So Punxsutawney Phil has performed his annual prognostication, and there are six more weeks of winter to go.<\/p>\n
Call me grumpy\/cynical\/party-pooper\/whatever, but whoopdy flipping do! Who, outside of Gobbler\u2019s Knob (a place that ranks up there with Bell End and Pratts Bottom for \u201cneed to change the name\u201d attention) gives a rodent\u2019s rectum about a grumpy rodent seeing his shadow or not?<\/p>\n
Millions of people, it seems.<\/p>\n
In all the hype and pomp and ceremony, nobody seems to care about Phil, so let me fix that. This is his diary entry for Feb 2nd, 2018.<\/p>\n
Those bloody idiots in their black top hats and coats woke me up again this morning. They do this every year! Don\u2019t they realize that I need to hibernate until March?<\/p>\n
This year, it seemed like they used an earth compacter about ten yards from my burrow to wake me up. I thought it was an earthquake; 8.5 at least! <\/p>\n
Idiots!<\/p>\n
The ways they coax me into waking up are many and varied. One year, I\u2019m sure they threw water on me. Another time, they played some infuriating bloody marching music. <\/p>\n
Three years ago, they tried being extra-special nice to me\u2014they played \u201cSpring\u201d from Vivaldi\u2019s Four Seasons<\/em> gently in my burrow. Dee dum-de-dum diddy-dum\u2026 I love that tune\u2026 But I heard people complaining about it. Something about \u201cyou mustn\u2019t influence his forecast.\u201d No idea what they meant. <\/p>\n I remember a while ago, they wafted female groundhog scent down my way. Idiots! All these years and they\u2019ve never bothered to check if I\u2019m a guy or not. Don\u2019t they know that \u201cPhil\u201d is short for \u201cPhilomena\u201d? <\/p>\n So the scent was a waste of time, and they had to poke me with a stick like they do most years.<\/p>\n Anyway, they woke me up. Not a word of apology. Not even an offer to fluff up my pillow. Out they take me into the perishing cold (0.1Kelvin by my reckoning), hold me up in the air, and show me to forty thousand other idiots, every one of whom was pointing their smartphone or camera at me. <\/p>\n I gave them such a look!<\/p>\n Now bear in mind that I\u2019ve been asleep for three months or so at this point, and they didn\u2019t even give me a chance to \u201cmake myself comfortable\u201d. And bear in mind that when they lift me up, they poke my tummy with their hands.<\/p>\n The indignity! I\u2019m 132 years old, and still perfectly continent, thanks to the groundhog punch they feed me every fall. But a lady can only control herself so much in such conditions.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sure the dry cleaners will be able to get his nice black coat looking as good as new.<\/p>\n Actually, I thought of molting over his coat\u2014a few of the white hairs left behind would have served to let him know I wasn\u2019t happy with the situation. But it was so cold, I figured I needed every hair I could keep.<\/p>\n Anyway. They put me on this purple mat thing, and stared at me.<\/p>\n Stared! How rude! And one of them had halitosis. But when one of the others mentioned it, he blamed it on me! \u201cEarly morning breath\u201d he said. Like they gave me a chance to do something about it.<\/p>\n Anyway, I stared back, and they got the message, because they backed away and one of them picked me up again. And then the guy with the talking stick spoke to the crowd and said that there was going to be six more weeks of winter!<\/p>\n No s**t Sherlock! I could\u2019ve told them that!<\/p>\n So\u2026 people cheered and people booed and people clapped and people laughed, and then the idiots in black put me back in my burrow. Not even a little dandelion treat to make up for disturbing my sleep\u2026 again!<\/p>\n So here I am. Hunkered down in my burrow, nice and warm again (finally!). My diary entry\u2019s finished. I\u2019m just going to read the Farmer\u2019s Almanac for a few minutes\u2014see what the weather\u2019s going to be later in the year, and then I\u2019m going back to sleep.<\/p>\n Maybe I\u2019ll be less grumpy come March. I should probably edit this diary entry when I wake up, just in case I\u2019ve exaggerated or written some untruth.<\/p>\n See you in six weeks\u2019 time.<\/p>\n Phil<\/p>\n P.S. If you see Bill Murray, tell him, \u201cthanks a million\u201d from me for making my February 2nd<\/sup> even more terrifying than it used to be!<\/p>\n I hope the crowds at Gobbler\u2019s Knob get to read Phil\u2019s diary. Perhaps they\u2019ll realize that he (actually I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a he or a she) has no more powers of foresight than they have. After all, the predictions that Phil is credited with have been correct only 39% of the time. And in any case, I\u2019ve never understood why shadow (=clear sky) means more winter and no shadow (= cloud) means spring. Can someone enlighten me?<\/p>\n Groundhog Day has its roots in Germany, where Dachstag or \u201cBadger Day\u201d was observed on Candlemas, the Christian festival that marks the 40th day of the Christmas-Epiphany season. Immigrants brought the tradition to Pennsylvania, but presumably the area lacked badgers, so they had to seek a new folklore meteorologist. <\/p>\n Phil started his predictions in the 1880s, and until the movie \u201cGroundhog Day\u201d was released, his Punxsutawney performance was relatively low-key\u2014around 2,000 people attended. Today, the crowd is of the order of 40,000 people.<\/p>\n It\u2019s claimed that Phil is over 130 years old, and owes his longevity to regular doses of \u201cGroundhog Punch\u201d. He speaks a language that only the President of the Groundhog Club, with the help of an acacia cane, can understand. <\/p>\n Interestingly, the Groundhog Club in Punxsutawney was formed originally to hunt and eat groundhogs. Wikipedia says so, so it must be true.<\/p>\n This is news on the BBC\u2019s website<\/a>, for crying out loud!\u00a0 While I realize that the BBC is a worldwide news service, why on the big guy\u2019s good green earth would the rest of the world care about when the weather is going to break in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania?<\/p>\n And where\u2019s the BBC report on Balzac Billy, who reported an early spring<\/a> in the Calgary region this year? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So Punxsutawney Phil has performed his annual prognostication, and there are six more weeks of winter to go. Call me grumpy\/cynical\/party-pooper\/whatever, but whoopdy flipping do! Who, outside of Gobbler\u2019s Knob (a place that ranks up there with Bell End and Pratts Bottom for \u201cneed to change the name\u201d attention) gives a rodent\u2019s rectum about a grumpy rodent seeing his shadow… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,487],"tags":[517,518,515,516,519],"class_list":["post-1014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fake","category-stories","tag-balzac-billy","tag-diary","tag-groundhog-day","tag-punxsutawney-phil","tag-sensationalization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1014\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/reggothard.com\/kelvin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nA Little Background…<\/h2>\n
And a Comment on the Hype…<\/h2>\n