Punxsutawney Phil:
Enemy of Allah
by Ali Kalil Mohammed Yousaf al-Wahiri

Brothers, I call upon you today to put down the funnies and instead take up arms in defense of the Almighty, the one God Allah, against a most insidious infidel. This impostor has made of himself a false idol. He is guilty of the basest effronteries, the most obscene self-veneration. Those he has most wholly corrupted he has made his priests and through them, this façade of gentle and smiling benevolence—this mirage of iniquity—he has bid his followers to prostrate themselves before him; to pay him the most extravagant tributes, to shower him with greatest praise, to annually supplicate him. Toward this end, he has subjugated them all with the wrath of heaven itself! He alone purports to speak to, for and through the firmament. He presumes to make of himself our God on Earth.

I speak now to you, of course, about Punxsutawney Phil!

Brothers, I urge you to take up arms against this unrepentant transgressor; this idolatrous “hog” who has gorged himself and grown so monumental at the trough of vainglorious idleness that he threatens to obstruct heaven itself! Observe his overindulgent contentedness, the world-weary grimace permanently affixed on his face, as he gazes out at his enchanted masses. Witness his paunch, his shameless corporeal profligacy! He has, in his unabashed worldliness, feasted on the very marrow of spirituality.

Worst and most outrageous of all, he has predicted seven straight long winters. Seven! There is no end to his duplicitous tyranny. On the one hand, he reveals to the world his placid, mollifying aspect. And yet, he undertakes his celestial machinations, his diabolical meteorological manipulations, with sinister opaqueness. The white shit does not lie! He is peeing on us through his suffocating accumulations!

His disdain is a deep, mustard yellow—suggesting a tangy, almost piquant, but nevertheless unacceptable savor. It is time to stop swallowing this gall, no matter how potentially delicious, how delectable this saucy taboo may enliven the tongue. Resist his, and all other, golden showers! Resist the glittering, arcing stream. The heady, yeasty bouquet, flowers with poison breath. Sweet, sweet poison…Perhaps I should change metaphors.

In short, slay this unholy beast, this mocking defiler. Your reward shall be great: 72 virgins to shower you with adoration, or even something else. Though I have no opinion as to what that might be. Punxsutawney Phil must be killed. Or at least forced into hiding so that his legend increases, until he is more widely known and revered than he ever was before we put a price on his squat, hairy head. And even his lamest literary endeavors are hailed for their courage and vision. On second thought, no: he should just be killed.