Louise: Don't you think it's really weird that Groundhog Day is a legit holiday?
Louise: Like on calendars and stuff?
Louise: It is so meaningless
Sean: Yeah, I don't really get it
Sean: The groundhog also seems like a semi-mythical animal to me
Louise: Like Andie MacDowell
Sean: Taxonomically, is a groundhog extremely different from a hedgehog?
Louise: Hmm
Louise: Taxonomically speaking
Sean: I feel like those names came from some dude spotting one of those animals once
Sean: With questionable accuracy
Sean: "I don't know, Linnaeus. you also called that thing a hog"
Sean: "I don't trust your observational skills"
Louise: I like that tactic of labeling things just based on what you saw them come out of
Sean: Yes, and then being too proud/embarrassed to revise anything
Sean: Interesting note: a groundhog and a woodchuck are the same creature
Louise: I just saw that too!
Louise: And the "land pig"
Louise: Didn't catch on as well as groundhog
Louise: I'm going to start calling hedgehogs "bush pigs"
Sean: Our agrarian human ancestors simply weren't very open-minded
Sean: Zoology was a total mystery
Sean: Unless everything could be compared to an existing farm animal
Sean: Manatee? Sea cow
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Louise: I blame some other language
Louise: Like French maybe
Louise: Languages where they don't create new words for new things
Louise: The French for potato is still "apple of the earth"
Sean: Groundhogs are also squirrels
Louise: Ew
Louise: That really creeps me out for some reason
Louise: That groundhogs are enormously fat squirrels
Sean: Squirrels are gross animals
Louise: Squirrels: Groundhogs :: Humans: Humans in WALL-E
Sean: Groundhogs are one of the rare animals that have benefited from human encroachment onto nature
Sean: They're not tough enough to live in a forest
Louise: Geez, groundhogs suck!
Sean: There's a lot of references to how groundhogs are TRUE hibernators
Sean: I guess they reach a level of laziness and inactivity that is unsurpassed in the animal kingdom
Louise: And stupidity
Louise: They are scared of their own shadows
Sean: You know, we are treating Groundhog Day like people in Berkeley treat Columbus Day
Nod.
Also in agrarian nicknames: tuna, chicken of the sea. And cops, pigs of the road.
P.S. I also got to be present recently at a discussion between Gene and Dan about the totally ridiculous cover of the Groundhog Day movie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:189656~Groundhog-Day-Posters.jpg). Bill Murray in a clock? Summer weather outside? Also, the tagline: "He's having the day of his life...over and over again." Are we really going to call this "the day of his life"? Wasn't the day of his life that day he talks about, when he and the Virgin Islands girl made love like sea otters? This DVD cover is the runt piglet of the film world, suitable only for mockery and eventual eating by its peers. Or something.