Penguins is practically chickens

The all time best ever Bugs Bunny episode is called "8 Ball Bunny." If you're too young to have watched this as a child, it's included in the DVD package of the 2005 hit movie "March of the Penguins." Check it out.

"8 Ball Bunny" has a lot to recommend it. There's an adorable little penguin who gets separated from his ice show. When he cries, his tears turn to ice cubes. Bugs agrees to walk the little guy home, but he mistakenly walks him to the Arctic, realizing too late that penguins come from Antarctica. When they get to Antarctica, Bugs realizes his little friend's destination is much closer to Hoboken than either end of the earth.

Along the way, they meet a panhandling Humphrey Bogart who pops in to ask, "Could you help out a fellow American who's down on his luck?" They also share a boat ride with a bum, that leads to a long stretch in the doldrums. As they become desperate for food and water, the bum hallucinates that the penguin is really a rotisserie chicken. He salivates as he says, "Penguins is practically chickens."

I have always found this line funny. The older I get, the more I also see it as an apt metaphor for much of modern society. So often, our beliefs and actions are based on wishful thinking about ourselves and our relationships. We buy things based on illusory promises from marketers. And we gobble fiction from our elected leaders like mother's milk.

But penguins is only practically chickens, and this blog - at least for now - is dedicated to exploring that wasteland between myth and reality.