This is planet earth

Hello.

This is your world speaking. No, not you lot. Just me, the one of me. Your planet. Earth, terra, etc.

Oh, for Pete's sake. Don't all look in the air. Where do you expect the voice of your planet to be coming from? That's better. And yes, I'm well aware I sound like James Earl Jones. Given that I've been around for 4.5 billion years longer than he has, I'm pretty well pissed off that the comparison always seems to go that way round.

And do I need to remind you who invented the whole concept of the 'year' in the first place?

The reason I've chosen to speak to you all is that I'm becoming increasingly aware that many of you feel they ought to do something to save me. I suppose I should be flattered. Truth be known, I only knew you lot were there relatively recently. To be honest, there's not much going on that grabs my attention. I had a nasty case of asteroids some time back, but since then it's been fairly quiet, planetary-wise.

Anyway. You lot have been pretty invasive, you believe. You're killing me, you think. I need saving from you all, apparently. Well, let me tell you something for nothing.  I'm big enough and ugly enough.

I'm 6,000 of your, what do you call them, miles, wide and made principally out of granite and iron.  Plus a whole buch of other stuff that you think yourselves very clever at finding and using.  Yes yes yes, I know all about uranium.  To be frank with you, I'd much rather I didn't have the stuff in me, it gives me a shocking case of hives at the best of times.  But you guys think you're the bees knees with your fast-breeder reactors and multiple warheads, don't you?

I do quite like bees, by the way.  I think they're a nice touch.  I'm fond of the humming.


But now I hear you all agonising about how you're mucking me up.  How you're killing me.  Look, folks, let's have a little honesty, shall we? You couldn't give a tinker's cuss - whatever on me one of those is - about anyone, or anything, but yourselves.  Your concern for planet Earth is really all to do with your own little temporary existence.  You don't kid me.  I wasn't impressed by the dinosaurs - bunch of bloody lizards with ideas above their station, if you ask me - and I'm not taken in by you upright chimps, either. 

I was here a long time before you were, so think on.  And I've got a good 5 billion or so rotations to go before old Sol gets all ansty and swallows me up, along with those others you call Mercury and Venus.

And while we're on the subject, which one of you thought Earth was a decent name?  You use the names of your gods for my brothers, then call me after the stuff in which you grow your spuds.  I ask you.  There's gratitude.

Anyhow, I digress.  As I said earlier, I've only just noticed you there - I thought it was a crust irritation at first.  In my younger eons I just needed to send up the odd me-quake, ice-age or volcano to quieten things down, but you don't seem to have taken the hint.  I'll just have to wait for the next comet to clear you buggers out, I suppose.