stargazing, sans stars

well, it's happened. pluto is no longer a planet. this is, i suppose, a shrug event to most people, but my early childhood "career" as an astronomy nerd makes me interested enough to point out every article on the topic for the past several years at least. it could be worse; i'm not one of those apparently traumatized at no longer being able to use the "my very energetic mother just served us nine pickles" mnemonic. i think "my very energetic mother just served us nothing" works well too, thanks.

but i do have to wonder: if the inability to get neptune out of it's orbit is one of the criteria that disqualified pluto, why didn't neptune get in trouble? it's not even the younger child.* and, because this is the first thing i think of every time the topic is raised, what will the astrologers do? when pluto was added as a planet, it was easy enough to just tack it on as a mysterious second ruler to scorpio and slip in some references to influences that maybe they hadn't talked about before. but now? they could add the other dwarf planets and sort of hedge, i guess, but i'm pretty sure pluto has already been blamed for some major horoscope events (and we all know how important horoscope events can be. although i shouldn't joke, some very powerful people have made important decisions based on them). perhaps that's the heart of it; i'm not so much interested in poor pluto itself, but rather in my favorite game of "how will people deal with THIS?"

how will they?



*it's ALWAYS the older child's fault, never the baby's. trust me, i ought to know. as a matter of fact, it's always my fault specifically. pluto's demotion is probably my fault too, just you wait.

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also, a quick poll, just because i wonder: do you abbreviate "probably" to "prob'ly" or "pro'lly"?