It’s interesting the direction the “what is a planet” discussion has gone in… After all the recent talk of possibly ‘demoting’ Pluto (not that it makes much difference to Pluto what we call it!) they instead propose a definition that not only keeps Pluto a planet, but makes Charon one too, adds Xena (or whatever they’re going to call it) and makes Ceres a planet again!

I like the new definition – a planet’s round under its own gravitation, and orbits a star and not another planet. Even the bit that gets Charon in and not the Moon makes sense to me, since the point Pluto and Charon are orbiting is outside Pluto, but the Earth/Moon barycenter’s inside the Earth. Of course, I’m sure lots of people are going to hate the new definition – they’ll propose arbitrary size limits to kick Pluto out or keep Pluto in but kick Ceres and Charon back out, they’ll complain there are going to be ‘too many’ planets, etc. But then I don’t think any definition is ever going to make everybody happy!

The real question is: What’s the new mnemonic for the planetary order going to be? The one I remember is My Very Expensive Machine Just Smashed Up Near Pluto… So maybe with a little modification… My Very Expensive Mini Cooper Just Smashed Up Near Pluto’s Cousin Xena/UB313/whatever? That could work!

(There… now we *have* to keep Ceres!)

I know we’re more than a third of the way through the month, and I haven’t said anything here, so I figured it was time to fix that! Things have been busy lately, with work and/or life in general cutting down a bit on available comic time, so the comic time I have had has been spent just on getting the daily comics (and Z7 3 times a week) done.

But I have found time to do three new sprite bonus strips, which are up today – in the first one, Floyd is unhappy with Prentis. In the second, Floyd is also unhappy with Linton! In the third, Prentis tries to think of a way to fix this… or at least the first part of it! Thank You to everyone who’s already voted for Station V3 this month, keeping it in the Top 100 on the lists even without a new bonus! I’m going to try to get to some bonus requests soon, so if you have any, you can post them here.

There are three new voting bonuses up today: An alternate version of today’s strip, a sprite strip in which the rumormongers discuss Prentis and the shapeshifters, and another sprite strip in which Floyd is back on the station with the worst part of the shapeshifter situation coming up. Thank You to everyone who’s been voting!

And here’s another look at the Station V3 Frappr map:

Prentis may claim to be off duty in today’s strip, but he’s very much on duty in the sprite strip up as today’s first bonus! (And you can see him again in today’s second bonus, a bad translation of today’s strip.)

Fun fact: Prentis was named after Prentis Hancock, who played Paul Morrow in the first season of Space:1999, as well as appearing in several Dr. Who episodes. (And other TV shows, though I’m not sure what else I might have seen him in, except maybe the episode of The New Avengers he was in.)

When I started updating in color every day in May 2005, I said the archives would be switching to color too “at some point.” It’s been a slow process, since I spend more time making new strips than going back and adding color to the old ones, but today is one of those points… May 2004 is now in color! If you haven’t seen those strips before, today’s a good day to read them… and if you *have* seen them before, today’s a good day to read them again!