It’s like googly eyes
On an F5 tornado;
Funny, scary doom.
I was perusing my Thanksgiving posts from the last several years and adding them to a new category called “Thanksgiving” so they’d be more easily searchable for me. Unfortunately, adding the new category and updating added them all to my Twitter feed. My apologies to the four people who follow that feed. Though, likely, it’s not the same four people who follow this. So they’ll never know I apologized. Oh well, enough about them. This is about us.
In last year’s post, I mentioned that the annual harvest had been “a bag of dicks”. That was ugly! I’d say I’m feeling more positive this year. 12 month’s ago, I, like many normal humans, was concerned about what the future would be like with our new insane president. Fortunately, it turns out, life is exactly the same. Well, the news is different, but the actual day-to-day part of life seems unchanged. That’s good enough, right? Let’s celebrate with a feast!
Thanksgiving feast is the only feast officially recognized by this blog. I eat until I’m sick 176 times per year, but this is the big one. This one is planned. It’s also the one time a year that I’m voluntarily social. I would be fine with a hundred people in our home for that one day only, provided most of them leave pretty quickly after eating. I wouldn’t go to someone else’s home to be with those people. Let’s not be crazy. But I’ll share our food with them in the comfort of my own home… because I know all the places I can hide if I get uncomfortable.
This year we have the added benefit of our college bound son coming home for the whole week. This is the beginning of the next stage in life. The one that eventually develops into adding a daughter in law and then grandchildren into the mix. We’ve already had “the talk”. The one about making sure any woman he dates doesn’t have conflicting Thanksgiving traditions. That’s a deal breaker for us, and we would destroy her.
So there you go. The year has been better than bag of dicks, we’re all getting older and while it’s not completely impossible, it’s probably unlikely that we’ll all die in a nuclear holocaust any time soon. Let’s eat!
Generations from now, when historians look back on 2016, they’ll agree that it can eat a bag of dicks. This year’s harvest was a steaming pile of crap. Regardless, we’ll give thanks tomorrow and celebrate with a feast.
As a nation, we normally gather on Thanksgiving in large diverse groups of friends and family. We smile and nod at racist uncles and Fox News repeaters, indulge vegan cousins and ignore goth nieces. A large enough dose of tryptophan makes everything a little more tolerable. This year, however, many will gather in smaller like minded groups. Some won’t join any gathering at all. The weeks’ old wounds of election day are still too raw for tolerance to be allowed back in our homes.
I often wonder about Thanksgiving in 1963. President Kennedy was killed on the Friday before Thanksgiving. He’d already pardoned a turkey. Right before Thanksgiving is a shit time to die. What’s worse is he was on his way to lunch. I’m very structured about meal times. I would have been thinking about what I was having for lunch at that time of day, and at that time of November, I’d have been daydreaming of the coming feast. Maybe presidents have more to worry about, but maybe they don’t. Maybe the personal tragedy of November 22, 1963 is that a man was robbed of life, lunch and Thanksgiving feast. I’ve heard stories of some pretty horrible things said in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. That must have been an uncomfortable year to share a table with people who had wicked words in their mouths.
There’s no moral to this stream of consciousness. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that you don’t need to make a point. Also a bag of dicks is a lot uglier than anyone could have dreamed.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Before we had internet memes, we had sayings. Before sayings, we had proverbs. These were things like “a penny saved is a penny earned”, “two wrongs don’t make a right” or “the pen is mightier than the sword”.
The proverb I want to talk about is “a drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts”. Honestly, I don’t remember even 60% of the things I say when I’m drunk, so I can’t tell you if that’s true or not. However, more than once, I’ve been enjoying my coffee and watching Meet The Press on a Sunday morning, and my phone will start blowing up with Facebook alerts because Drunk-Me posted something inappropriate the night before. Reading what I posted is often embarrassing, but admittedly it usually makes me snicker. In those cases, the drunk man’s posts were a fair reflection of the inappropriate thoughts usually contained in my sober mind.
Several months back, I found a bunch of Gene Autry songs in my digital music library. Apparently Drunk-Me is much older than I am, but he’s pretty tech-wise for a man of his advancing years. He’s also not averse to a little digital piracy. Most recently, Drunk-Me bootlegged all 6 Bing Crosby & Bob Hope Road Movies, even Road to Hong Kong from 1962, which doesn’t even have Dorothy Lamour in it. I don’t remember if I was being thorough or if I’m just a jerk.
Drunk-Me is a tech-savvy octogenarian with a rude sense of humor, a completist’s attention to detail and a lax opinion of copyright law. That’s the sort of guy I’d like to have a beer with. In fact, I hope to never have a beer without him. In the road movie of my life, Drunk-Me is the Crosby to my Hope. Or is he the Hope to my Crosby? Are we both Hope? I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this level of introspection.
A few weeks back, I was at a stoplight on the way to work. In my rear view mirror, I saw a normal looking middle aged white man in a plain suburban sedan, methodically and repeatedly picking his nose and eating his boogers.
Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around me. I fell on the ground and heard a voice say, “Great Caeser’s Ghost, why do you still expect the best of your fellow man. This is what they are, a bunch of mouth breathing, booger eating, hairless apes.”
Epiphany!
If you know me at all, you know I’m an optimist. I believe that when confronted with the worst, we rise to the occasion. I believe that despite our often cruel and evil behavior, it’s “the better angels of our nature” (attribute: A. Lincoln) that prevail. But deep down inside, I mean way, way down, I’ve always suspected that humans are a bunch of filthy animals. Racists, homophobes, wife-beaters, “mother rapers, father stabbers, father rapers.” (attribute: A. Guthrie).
Seeing that normal looking man in my rear view eating his boogers was like a secret glimpse into a dark place that I always suspected was there, but never knew for sure. But now, just as surely as Saul was struck blind by God on the road to Damascus, I was given sight on the road to Richardson. There is no hope for mankind. We’ve bombed the innocent, ravaged the climate and nominated Trump. From here on, we get what we deserve. Welcome to the Upside Down.
www.davidtrippart.com
50,000 Monkeys at 50,000 Typewriters Can't Be Wrong
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Part time actor, aspiring writer of poetry and prose and full-time idiot with a heart.
where would-be writer works with words
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Ideas change everything
I write books--cuz I love words. Sometimes they love me back.
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A travel blog for those of us who get lost, stay lost, and make poor decisions throughout.
A Satirical Word In Your Shell-Like Ear
Random bits of nonsense, hurling thru cyber-space at the speed of thought.
A Day In the Life Of A Cloud
Write at work. Edit never.
