Like, Happy Thanksgiving, Or Whatever

It's Thanksgiving, which, as the name implies, is a time for giving thanks, if not also a time to remember that Thanksgiving helped, uh, usher in the extermination of Native Americans from the northeast. (Stand with Standing Rock here.) And I confess, I'm feeling a little more of that last one this year given obvious events on American shores earlier this month that would seem, in certain respects, to indicate parts of these here United States have not really advanced all that much in social attitudes since the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock.

Of course, as soon as you start talking that way, there are all manner of morons who emerge to tell you to stop being that guy because all these stories about the real Thanksgiving are just a conspiracy by The Media™ to ruin the taste of everyone's turkey. What's worse, there are also all manner of optimists who emerge to tell you that everything is going to be ok because the sun came up, and to tell you that hey, man, it's Thanksgiving so, like, give thanks! And hell, there are still beautiful things in the world. There's this Tribe Called Quest song; there's this Carly Rae Jepsen song; there's the banana pudding at Hattie B's; there's Laurence Laurentz; there's Olya Povlatsky; there's Tommy Armstrong Jr. scrambling out of the pocket and heaving the football downfield which makes me feel like, I imagine, Katy Perry flying above some gargantuan stadium in a harness. Still, you know, all the other stuff. Sigh.

That's why this Thanksgiving I find myself feeling a little like the immortal Del Griffith of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", wanting to exude so much gladness amidst calamity even as I nonetheless find myself wracked by fear and sadness, straining to put a smile on my face but collapsing into tears when no one's looking. So, this Thanksgiving, I don't want to watch "Love Actually", frankly, which has been a longstanding tradition of my fellow Turkey Day orphans, because I'm not feeling like love actually is all around because I'm feeling like a good chunk of my American peeps who flaunt their evangelicism only want to issue love on the basis of this & that because they get off on hate so much more than they will ever realize.

So fuck it. I'll just be over here in this burned out car, in the snow, sitting by myself.