A Pilgram's Progress

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Aside from Halloween, Thanksgiving is simply one of the most darkly disturbing holidays ever ... and I've already dubbed this year "Cranksgiving 2007".

You know, I am thankful. I'm having one of my best years ever: I've got great friends, a fantastic job, and a big-assed television. Game over. I win, right? So why stick me in that viper pit of poultry pounding relatives?

Jesus. I sneak peeks around the room, and find my mind turning the same thought over and over: how the hell did I come out normal around these weirdoes?

Then I force my attention back to the football game on my big-assed television.

God I love that television.


***

Inevitably, my cozy, slothful splendor will be torn asunder: somebody forgot something at the store, and I've gotta face the cold to address an emergency cranberry deficit or something. I mean why do I have to suffer for someone else's pisspoor planning? History is absolutely littered with the arrow-riddled bodies of pilgrims toting last-minute yams and 12 packs of Coke ... even after fifty of sixty years, have we learned nothing?

Mom should be fired immediately. Hey, I'm sorry ... I understand that you were up all night poking and prodding a dead bird in the oven. But this is like the 20th Century already: we have frozen turkey dinners now. Six minutes in the microwave. Plastic sporks. Boom! On to the football.

It's called the Pilgrim's Progress, and Americas neverending quest for big-assed televisions and footbal is well-documented in all the history books. Embrace it. Learn from it. And never forget, lest ye be slain horribly by Indians too.

.. And please note that I'm not saying be mean to mom; I mean she is mom after all. Give her a decent reference. Set her up with one of them "Golden Parachutes" and a nice severance package to make sure she can afford COBRA for the duration while she seeks some other deserving nomadic tribe of needful pilgrims without microwave ovens. It wouldn't be so bad if done properly; I mean all she needs to do is hang out on the beach and wait for a boat, right?

Mom could use a tan.


***

And every family has one. The member -usually a brother- who has a new "significant other" every year. So every year you gotta mince about on eggshells to impress this new person you will never see again.

Last year, we took the new harlot aside and insisted that the entire family had been genetically blessed with a superfluous nipple that, until blessed with new progeny, we primarily use to feed the cats.

She was gone before the football even started.


***

Inescapably my mind will turn to our troops overseas. Each and every one of them is a million miles from home, friends, and family, blowin the crap out of stuff. This is the one day of the year I'm completely overtaken by jealousy of them.

And it's here that the sarcasm screeches to an abrupt and uncharacteristic halt ...

Even as I sit and write and bitch, there are people being shot at to defend me. Kids mostly. Undeniably, a quantifiable statistic of them will never see the land they are fighting for again ... and some will be so brutalized, they might wish they were part of that statistic.

I'm scared for them, and I don't understand our enemy at all; can't we all just get big televisions, and watch the Packers smear the Lions through a sated tryptophan haze?

Even just today?

Happy Thanksgiving to our troops; you are in our thoughts and prayers.

And I wish you come home safe.

... so I can complain about you next Thanksgiving.

:)