The Secret Truth Of Groundhogs

After a few weeks in a mystical den somewhere in deepest darkest west central Pennsylvania, a groundhog is imbued with certain magical talents which enable it to see future weather patterns.

 

Unfortunately, the effect of the sun’s juxtaposition with Pennsylvania interferes with the enchantment, since as we all know, any remotely decent enchantments are most powerful under cover of night. By casting his own shadow, the groundhog can recapture enough of the magic to predict a long winter, but when the spring is set to come early, the enchantment fades, and he doesn’t have to cast a shadow. Which is helpful, since as a general rule, groundhogs don’t like throwing shade any more than humans do, and if the winter is ending soon, the groundhog can switch to his regular job as a woodchuck, and get back to chucking wood at a generally unknown rate and quantity.

 

Technically, the enchantment could work on any mammal of the family Sciuridae, but squirrels and chipmunks simply don’t have the memory span to remember the spells, and thus it falls to marmot-kind to undertake this noble responsibility.

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Dave Is A Small Rubber Pyramid

Members of the National Surrealist Association protested in Washington DC early Monday morning, bringing local traffic to a standstill. The specific issue at hand was never quite detailed, with possibilities ranging from the color of Mountain Dew to the involvement of the federal government in cricket matches by mail.

Three members of the Association, who referred to themselves as Larry, Curly and Sauron, held an empty picture frame in front of the Capitol building, captioned with the phrase “When is a rhinoceros!”. Others hung thousands of left shoes from the White House fence, singing Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” in a round.

A spokesman for the group wrapped reporters in clingfilm, repeatedly screaming “Climb that beanstalk now, you fuckers!”.

Other than expressing annoyance at the traffic slowdown, however, District residents largely ignored the protest. “It’s actually still much saner than anything that happens INSIDE the Capitol building,” said one. “The only difference is that I’m not paying these guys to do it.”

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This Little Piggy Went Back To Work

So I do not, in fact, have the swine flu.

Thanks to everybody who expressed their concern, here and elsewhere.

Apparently there are a couple of viruses doing the rounds which present with roughly the same symptoms, which I’m sure makes things inconvenient for those in the medical profession.

So I picked up the test results in writing on Monday afternoon, figuring that I could report back in to my employer that all was well, and be back to work as quickly as I left.

Yeah. WOW, was there ever a lot of red tape to go through in order to return to work, across multiple departments and requiring approval from all over the place. One would think that official test results, in writing, would be sufficient, but apparently not.

So I didn’t in fact go back to work yesterday as I had planned.

I am back today, with an extra three and a half days’ work on my plate. Fun!

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Weekend Round-up

Just a few bits regarding some of my favorite posting topics:

Dollhouse: The season finale of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse last night was amazing, astounding, astonishing, and quite possibly a lot of other words beginning with A.

For those of you who are interested in the show, but haven’t yet caught last week’s episode or last night’s, I’m not going to give away the identity of the guest star, but his performances in those two episodes have had “Give this man an Emmy!” written all over them. Just incredible.

Citizenship: Thank you to everyone who tweeted and Facebooked and LiveJournaled and texted and in other ways passed along their congratulations; each helped to make an already special day a little more so.

I came home last night to find this:

… which was amazingly sweet.

Gay marriage: So I got a little pocket-sized copy of the Constitution at the ceremony yesterday, and was reading through it when I noticed something.

“Article IV, Section 1: Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records and judicial Proceedings of every other State;”

Doesn’t that mean that these supposed decisions taken by states to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states are really just the states in question deciding to do what they were already constitutionally bound to do?

And by extension, if every state is required to recognize gay marriages performed in other states, doesn’t that make banning them a little pointless?

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A vampire?! Let me check my notes…

This was a relatively recent bookstore find:

While it may be a handy-dandy resource when researching Eastern European folklore, or perhaps offer some insights into the deeper meanings of Twilight or Buffy… this title seems a little misleading.

Here is my revised Complete Idiot’s Guide to Vampires:

If you see one coming toward you, run like hell. You can look him up if you survive, but since you will have survived it was most likely just a goth.

In the spirit of offering advice to “Complete Idiots”, I would also like to share a recent grocery store find:

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Everybody wants prosthetic foreskins on their…

Some of the products out there just baffle me.

It seems that one can now buy reusable latex foreskins for a different experience. (Thanks to Andrew over on Facebook for the link.)

All together now: “please be gentile with me”…

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8 Ways We Traumatize Our Offspring

While it is no surprise to me that the lyrics to many kiddie songs are both insipid and inane, I had not given a great deal of thought to very much of the content. Some of the sentiments and concepts expressed are extremely odd, and some are just plain scary to contemplate.

As such, I present a kiddie hit parade of sorts – the songs I refer to will doubtless be known to you all.

1. Your father is bribing you to shut up by buying you all kinds of stuff. Much of it appears to be livestock.

2. Some lunatic decided to put your cradle in a tree and I am now trying to convince you to sleep in it, presumably with the idea that when high winds hit, you’ll get a surprise. And this is good. Really.

3. Field mice are evil, the resolution of which lies in cranial trauma administered by a rabbit.

4. Speaking of cranial trauma, the protagonist of our next ditty not only suffered the injury and indignity of falling down a hill, but also the painful cauterization of the resulting wound with whatever substance was convenient and acidic, in this case vinegar.

5. Living in footwear is apparently not conducive to birth control, nor to the ability to feed your kids, though it does give you quite the background for child abuse.

6. When your true love drowns in the sea and you are unable to save her, you still have her sister as a backup option once you have made it through the obligatory four verses of grieving.

7. Spiders have nothing better to do than climb up spouts, and are too stupid to find somewhere else to go in bad weather. And we are supposed to believe this of a species that also engages in the laudable practice of helping young women get off their tuffets and get some exercise.

8. Egg-shaped people should avoid sitting on masonry, for they are too fragile to survive loss of balance. They are also rather less subject to re-assembly than, say, an IKEA bookshelf.

I’m sure I could come up with many more, but that’s all I can think of for the moment. If you feel inclined to comment with others, I look forward to reading them.

Also – though of a less traumatic bent – does anyone know the escape velocity required to counteract the gravitational pull of mulberry bushes?

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