Phil Dunphy

"I’m the cool dad, that’s my thang. I’m hip, I surf the web, I text. LOL: laugh out loud, OMG: oh my god, WTF: why the face." - Phil Dunphy

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Happy Birthday


            I would have loved to meet the narrator, Jonah, in Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Cat’s Cradle. By the end of Jonah’s fantastic tale, he finds himself in a peculiar situation. After surviving a dreadful disaster with similar effects to that of the atom bomb, he discovers few others on the island of San Lorenzo survived the catastrophe as well. Before this devastating event that wiped out almost the entire population of San Lorenzo and after Jonah becomes president of the little island, the narrator begins to possess a growing need to climb to the top of the country’s largest mountain peak, Mount McCabe. Once informed that the mountain has never been scaled by man as well as non sacred to the local religion, the adventurer claims that “Maybe I’ll [Jonah] climb it” (211). After the tragic mishap to the island, it becomes Jonah’s dream to reach the top of Mount McCabe and plant a symbol on the mountain’s peak. For this reason, if I could present a birthday present to Jonah, I would give him a pair of Verbera Hiker GTX Boots found only in North Face stores. It did cross my mind that Jonah could “borrow” a pair of hiking boots from a deserted store in the country’s capital, Bolivar. However, because San Lorenzo suffered from “misery and muck,” I figured Jonah had a slim probability of stumbling across a North Face store and therefore would have to climb in sub-par hiking gear (133). Once ascended to the top of Mount McCabe in his stellar boots, Jonah planned to turn himself to stone with the help of Felix Hoenikker’s invention, ice-nine. Every human to ever watch a movie knows that a hero, such as Jonah, has a perfect woman to love. Even before meeting her, Jonah fell in love with a young peach named Mona Aamons Monzano, exclaiming that she “could make me [Jonah] far happier than any woman” (85). Mona’s fate proved identical to Jonah’s: suicide. In order to give Jonah the strength to perform such a feat, my second gift to him would consist of a locket to wear around his neck with a picture of his heavenly Mona locked tightly against his heart. I hope that these two gifts bestow the necessary gear and strength to my friend Jonah so that he may complete his dream and fulfill his Bokononist views.


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