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If Pluto is no longer a planet, that means there are now eight planets.

But what does it mean for everyone’s favorite Disney dog?

And if Pluto is actually a “dwarf” planet, does that mean there are now eight dwarfs?

The whole thing sounds goofy to me.

What seemed like a small decision last week by a bunch of astronomicalographers, or whatever they’re called, to bump Pluto right out of the solar system is messing with the very foundation of everything most of us thought we knew.

I mean, what’s next?

Are there really only 49 states?

Only 23 hours in a day?

Only 30 flavors?

I’m sure all those scientific scholars who were out in Prague deciding the fate of “the ex-planet formerly known as the ninth” are very smart.

But, c’mon. Have they no hearts? No souls?

What did Pluto ever do to anyone to warrant a demotion? Is this where outsourcing has brought us? Who is going to do Pluto’s job now?

Windswept Neptune certainly can’t handle it, and Uranus can’t even hold itself upright. Plus, it has a funny name.

It never seemed like much, but Pluto’s job wasn’t easy.

Nobody wants to be known for being the smallest of anything. But Pluto did it proudly, holding up the far end of the solar system for schoolkids for more than 70 years.

I’m sure there are important scientific reasons why those people at the International Astronomical Union did what they did. But isn’t it a little unfair to change the rules about what makes a planet 76 years after it’s been discovered and called a planet?

The whole thing really reeks of backdoor bribes, and I’ll bet the textbook companies have their paws all over it.

Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” who got his TV start on Seattle’s “Almost Live!,” told ABC it’s good that there’s such an outcry about Pluto’s exclusion.

“This object that’s so fantastically distant, much smaller than our moon, that there’s this outcry about it I think is great,” Nye said. “It gets people thinking about what it means to live on a planet, to live in the cosmos and be part of the universe, and what it means to try and understand these points of light in the night sky.”

Sadly, it doesn’t.

This will eventually be forgotten and it will be one of those trick questions on a Trivial Pursuit card.

That Pluto even needs to be a part of such controversy is not right.

It’s like watching some twisted “E! True Hollywood Story” about a child TV star whose life went south after his time in the limelight.

But that’s where Pluto will end up, the planetary equivalent of Danny Bonaduce, strung out on, I don’t know, plutonium and Vicodin, still talking about the days when it used to roll with the Fearsome Ninesome.

So, no, Bill. It won’t make us think more about planets and the cosmos. It’ll just be a sour memory about the time when a bunch of eggheads ruined it for everyone by taking our little planet away.

Columnist Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@ heraldnet.com.