Thanks

Well, happy thanksgiving all.

My family has this "tradition" of reminiscing during family get-togethers. I suspect that this is a common affliction. For some reason, my nieces and my children delight in hearing stories about the rare times when I was naughty as a child. Both of my sisters chime in with their favorite tales about when I threw them down the staircase or convinced them that the walls in my room were filled with candy.

I just take the punishment and chalk it up to Karma.

Here's hoping that you are able to ridicule your loved ones this holiday. Give thanks to those that keep us humble.

Nutty

Sometimes, when I am holed up in my office, I begin to fantasize that people are generally fundamentally good. In order to shock myself back into reality, I like to take a trip to Wal-Mart. I just returned from such a re-awakening expedition, and my contempt for mankind is refreshingly renewed.

It is not the shelf after shelf of slave labor by foreign children that bothers me so much. Slaves do need to work or else what good are they? And I certainly cannot afford more than $4.00 for a 3-pack of T-shirts. What do you expect me to do, wear a stained undergarment?

The troubling thing about Wal-Mart is not Wal-Mart, it is the Wal-Martians. This is a species of obese, mentally challenged creatures that wanders the aisles aimlessly amassing stuff. You can tell by the glazed look in their eyes that they have surrendered completely, and the slave-master has been enslaved.

These zombies insist upon getting in my way at each and every turn of my journey, and they are the very definition of inefficiency. Why must you and your family stop at the entrance in a Red-Rover formation while you view the crap that is on special? Why must you place your cart directly in my way before you back across the aisle to view some non-existent fantasy-item on the top shelf? Why do you insist upon choosing the only item in the entire store without a bar code so that we all have to wait while Lawn&Garden figures out how much to charge for a rake?

The ostensible reason for my journey amongst the Wal-Martians was because of the holidays. We are deep frying a turkey for Thanksgiving because that is how the Pilgrims would have done it if they were alive today and if they had modified the turkey into a grotesquely shaped bird with a bounty of white meat.

And the Pilgrims would have used peanut oil. I'm not sure why we need peanut oil, but my mother was very specific about this detail. It was the kind of direction that one is tempted to ignore just to see how big the fire would be, but I chickened out.

So here is my gripe. The froaching peanut oil is more expensive than the harf-gamped turkey!!! I can get a 20lb bird for $12.00, but a giant thing of oil is $20.00!?! I guess those slaves don't work for peanuts anymore. Or, perhaps they do. Is there a peanut scarcity?