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SAN FRANCISCO--The recently established Cubby Department of Observations today
declared the third week of September to be a period of reflection and remembrance to
be known henceforward as Hot September, or Kathy Barra Days. Observations went on to proclaim that the week-long autumnal rite would be held at the end of October instead of during the third week of September this year. According to Cubby Lore, it was during "Hot September" that Kathy Barra was tormented and taunted and deemed a rodent by her third-grade classmates. In the Cubby Creatures song "Who Remembers Kathy Barra?" there's the lyric: in a classroom in hot September we gave her the name she would never forget. That name, of course, was "capybara," taken from the name of the world's largest-bodied species of rodent, which flourishes in South America. When Kathy Barra's third-grade classmates--a few of The Cubby Creatures allegedly among them--first heard the name of this rodent variety, they misheard the teacher and collectively believed that the teacher had said, "Kathy Barra." What followed was an episode of human psychological torture that marred the girl's self-image and turned her into a drunken, drug-addicted prostitute. "You're a capybara!" they all screamed as they gathered around her in a circle and pointed and jeered and had the best time of their lives at her expense. The Cubby Creatures devoted a large part of their early career to seeking out and publicly apologizing to Kathy Barra, who eventually joined them as part of the cast of Cubbyvision, the short-lived cable series in San Francisco. "Since we have only just now gotten it together to proclaim thusly about the newly established holiday," read the Observation Department's official press release, which came out today, "we found fit to declare as a caveat that the newly established holiday will be enacted for the first time during the last week of October, from Tuesday the 24th of October until 11:59pm on Halloween. It is, in fact, in progress at this time. "While we feel it would be absurd to call the week of remembrance 'Hot September' this year, since it will, in 2006, be observed during the final week of October instead of during the designated third week of September, we think that the term 'Kathy Barra Days' will do just fine this year. Although if you want to go ahead and call it Hot September, be our guest." The Department of Observations went on to recommend fasting during Hot September, as a way of paying tribute and retribution for Kathy Barra's own Hot September activity: the nonstop binge eating episode that would launch her downward spiral into a netherworld of psychic despair and health concerns. The department added that it had been asked whether it would not be more appropriate for observant cubbyites to binge eat during Kathy Barra Days, a notion the department declared "silly." |