IT'S A WORLD OF MASCOTS!
HA! I'm kidding!
It's a world of people and beetles, mostly, isn't it?*
Nonetheless, we should be more grateful to the mascots among us. They come in all shapes, sizes and species. They warn our athletes of the humiliating consequences of defeat; they raise public awareness about trivial public issues; and, best of all, they remind us to buy stuff before we even realize we need it. And that's why you had better get used to our relentlessly recurring feature: The Weakly Blow's MASCOTS OF THE MOMENT!
For this, our inaugural rumpus, we recognize two deserving recognizees - an old, retired fish and an up-and-coming pachyderm floozie.
First, a tip of the old fedora to . . .
PINKY
Pinky, left, currently resides at Walingford Roadside Ski-Ball Palace and Petting Zoo on Kansas Highway 62, a little ways past exit 47 (it's the Walingford/Spiggot Hill exit, I think.) She's always available for birthday celebrations, Bar Mitzvahs, funerals and bachelor parties.
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*Whether it's more of a people's world or a beetles' one is a question that torments me night and day. On the one hand, there are a lot more of them than there are of us. So far, beetle maniacs have counted 350,000 different species of beetles and they (the maniacs, not the beetles) are finding more of them all the time. The famous geneticist J. B. S. Haldane said that "God had an inordinate fondness for beetles." But, personally, I think God's affection for people is much more difficult to understand. A case in point: The reason there's only one species of us is that, before you were born, our grampas killed-off the Neanderthals. And remember, not only are there more beetles than people, but they've got more legs than we do. On the other hand, we're taller and have most of the money . . . and money usually wins.
