2008 Woodie Awards
Penguins, Parrot Bay, and the human response
David Monroe
Issue date: 4/3/07 Section: Distractions
Nature is cruel. Such was my conclusion after catching my first glimpse of (i)Planet Earth, the groundbreaking new television series. Like a telescopic lens aimed at the third floor bathroom window of the Kappa house, the show offers the viewer a peak at things that few human beings will ever see. Thanks to (i)Planet Earth, I have witnessed such seemingly alien sights as bears swimming sixty miles out at sea, penguins parenting their children to death, and (i)Phi writers bathing in mountains of bat guano.
After watching a couple episodes, I have decided that despite its sometimes-lethal parental zeal, the penguin is my second favorite animal. Right now only the King of Kuddly, the Koala bear, beats out the penguin in my hierarchy. Next to Taylor Woods, the penguin is probably the silliest creature in the world. However, while Taylor has little to offer society other than an unquenchable thirst for new installments of (i)Pet Star, penguins have been credited with the invention of both the tuxedo and the Slip n' Slide. Delightful animals.
But Nature does not have pity even on these fun-loving, binary-hued party machines. In fact, Nature seems to find perverse delight in the destruction of penguins. Barely aware of his own ridiculousness, the penguin is hardly able to respond to the myriad dangers that lie in wait for him in his Antarctic homeland.
It's enough to make one want to weep for those poor penguins. And that's precisely what I was doing when someone introduced me to the next great love of my life. "Why cry when you can drink a Parrot Bay?" he asked.
You see, Parrot Bay is a beverage that combines the alcohol content of a can of beer with the sugar content of a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats. The combination of alcohol, that most time-proven of anti-depressants, and sugar, which is tasty, seemed so straightforward that at the time I wondered why no one had thought of it before. Then I remembered Mike's Hard Lemonade. And Mike's Hard Berry. And Zima.
After watching a couple episodes, I have decided that despite its sometimes-lethal parental zeal, the penguin is my second favorite animal. Right now only the King of Kuddly, the Koala bear, beats out the penguin in my hierarchy. Next to Taylor Woods, the penguin is probably the silliest creature in the world. However, while Taylor has little to offer society other than an unquenchable thirst for new installments of (i)Pet Star, penguins have been credited with the invention of both the tuxedo and the Slip n' Slide. Delightful animals.
But Nature does not have pity even on these fun-loving, binary-hued party machines. In fact, Nature seems to find perverse delight in the destruction of penguins. Barely aware of his own ridiculousness, the penguin is hardly able to respond to the myriad dangers that lie in wait for him in his Antarctic homeland.
It's enough to make one want to weep for those poor penguins. And that's precisely what I was doing when someone introduced me to the next great love of my life. "Why cry when you can drink a Parrot Bay?" he asked.
You see, Parrot Bay is a beverage that combines the alcohol content of a can of beer with the sugar content of a box of Frosted Mini-Wheats. The combination of alcohol, that most time-proven of anti-depressants, and sugar, which is tasty, seemed so straightforward that at the time I wondered why no one had thought of it before. Then I remembered Mike's Hard Lemonade. And Mike's Hard Berry. And Zima.
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