Hit Movie Inspires Monogamy "Penguin-Style"

PALO ALTO, California. Last year's surprise cinematic hit "The March of the Penguins" has spawned a new breed of promiscuous behavior according to the Hoover Research Foundation, a conservative think-tank that initially praised the film for its family values.

"I'll love you forever, or 'till the end of the year, whichever comes first."

"We thought it was a great story for parents, especially fathers," notes Luke Segal, the foundation's executive director. "Male penguins trudging through freezing cold to eat fish that they regurgitate for their young. It's like Chuck E. Cheese without the bad pizza and the pedophiles in the bathrooms."

"My daddy won't let me have a turn!"

But viewers are apparently taking a very different message away from the Warner Independent film.  "We missed the part about penguins switching mates every year after the babies are old enough to walk," Segal says. "That's certainly not something we want to encourage."

"As soon as I dump her in December, I'll give you a call."

The penguin's out of the bag for Joe Don Everly, a long-haul trucker from Springfield, Missouri who says he was dragged "kicking and screaming" to the Show-Me Multiplex 14 to see the movie. "I wanted to see a Police Academy or Jackie Chan kinda movie," he says, "But Jean Louise Mabry said she'd have sex with me if I took her out to dinner and the penguin movie."

Joe Don, Sr. moves on.

That assignation produced little Joe Don, Jr., a ten-pound baby boy that his father now refuses to support. "Jean Louise was crying saying how wonderful that movie was.  I'm just doing what them penguins do."

"He says I can bring my grade up to a B+ with a little private tutoring."

Penguins of mating age are monogamous for a year until a new reproductive cycle commences, at which point they switch mates. "It is essentially serial monogamy," says zoologist Cameron Swanson of Rutgers University. "In much the same way that college professors are greeted with a new crop of young women to pick from--I mean educate--each fall, penguins seek variety on an annual basis."

Jean Louise Mabry, the now-abandoned mother of one-year-old Joe Don, Jr., says she never would have insisted on seeing "March of the Penguins" if she had known the enormous impact it would have on her life. "If I'da known Joe Don was gonna run off on me like that, I woulda gone to see somethin' less educational."

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman