RNDP Spoiler: Women are from Venus, Dwarfs are from Pluto

So, I was skootching around the intertubes this morning, favourite breakfast nearby and doggy eyebrows deeply furrowed over the true import of the latest Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm treatise from that whacked-out Dwarf ummm, my esteemed blogging associate, when I fell across a news item that caused me to spew milk and Cap'n Crunch all over the monitor.* It was a blinding, capitalized, Eureka Moment. At least until I wiped up the mess.

It seems that after last year's scandalous astronomical furor in which Pluto lost its planetary status (You missed that? How strange.) astronomers have now decided to compromise and call all dwarf planets 'Plutoids'.

Suddenly I got it! I see where 4th Dwarf's RNDP is going, and why he's so desperate to get buy-in. I mean, he's been flogging this thing hard! See, many dating paradigms in the past few years have referenced this catchily-labelled (and lucrative) little trope. But if Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus, where in the world(s) do dwarfs come from? The answer has to be the Dwarf Planet. (For proof, I refer you to Wikipedia, which makes a huge point about Pluto's eccentricity) And Pluto has been planet non grata since the big astronomical society dust-up. Which is about, I must point out, when this RNDP stuff started.

Obviously, if the the Short Guy is ever gonna get a date again, he's got to persuade women that he's still got standing somewhere in the relationship cosmos. Or at least the solar system. And regaining some kind of status for Pluto is a big part of it. I see it all now. He's done it!

Welcome back to the dating game, my short-ass friend. Good luck with that. But I hafta warn ya: the women you date from here on, will probably only be interested in Plutonic relationships...

* For a definitive 11,000-word treatise on how best to partake of Cap'n Crunch, please see Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. Don't remember the page. Sorry.

The Long Road Back to Elgin Street

Umm, so, here I am in the interestin' position of shotgunnin' in 4th Dwarf's primo ride, on the way back from the ESI Beachfront Timeshare™. (Don'cha just love WiFi?)

Unfortunately, we've been stuck in permanent gridlock on the Decarie Expressway in Montreal for days now. Something about a subway collapse downtown rerouting all the traffic out here in the 'burbs. And, oh, maybe the fact that the navigator is a teensy bit bad with maps.

Lookit, I work mostly by smell, for cripes' sake.

While I can handle the gnashing teeth and sotto voce cussing (Hey. I'm the one doin' it, after all...) I am becoming increasingly nervous when the Short Guy starts muttering darkly about "cracking the taps on the liquid oxygen tanks and torching off the retro boosters to get the f*ck outta here". 'Specially since all I can see back there is a two-horsepower Evinrude and a coupla leftover propane cartridges....

We'll make it back eventually, I keep telling him. We'll be fine. Hell, we have Jerky Treats™ up the wazoo in this thing. But all he does is moan about the perfection of the fries at The Usual Spot on Elgin Street, and how long it's been since he's had any, and droolin' in a most unseemly way. Frankly, I fear for his sanity. And maybe mine...

Here am I floating in a tin can...

I'm not sure how far I'll get in this world. But I know my name has travelled widely in outer space.

When my spyglass is trained just right on a clear night I can see a special little speck in the sky: the Stardust spacecraft.

On board are two tiny microchips with more than a million names, including mine, engraved on them. I signed up many moons ago and recently remembered that I had climbed aboard the mission.

Stardust hurtled into space in early February 1999, bound for Comet Wild 2, which hangs out 390 kilometres from Earth.

It scooped up some cometary materials and plenty of interesting dust particles in a sample capsule, which returned to Earth last year. But the rest of the Stardust craft will remain in space, forever orbiting the sun.

It's good to be along for the ride.