i hate fudge

Today I will be once again linking Groundhog Day to various quotations used in an impromptu round at today's speech tournament (this one down in Long Beach)... as I did here, here and here & here and here & here.

"Life is a challenge - meet it. Life is a song - sing it. Life is a dream - realize it. Life is a game - play it. Life is love - enjoy it." - Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

This quotation (like a few others I saw today) is almost too easy because it is so broad. But, I could make it (relatively) difficult by breaking it down. There are five parts to it. Groundhog Day links to each of those.

1. Phil's life (both pre-loop and in-loop... and post-loop if I was right here) is definitely a challenge. His good days, his bad days--they all take work. Even his worst days--the breaking-of-the-alarm-clock days and the suicide days--take work. He doesn't just hit a snooze button; he destroys that clock. And, he doesn't do the obvious (and possibly more poetic) and electrocute himself with that alarm clock but instead goes two flights down before coming one flight back up to electrocute himself with the toaster. Nothing is simple.
2. "Song" is obviously a metaphor, but Phil's life in-loop is much closer to the structure of a song than most, repeating as it does. Still, the point of the metaphor is, in my opinion, that life is full of patterns and is meant to be enjoyed and shared. If this isn't something Phil learns in the loop, I don't know what is... and, trust me, after this long, I think I know what is.
3. "Dream" also is a metaphor, obviously. But, Phil's repeating life in the loop is certainly closer to a literal dream than most lives are. I imagine, though, that it's the normal flow of time that will seem dreamlike as the loop goes on, fleeting and forgotten.
4. Phil knows all too well that life can be a game, the way he plays it in his adolescent period, the way he manipulates it on date night, and the way he perfects it in act three. Life is meant to be enjoyed... and I only use the term "meant" because if I were doing this as an actual impromptu speech I would need to conserve time rather than ramble on about how I don't think anything necessarily means anything. And, life certainly isn't meant to be any one particular thing or another. It just is. For Phil, life is all about selfish joy pre-loop and early in-loop but he learns something more like the value of being a team player as the loop goes on.
5. Life is love... taken figuratively, love, game, dream and song work in basically the same manner; life is not supposed to be--and I'm putting the meaning here on the author of this quotation more than on myself--boring and monotonous; it is suppose to be fun.

And, I'm well over 600 words in and I've not even made it to the second of twenty-one quotations from today's (yesterday's actually, as it is after 1 AM) second round of impromptu. I didn't get home until 12:30, after leaving before 6 this morning. It was a long day and I judged 5 events, ate some unusual food (for me); imagine me, like Rita saying with disgust "I ate fudge"--

(Or, maybe it's "I hate fudge." It's hard to be sure.)

--that I ate avocado. Had a "veggie" sandwich from a place I don't frequent and apparently they don't deal in veggie much. It wasn't much more than avocado and lettuce on it. But for some mayonnaise and mustard and some pickles and pepperoncinis I added, I'm not sure I could have eaten it.

And, I'm digressing about food when I should be pointing out that linking all these quotations to Groundhog Day will inevitably get repetitive. And it will also apparently get more and more wordy. And, I think one quotation is all I will be dealing with tonight. Perhaps I will get to the rest tomorrow. For now, I will be taking Groundhog Day to bed with me on the iPad. And, I will try to get some sleep before finals weeks gets going tomorrow (today).

Today's reason to repeat a day forever: to get some sleep.