Groundhog Day is stupid. Granted, this seems sort of obvious, but it still just completely baffles me. I'm sure it's all rooted in some weird Pagan symbolic thing that I could not possibly understand, and since it's Paganism, it probably has something to do with sex, but that's really beside the point. What worries me is that whether or not the groundhog sees its shadow is reported on the news. Not just local news, but on freaking national television. And frankly, I find that sort of embarrassing. I mean, I know it's just pandering, and you could go on and on about how it's "tradition", but I really despise whenever airtime gets wasted. This might have been excusable if it were an incredibly slow news day, but with all the crazy crap that's going on in Egypt* right now, it's really kind of stupid.
I would love to see somebody try to explain the rationale behind the concept. Again, I'm sure it's got this ridiculous, convoluted backstory that eventually mutated into the weird thing we got going on today, but if we just focus on what we do NOW, it just seems absolutely ridiculous. I'd like to see what they do if the groundhog dies, or if he just doesn't feel like coming out that day. And how exactly do they gauge whether or not he sees his shadow? Doesn't really make any sense.
Also, apparently the groundhog has been wrong far more times then he's been right. So you could actually do better at predicting if you just assume the groundhog is wrong. So why not just change the tradition? Would that be sacrilege? No, it's a goddamn giant gopher. Get over yourselves.
There, I didn't mention Bill Murray once.
*On the other hand, I am glad that people are starting to pay attention to Egypt again. They have all this amazingly badass history and mythology that nobody really cared about anymore. It's not much, but I like seeing them get some attention, even if it's for all the wrong reasons.
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