Some Thanksgivingnukkah Thoughts

I found out about the whole Thanksgiving - Hanukkah thing a little too late to make a big deal out of it.  I feel like I should have done a little more to mark the passing of the day that will not happen again in 78,000 years and, as I can't conceive of the human race surviving for another 78,000 years, we may never see again.  I mean, sure, maybe humans will still be around 78,000 years from now, but I have to believe that there will be some kind of apocalyptic event that will change the culture entirely.  I believe in that, I think, more than I believe in Christ himself -- though maybe he comes back to save the day.  That hope is what Christmas is all about.  I read it in a book.

Ah, but let's not be so glum.  It was Thanksgiving, a time to be thankful.  Here is a brief list of things for which I am thankful:

Pomegranates.  I love me some pomegranates.  At work you will often find me at this time of year standing in our office kitchenette, carefully separating the ruby red tendrils from the rest of the fruit and putting them into a bowl.  I'll sit at my desk all day and eat them with a spoon.  Nobody else at the office does this -- they think I am kind of weird.  Can't imagine why.

The end of Black Friday.  I know a lot of my friends and my parents are kind of upset about the fact that a lot of stores opened up Thanksgiving night at 8 PM.  I was too, until I hit the Toys R' Us parking lot the day after at 8 AM and found it to be relatively empty.  There were signs of the great frenzy that had occurred the night before: the half empty boxes, the spattered blood, the bombed out Tiger Tank in aisle 5.  I had avoided all of it.  If it wasn't for the people who have to work at the stores on Thanksgiving day, I'd have no problem with giving the people what they want.  You can keep Thanksgiving in your way, I'll keep it mine, and if it means I can just walz into any store I want on my day off and take advantage of some killer deals, well, so much the better.  

I am thankful for this cock and balls sweater.  Wear it at your Church's next holiday mixer, and may the odds be ever in your favor.

Fun.

Rocky IV. Surely the greatest of the bunch. This movie teaches us about American Greatness, and also what it means to love.  It's also worth noting that this movie came out in 1985 and in just six short years the Soviet Union had fallen.  I'm not daft enough to believe that Rocky IV singlehandedly tore down the Iron Curtain, but surely it was the last nail in coffin.

Mannheim Steamroller.  Actually, no.  I really, really don't like Mannheim Steamroller.  I appreciate their musical ability, but I find their Christmas music to be too dramatic.  Christmas music should be about a little baby in a manger, or chestnuts roasting on an open fire, or about how people you love make it feel like Christmas even when things go wrong;  by contrast, Mannheim Steamroller is probably the kind of Christmas Music that Luke Skywalker would be listening to as he skimmed along the circumference of the Death Star.  

I don't like dramatic things.  This is why I don't particularly care for Dr. Who.  You'd think it would be perfect for me, because it's British.  But it's just so dramatic.  The world is always going to end and things are always trying to exterminate other things and there is a lot of shouting and screaming and it's just....it's just too much.  I vastly prefer an understated drama where a sexy woman drinks a cup of coffee and stares out a bunch of snowy pine trees thinking about Dostoevsky and no one talks.  

But back to Mannheim Steamroller.  The other thing I don't like about them is that you can just tell they are super-stoked about the music they are making, like in an over excitable Dwight Schrute way that is hard to put into words.  In their defense I suppose I'd also be super-stoked about anything that made me as much money as they have producing over dramatic Christmas music, but I don't know.  It just makes listening to their music worse, because they think its so cool, and now its Christmas and I am attacking the Death Star AND It's supposed to be totally cool.  And it's not, because it's war!  A few weeks ago I was just a country bumpkin living on Tatooine, buzzing wamp-rats in my piece of shit T-16.  Now my aunt and uncle are dead, that cool old Hermit is dead, my new friends are all about to die...I'm living in a sea of death! And to make matters worse I'm really confused about that Princess Leia chick.  On the one hand those hair earmuffs, I mean....wow. You never see anything like on that Tatooine. They just make you want to....and yet I don't think I can.  It's like I know her from somewhere.

Mannheim Steamroller.  At any rate, I saw these jokers riding a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and, as I expected, they were super-excited to be there.  Surprise surprise.  

Friends and Family.  Woe be unto me if I don't mention the one thing I am actually truly thankful for.  Except for the pomegranates.  I really do love pomegranates.  And these guys.