needed to do to get a little positive feedback from the "public" was create a tacky and derivative video about a favored junked food, and compose a rinky-dink ditty as accompaniment. Ach, well, I sigh.

New flag proposed for "da Urth"

Don't tread on me, or even think about thwacking me with a slap-stick!

For some reason that we stubbornly refuse to devote any self-critical attention to, when we stumbled across Mr. Punch some time back, he struck us as the perfect symbol for modern "Urth" times. This flag proposal depicted above is merely a rough concept tossed together on the Personal Computing Engine using clip art and DaguerreoShop. Hopefully the final version will be chock full of filigree, rigmaroles, accents, sans-serifs, motley, and outre symbolic details. Maybe the flag will feature olive branches framing Mr. Punches adorable head--a United Nations of homicidal lunacy.

[Editor's Note: For frolicsome post-game fun, gaze intently into psychotic Mr. Punch's cock-eyes and meditate unto the events of the last six years. Truly, he is the spirit of the times! One could easily visualize him merrily elaborating on some genocidal point at a press conference and then massacring the assemble media representatives]

NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS

We're whimsy-depleted

For a short while at least, all the hot action will be taking place at our newer site--The Nohovian--largely because we're feeling a bit diminished. Since neither site is read by much of anyone anyhow, this announcement amounts, analogously, to, say, my putting up a warning in the attic advising that later this evening I might roll over onto my right side unexpectedly while sleeping. Maybe Wotan pays attention to such things.

We'd hoped that by posting moose photos on the Nohovian site we might pick up a few readers since our Marketing to "Urth" Folk pamphlet says that furry animal pics are popular with just about everyone with functioning lower brains and above. Disgruntled elements on the Panopticon staff still insist we should hang it all up and post saucy daguerreotypes (the income would pay all Peepergate operation and maintenance costs, guaranteed) or we should attempt something else that I just saw a concept proposal for: a site called That Darn Bush! that would consist of jabs and jibes directed at the current Merkan Pez-head-ent. Our staff cultural psychologists say our biggest problem regarding "Urth" audiences and these things-called-blogs is that none of our efforts reassure anyone that, for one, their current Reality Tunnel (set of beliefs...sort of) is the wisely picked one, and there's nothing here at all within these pages to make one feel smug (kind of the same thing). The Onion does a fine job of all that, it being directed at smug vaguely young, vaguely literate, vaguely upscale sophisticates who'd never play video games for twelve straight hours while eating nothing but Cocoa Puffs.

Our true dilemma is that we challenge, and we challenge by being mildly elusive, whimsical, droll, and incoherent; and we do plain dreadful things like write saucy daguerreotypes instead of pornography (a word that truly is about the vilest that was ever coined and distributed for broad usage) forcing many (well, actually nobody--we've lost them by then) to hustle for the online dictionary to get a sense of the word daguerreotype and maybe even saucy. No one languishing under the tattered beach umbrella of current "Urth" culture is going to make the slightest effort to be challenged; and in a way maybe that's our convoluted point here, not that any point was ever intended. Heck, we're just trying to have a bit of fun without imitating what everyone else does.

Speaking of having a bit of fun, the above is one of Gustav Dore's illustrations for Rabelais's book(s) about Gargantua and Pantagruel. This is a swell doodle to be sure, but there are others by him (images of which we couldn't locate) that are beyond all believing. No modern "Urth" graphic artist or illustrator of pictorial epics (comic books)* comes close to Dore. In truth, when you place work by him, or, more so, by Arthur Rackham, alongside that of the stylus-wielding giants of these times something uncomfortable reveals itself. "God," as the architect Mies van der Rohe once wrote, "is in the details" and details are not simply little extra add-ons like those mailboxes or flower gardens one may clump around Barbie's Dream House. They are the subtle nuances that make the difference between great all-embracing art and mimicry and superficial "perfection."

We think here of one B. Moser who has garnered unjustified fame as an illustrator of classic books of the sort that few on "Urth" bother to read or treasure any longer. The books still sell--albeit in ever-reducing numbers--because the pretense of cultural sophistication (sorry, I'm paraphrasing from one of Prof. Fricke's marvelous books on "Urth" culture) is still maintained here and there for reasons that we won't go into that are highly insulting anyway. Since few on "Urth" are adequate judges of talent any longer, Herr Moser gets along dandily by filling book pages with flat, lifeless, wooden, and largely uninteresting drawings that, if nothing else, make for fine simulations of the real item--that being quality art. They look like book illustrations and there are no obvious mistakes in execution. He is, granted, a master of chiaroscuro, but he depends almost wholly upon this coupled with strained emotion for dramatic (we'd say melodramatic) impact. A full book of these shadowy representations of mania and hyperventilation and a tedium creeps in (his "Alice" work assiduously avoids any journey into any Wonderland whatsoever, having all the surreal otherwordliness of a Civil War reenactment). If one seeks a soul or even a glimmer of rich personality behind any of the numerous pairs of eyes he has rendered, one is at a loss. The pictures play out like so many corporate logos of the over-insistent "all-natural" and "whole wheat" variety.

Oh well, this is really subject matter for The Nohovian.

*Calling comic books pictorial epics with a straight face is an ancient and lost form of communication that was known to the Romans (or maybe Greeks) as irony (eye-rawn-knee), which is Navajo or possibly Inuit for "he who speaks through flattened spoons." Some communications whiz-bangs here at the Mt. Palomine Institute have suggested that we utilize contemporary "Urth" text standards and, for starters, highlight eye-rawn-nick passages with a pleasing yet identifiable color, this so that readers will immediately understand that the statement is meant to be just a tiny bit funny. Another expedient would be to include side-bars (and chrome mufflers too, I'd imagine) that would explain the parts of the text that weren't in, shall we say, reduced communicative mode. A fully annotated Professor Pille's Planetary Panopticon with subtitles was also considered.

New titles from the Mt. Palomine Press

They just keep rolling off the sub-basement presses!

Mr. Punch explains why you are all doomed

It'll be all bloody helle fer ya

Them top and bottomy icey poles be gettin' all warm and slushy and whens theys melts--hrrr, hrrr--it'll slick up the Urth and all them terrie-ists'll be slidin' right outa thar hidey-holes up in tha hills and right inter yer laps like they was on buttered toboggans. Cold and wet-as-my-bum terrie-ists all riled up and orn'ry, ta add ta yer endless sea o'woes and troubles. Even more of em'll be blown outa where they be hidin' up in the tree-tops by the mitey winds from all them fro-shush hurry-canes; droppin' from tha heavens inta yer back-yards and touchin' yer dawters. Then, after that's all been done and spoken fer, all the satty-lites up in outy-space come crashin' down and bustin' open yer heads, flattenin' the rest of yer lyke pancakes. Then big rocks'll come rolling down the hills to crush yer bones ta dust. Yer doomed.

New guest columnist for the Panopticon--Mr. Punch

Yer doomed

Cheerful puppet to inject hyperbolically pessimistic commentary into the lighthearted news coming daily from "da Urth"

New meat to hit street

Classic Former Republic of Former Russland advertising art!

After a few too many late night sandwiches made with canned kraken (Spraken© brand is the one we all known and cherish) and a slice or two of Fizzly Farms© ghost-cheese, one tends to start looking around for alternatives. Over there in the Former Republic of Former Russland--home turf of the gosh-darned best tinned kraken loaf on Erde--they've finally decided to test-market chunked nautical abyss serpent here in The Empire (it's been a staple in the FRFR for decades). Till now, there hasn't been much demand thisaway, most Empire folk being not too inclined to eat slimy water snake steaks, but a big ad campaign is coming up and a least one famed purveyor of fast foods (yes, McKrakens©) will be offering, for a short time, a McSerpent© pocket sandwich (with a choice of mustard or ranch sauces). Nobody here at the Institute, except, of course, Patty Pille, has ever tasted nautical abyss serpent (she killed a record-sized one with her diving knife while exploring sunken cities off the coast of Bazookaland last year) but she assures us that it's--and she managed to say this with a nearly straight face--"yummy."

[Editor's Note: Honestly, there was no product placement in this posting! I mean, the Fizzly Farms© people gave us an assortment of their fine ghost-cheeses in this attractive basket, kind of as thanks for a little favor we did for them (we exorcised their brie), and we do have a big pile of buy-one-get-one-free coupons for Big Kraks© from McKrakens© (that expire in a week anyway) but their manager hands those out to all the businesses and institutions in town every year!]

Fierce flying fighter frontlines Imperial Air Fleet

The Pilleheed ZP-93A Mixmaster

Like anything else our "military" purchases, it's totally harmless, although scary looking and loud as helle as it uses stock "Urth" moto-cycle* mufflers. The ZP-93A is designed to dump food, treats, informative pamphlets, or, in case of a real crisis, cash (what better way to disrupt?), on belligerent people; and is armed with a long range EMP pulse device and DOODADs (Deployable Onboard Operational Defensive Absurdism Distractors) that will shut down or at least confuse the bejeebers out of just about anything unfriendly in its way. It can also simply vanish, leaving behind either a rapidly fading holographical smile or a cloud of radar-jamming "pixie dust." These miracle "shady" technologies were developed at the Mt. Palomine Institute's Pilleheed Aeronauticaetherical Division in total secrecy so don't tell. Pilots say flying the Mixmaster is like sailing through the clouds on a perpetually flushing toilet, which, they add, is not all that unpleasant an experience.

*a moto-cycle is an oddball "Urth" mechanism, ostensibly used for transportation in flocks--usually only to gatherings of similar vehicles. In fact it's a sort of metallic/sonic erectile dysfunction medication and midlife mate magnet (hence the metals).

[Editor: Ironically, the "Urth" aircraft that this bears an uncanny similarity to was, in fact, also dubbed the "Mixmaster" by its pilots; however the derivations differ. Our "Mixmaster" is named after famed baluchatherium-gal, moving picture actress, and banjoleum songstress Tomasina Mixmaster. Theirs is named for a (winged?) device used to make pina coladas--a sort of stewed rums]