January 20: Penguin Awareness Day

Today was Penguin Awareness Day, begging the all important question of how one becomes aware of penguins.  And aren't we already aware of them?  I mean really.  I, for one, am aware of delicious, delicious penguins.  That's not true.  They taste terrible.

Don't cry, Penguin.  Your grossness is your salvation.

Oh nay nay - the awareness here refers to the shrinking habitat that many species of penguin have to endure because of climate change.  Man.  That shit's sad.  Luckily, Justin and I were able to single-handedly reverse all of the damage done by decades of climate change by sponsoring a penguin family.

Congratulations, [Your Name Here]!

Yes that's a cell phone picture.  DEAL WITH IT.  We planned weeks in advance (and this is true) to adopt a penguin family on Penguin Awareness Day and then completely forgot on the day of until, apparently, 10:24pm.  Luckily for us, the internet exists.

The adopting of a penguin family is actually a great program.  Defenders of Wildlife allows you to choose various levels of symbolic penguin adoption.  Do you want to save a penguin family?  Maybe save the penguin mommy and penguin babies because you don't want some penguin dude honing in on your ladybird?  That's sick.  You're sick.  Anyway, sicko, you can adopt a penguin family and the organization will use the money to lobby congress and other organizations to stop environmental policies that harm penguin populations. That's pretty neat.  Unless you're a penguin hating libertarian.

I also taught Justin the penguin dance - which was an AMAZING theater warm up I learned doing plays at East Quad.  The basic gist is that you stand there mimicking a penguin, one limb at a time.  So, first you're standing and just flapping your left arm like some kind of odd penguin moron.  Then you flap both arms.  Then you flap both arms and move one leg in a sort of lopsided stationary waddle.  Then you flap both arms and waddle with both legs.  And then - BEST PART - "penguins attack" - you waddle AT EACH OTHER in an adorable melee.  Amazeballs.

But Justin won the holiday:

SO MUCH THIS.

Despite the fact that Penguin Awareness Day has come and gone, we would highly recommend that people check out Defenders of Wildlife - they are doing good work and they're a highly rated charity (none of that lining their execs pockets BS).  And yes - you can still adopt a penguin family and get your very own non-personalized certificate to print at home.*

*I'm teasing - we'll get a real certificate and a penguin plushy, but it won't come for about a week.