Blog Love Omega Glee: Groundhog Filet (2 February 2012)

Reading the news online, Francine notes that the groundhog in Pennsylvania saw its shadow, meaning six more weeks of winter. "That thing almost always sees its shadow," she thinks, "What I've never understood is if it sees its shadow that means the sun's out, and if the sun's out that suggests nice weather, and nice weather suggests spring, so why would it see its shadow, get scared, and run back in its burrow? I mean if it was cloudy out or snowing or some more typical winter weather and the groundhog didn't see its shadow, how does that mean spring is only a couple of weeks away? Let's look it up."

Francine types in "groundhog day" in a search engine, and discovers that the tradition is based on folk wisdom that for some reason thinks that if the groundhog sees the sun this means a longer winter. Then again, this folk "wisdom" comes from people who sought weather forecasting from a rodent so that probably explains everything. Francine thinks, "I bet today the groundhog sees the crowd of people waiting for him outside and that's why it flees back into the burrow, more than seeing its shadow. Of course, with global warming, maybe spring will start in the middle of February before too long regardless of what the groundhog sees. About the only thing that a groundhog is guaranteed to see today is more people. There's seven billion people on Earth. One hundred years ago . . ."

Francine types "world population" in a search engine, ". . . there were only about two billion. So in a hundred years, the number of human beings has tripled. That's triple the amount of food needed to feed them. Triple the housing. Triple the clothing. Triple the energy to keep them warm, cool, getting from place to place, and supplied with electricity so they can watch television. Triple the human beings fighting for territory, reproduction, oil, fresh water, prime real estate, and whatever else human beings fight over. How many human beings can the planet handle before the environment sustaining them hits its natural limit? And do we even want to live in a world already shaped by too many human beings? All the overcrowding would be miserable. There'd be wars no doubt over natural resources, though the wars would lower population a bit at least, as awful as that sounds. If things continue as estimated, by the time I'm old, the population will be ten billion. Imagine all those people and all those things each person has. Factories worldwide churning out ever more stuff for more and more people. And, the natural resources being consumed to produce that stuff. Won't some of it eventually run out? Chopping down trees for ten billions assholes to wipe their asses with. Scooping every last fish out of the sea for an all you can eat fast food fish fry. More cars pumping out greenhouse gases making more global warming making less land livable due to rising seas here and droughts there. More wilderness turned into subdivisions for human burrows. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? That's an easy question to answer in comparison with how many people can a groundhog handle before it gets killed off by somebody who doesn't think its cute or want to consult it for the weather? Or say food crops fail, and all ten billion of us are desperate to eat, then I bet even that groundhog will do for dinner. I wonder what groundhog tastes like? Despite the name I doubt it tastes like pork. Maybe chicken. Everything tastes like chicken. Maybe it tastes like a rat. Could I eat a rodent if I were hungry enough? My aunt used to shoot groundhogs when they used her garden as a salad bar, but she never ate them . . ."

Francine clutches her side and tries to hold a repulsive thought down her throat, " . . . that I know of. Though, there were those mystery meatloafs she would make . . ."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.