{"id":174,"date":"2011-02-02T18:44:58","date_gmt":"2011-02-02T18:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/?p=174"},"modified":"2011-03-11T00:37:39","modified_gmt":"2011-03-11T00:37:39","slug":"why-the-groundhog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/2011\/02\/why-the-groundhog\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Groundhog?"},"content":{"rendered":"<script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script> <fb:like href=\"http%3A%2F%2Fjoe-mangum.com%2F2011%2F02%2Fwhy-the-groundhog%2F\" show_faces=\"false\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 15px 0px; clear:both;\"><\/fb:like><p><a href=\"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/groundhog.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-175\" title=\"groundhog\" src=\"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/02\/groundhog.jpg\" alt=\"groundhog\" width=\"253\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>So it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.groundhog.org\/\">Groundhog Day<\/a>. Glory glory hallelujah (sarcasm)! What a waist of a holiday. You don&#8217;t get off school or work. There&#8217;s no gifts and no fireworks. There&#8217;s not even a reason to eat more than usual on any particular type of food.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, about the only thing you can hope for from this holiday is the possibility that a rodent will tell you it&#8217;s going to warm up soon and maybe a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Groundhog_Day_(film)\">movie night with Bill Murray<\/a>. Even then, who wants to see Bill Murray replay the same scene fourteen times in a row (it&#8217;s actually not that bad of a movie&#8230; #imjustsayin)?<\/p>\n<p>Not only is this a rip off of a holiday, it&#8217;s just weird that we use a groundhog as the iconic figure of the day. How doe&#8217;s a flippin rodent seeing his shadow have anything to do with whether or not Spring will come one month earlier than it usually does. Last time I checked, there were<a href=\"http:\/\/www.whenguide.com\/when-is-the-first-day-of-each-season.html\"> set days that mark the ends and beginnings of each season<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Can&#8217;t we come up with a better way to determine if it&#8217;s cold outside? A thermometer? Maybe even just go outside and see if it&#8217;s cold? If we&#8217;re going to use a groundhog, why not take to a pile of wood and let it live up to it&#8217;s name as a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DjGwusHrOtk\">woodchuck<\/a>?&#8221; If the wood pieces are frozen together and the woodchuck can&#8217;t chuck the wood&#8230; might be a good indication that winter is going to last as long as it usually does.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know&#8230; what do you think?<\/p>\n<div style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\" data-count=\"vertical\" data-url=\"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/2011\/02\/why-the-groundhog\/\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script> <fb:like href=\"http%3A%2F%2Fjoe-mangum.com%2F2011%2F02%2Fwhy-the-groundhog%2F\" show_faces=\"false\" style=\"margin:0px 0px 15px 0px; clear:both;\"><\/fb:like>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So it&#8217;s Groundhog Day. Glory glory hallelujah (sarcasm)! What a waist of a holiday. You don&#8217;t get off school or work. There&#8217;s no gifts and no fireworks. There&#8217;s not even a reason to eat more than usual on any particular &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/2011\/02\/why-the-groundhog\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joe-mangum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}