THIS JUST IN. Dateline... Solar System.Jupiter once again played self-appointed hero this week, taking a hit for the solar system and making all the other planets look feeble by comparison.
On July 19, an Australian Astronomer located a dark patch near the smug and self-important gas giant's southern pole. The patch, which in a apparent act of nose-thumbing, was roughly earth-sized, turned out not to be a storm as first thought (which, with Jupiter already fueling one earth-sized storm these centuries on, the other planets agreed would have been garishly excessive); it was in fact an impact scar.
And while a save of meteoric importance would normally have preserved Jupiter's dignity in certain circles, it only further irked and inflamed the Jovian ballyhooer's cosmic neighbors... particularly twin mini-giants of the outer solar sytem, Uranus and Neptune.
"Jupiter pulled this stunt already, in 1994," said Uranus, all but prostrate (at 97.77 degrees) over the grandstanding move. "To pull it again, practically days later [cosmologically speaking], reveals just how insecure our bellicose Brown Dwarf has become. Frankly, it bowls me over."
Saturn, this reporter has on good authority, seemed rather bored by the whole magilla; doing little more than spinning within the confines of her ornate ring system and saying something disparaging about Europa.
Venus, who has been seen on many occasions with the system's most titanic planet (both are the brightest objects in the night sky), was far more philosophic: "I think... after that ugly Cassini probe affair," said the radiant beauty during an early morning interview," Jo... er, I mean Jupiter just felt a little left out -- he wanted to feel like a hero again, just for a day. That's all.
"Look at the news this year. Hydrocarbons on Titan; water geysers on Enceladus, and the endless, interminable attention given to "Her Highness and her oh so many, pretty rings" oooo... that fat blinged-up tart Saturn doesn't work for any of it, you know; she's been coasting on those gaudy circlets for as long as I've known her.
"Now Jo, he's a working planet, with more satellites to support than any.... and don't you bring up Saturn here; she doesn't have more, not really. Those shepherd moons are more like pets. ANd so what, she has it made. She doesn't have a problem satellite like Io, spewing his ionizing sulfur compounds throughout her system and irradiating everything. She's never had to lift a finger, and now she's also the belle of the ball? (And seriously, have you seen her face? Pale as the Milky Way, and all that rotational velocity of hers makes her look fat).
"I try to reassure Jo," Venus added, "tell him that he's still brightest planet in the sky [next to myself, of course], he starred in all those Kubrick films, and he's still the biggest planet in the solar system... but he's been listening in to all the NASA reports recently, the ones on those newly discovered exo-planets: three, six, 20 times Jo's size, the reports say... and you have to remember how he was brought up. So it's been hard on him, very hard."
Jupiter couldn't be reached for comment, but spokes-satellite Callisto had this to say: "Jupiter has been fielding cometary and planetoidal debris for eons now, sweeping the solar system clean and keeping planetary surfaces pristine since long before anyone would care to admit, and no one has complained or made snide remarks before (nor should they! Earth's moon still gets mocked terribly by little Deimos and Phobos: crater face? pizza puss...?! So cruel).
"My Dad is just doing the work that suits him best," said a teary Callisto, "If you have a non-reducing atmosphere and are close to the sun like Venus, you shine like a pretty pearl; if you have an oxygen-rich atmosphere and liquid water surface like Earth, you go into life forming... Jupiter is massive and has a terrific gravitational pull-second only the sun-he's just playing to his strengths."
Callisto closed by saying that Jupiter would continue to do the job as he has always done, and not let the jealousy of other worlds unduly influence him. The remaining planets could not be reached for comment; though this reporter has heard since that Callisto has been hit with a cease-and- desist from former planet Pluto over her use of the term "planetoidal debris." The distant former-planet intends to sue for emotional damages.
And that, as far as you know, is the way it was... film at 11!
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