Groundhog Day after Tomorrow

Tomorrow we are looking at a 60% chance of nuclear fallout,
but does the weekend look brighter? Jim will have the
7-Day Forecast for you  up next.

Lately I have become convinced that the world is actually coming to end. It's not so much that I believe in the Mayan calendar or even because the seventh seal of the biblical apocalypse was broken when the Giants beat the Patriots in the Superbowl. (And God pointed his mighty foam finger and from it came a cone of fire and in that fire I beheld a giant whose head did not fit-eth into his helmet of war. Hence, this soft-headed giant did make war with a nation of patriots and thus was that nation embarrassed when their captain was called for intentional grounding in their own end zone. So the seventh seal lay broken and the Lord proclaimed, in a raucous and mighty voice, "Tebow would not have made that mistake?" [Revelations 2:5-7]) What really has been freaking me out lately about the coming end times is, the weather.

As I write this it is currently 50 degree Fahrenheit outside (that's about 10 degree Celsius for my foreign friends,) and it's February. For the New York metropolitan area the average temperature in January was 35.1 degree Fahrenheit, which is four degrees above the average for the past thirty years for January. Some days have even topped out at 60 degrees. Add to this a freak snow storm in October that dumped almost 19 inches in some places, a previous summer filled with hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding, and we very well could be looking at the beginning of Armageddon. Soon enough the icecaps will melt, sea waters will rise, and our streets will fall prey to wild gangs of roving furry creatures. Moose, mountain lions, and Robin Williams will start invading our towns as their natural habitats are slowly consumed by flood water and disaster films. You think it is a joke now, but wait till you wake up one day and find a polar bear in your kitchen drinking your Coca Cola, (and that stuff is like crack to them.)

Probably what's most disappointing about the coming weather-related apocalypse is that it will be boring. I mean we always knew the world was going to have to end, but seriously weather? I was really hoping for a good old fashioned World War III or some kind of asteroid, but no. Instead, we get to be killed off by errant jet streams and warm fronts. Having your planet destroyed by weather is like getting killed by a papercut from a Robert Frost poem. There are so many cooler ways to go, demon hordes, super-viruses, solar flares, black holes, and of course the ever-popular zombie apocalypse.

However, (as I know many of you do) I have a dream scenario for the end of our world, extraterrestrial invasion. I am not even sure why that has always appealed to me, but maybe it is the thought of the human race coming together as one people to repel foreign invaders from the stars. (Also, I may or may not receive superpowers in this scenario, but that's a discussion for another day.) The best thing about an alien invasion is that in all my research I have yet to see the human race lose to the outer space invaders. With people like Jeff Goldblum, Will Smith, and Mel Gibson on our side how could we not. All we have to do is decipher the invader's incomprehensible computer code language (because how hard could that be) to implant a virus in their mothership, throw a few glasses of water on them, and then hit them with a baseball bat, and voila... Good-bye space invaders. True, our cities and civilizations will be destroyed and lay in ruin, but as a bonus once we defeat our temporary alien overlords we will have complete access to their technology and a firmer belief in the human spirit. We could rebuild our civilizations and make them stronger and more technologically advanced. Eventually, we too would be able to stretch our reach out to the stars united as a race of people with one goal in mind, conquering planetary civilaztions weaker than ours (How could we lose).

There is no way this winter is ever going to end, as long

 as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don't

see any other way out. He's got to be stopped. And I

have to stop him. -Bill Murry

Unfortunately, those are just pipe dreams, because how do you really combat the weather? We can't shoot guns at it, it doesn't respond to our witty one-liners, and going to a nuclear solution just seems silly. I mean if Al Gore had told us that demonic hordes or man-bear-pigs would soon be rising from the underworld to take over the planet, maybe I could have found more reasons to care. After all, at least that promises the excitement of possibly getting to unload a firearm or two at a potential menace.

Yet, for those of us that believe death by weather is too boring, I offer a single strand of hope, and it all stems from one little groundhog. You see Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of winter last week, and through research I have come to find that old Punxy has an accuracy rating of 80% and is over 120 years old. Phil is also constantly surrounded by a troupe of top-hatted men called the inner-circle, and speaks Ground-hoggese, which only the president of that circle understands. This has led to my newest theory that Phil is not predicting the weather, but controlling he weather. They say the devil can take many forms, but who would actually suspect the groundhog? And if you don't believe in Phil's power don't forget what he did to Bill Murray.

I know satanic groundhogs sounds like a crackpot theory, but let's not forget that everyone said the same thing to Al Gore about Global Warming. If my theory proves true, and Punxsutawney Phil is the Anti-Christ than I predict six more weeks of winter, followed by snow in June, hellfire-rain in October, and the Sun should be the color of sackcloth and the moon the color of blood, by December.