Folks in Pennsylvania have been complaining for years about all the taxpayer money they spend on lavishing their resident star groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, with the best hole in the county and some of the finest fruits and vegetables around. For what they’re spending, they don’t feel they are getting much more than a quick peek out the hole every year to see how much more of a winter they have to endure.
So this year they decided to make the groundhog work a little harder for his fame and have given him a second job, that of political predictalator. Just as Paul the Psychic Octopus became famous predicting the winners in the last Soccer World Cup, Punxsutawney Phil or just “Phil the Predictalator” as he is now known, was given a chance to predict just how much more voters had to endure of one particular candidate for President, Newt Gingrich.
“At first,” said Mayor John Rhodent, “we thought we should use an actual newt to predict the length of stay of Gingrich on the political scene, but after several attempts at pinning one down (they are extremely slimy and hard to catch), we decided to just tack on the job to Phil’s other duties.”
Asked why they were only interested in how much longer Newt Gingrich would run and not the other three candidates, including the frontrunner, Mitt Romney, Rhodent said this “Don’t know really. Guess someone made the connection between a large rodent and Gingrich. That and the fact that we’d all had a bit too much to drink night before last, and the more we thought about it, we figured ‘why the hell not?’”
Meanwhile, hack job types like Newt never truly go away. Or, at least, never enough to actually just stay there. For whatever reason, they just keep coming back, like Jason in the "Friday The 13th" movies, like Billy Martin did for a while there with the New York Yankees in the 1970's and 80's, and, oh yeah, like Richard Nixon continually attempted to do during his endless assortment of had to be there would-be comeback days leading up to that there wonderful moment in once upon a time in 1968 (fun year, in case anyone out there has forgotten) when he was handed the keys to the national store, so to speak, just in time to destroy whatever illusions the public may have had about their semi-well chosen, more or less, officially elected leaders. Or, something like that. All of which means that even though the current shelf life of Newt might be brief, the overall effect of the guy is a little more long lasting, and forever recurring. In other words, a lot like that container of now spoiled doggie bag leftovers that some of us keep rotating around the fridge, mainly cause the thought of tossing what remains of such a once proud high end fine dining experience is, even at this late date, too much to either bear, accept, and/or ever really consider. Hence the need for even more baking soda, and, as always, another alternative to eating something else you shouldn't as the rest of the evening wears on. Yeah, right. In still other words, good luck with that last one.
ReplyDeleteTalk about scary movies...Donald Trump endorsing Mitt Romney and in turn, Romney gushing all over Trump for the endorsement. I may not be able to sleep tonight.
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