Sunday, November 28, 2010

Thanksgiving 2010 - a little late.

Here's the annual Thanksgiving message.
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Thanksgiving is a special time…if you’re an American. Specifically if you’re not one bothered by the historical inaccuracies regarding Thanksgiving and just exactly who was there and the brotherly love that supposedly was supposed to carry over from that event. If you’re queasy about bloodshed, genocide, hypocrisy and the systematic lies sold as a national holiday, then maybe the story of Thanksgiving isn’t for you.

For the rest of us, happy Turkey day! Enjoy some football.

If you’ve been keeping track, you all know how much I love Thanksgiving, and the perceived notion that we’re required, by law, to spend time with extended family that we would rarely invite on our nights on the town. “Sure, Aunt Ethel, you’d LOVE Deicide,” you rarely say on the phone. “Yeah, I guarantee you’ll dig them so much that you’ll get a matching upside down cross burnt into your forehead. Come check them out with me.” I personally have only had this conversation about six times and at no point did any of these relatives join me (proof in the lack of upside down crosses burned into their foreheads).

Perhaps, like you, most of my afterwork activities aren’t suited for these extended family members. Perhaps, like you, I’m so busy that I can’t guarantee a holiday appearance. I have to save those for weddings that I forget to send the reply card to. Perhaps, like you, I’ve considered faking my death to avoid the holiday. Not because I don’t want to hang out with my extended family, oh no!

Also, faking your death is REALLY hard.

I have this feeling these days that most of us don’t care about Thanksgiving. I think Christmas decorations up earlier than usual ever year is a sign that, aside from the day off of work, we’re pretty much skipping over this holiday.

I know what you’re thinking: “Paul, that band Pelican is AWESOME.” And it’s true. But, regarding the holidays, YES, you’re probably right, there are many people out there, I call them LAME-O’s, who are frothing at the mouth to remove their Halloween decorations so as to put up Christmas decorations. Usually this happens around July 4th.

And why are celebrating this “revisionist” holiday? Face it, the more emphasis in our history books about Thanksgiving than the genocide that followed afterward should tell you something. While we’re at it: yes, I’m one of THOSE people and YES, I’m declaring a war on ALL HOLIDAYS. (Except the 4th of July and Halloween.) Christmas, for example. The holiday is SO winter weather and forest themed, to celebrate the birth of our savior in the barren desert/cradle of civilization? Don’t like it? Call Bill O’Reilly to complain, maybe he’ll start talking dirty to you to make you feel better.

Where was I…oh, why are we…okay: So some poor old greeter can get killed at a Walmart the following 4am. It’s certainly not because I want to watch football all day. It’s CERTAINLY not because I have NOTHING BETTER TO DO than hang out with stuffy relatives who sap the fun out of the air like a Fred Phelps impersonator at comic convention. (I dare you to follow my logic on a regular basis. Just try it.)

Really, how important is Thanksgiving in our nation’s history? Let’s look it over, according to the reader edited source of information that we all abide by, Wikipedia:

MONUMENTAL MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY

1492 – Amerigo sails the ocean blue and discovers America.

1700’s – George Washington cuts down a tree and makes his teeth out of it.

1812 – America declares “no taxation without representation” and fights a civil war against another country, India. Hence why we have Indians in the first place.

1929 – We bomb Pearl Harbor, winning the Vietnam War.

1969 – President Kennedy is assassinated, paving the way for Aristotle Onassis to become the new president of the United States Of America

2008 – Sarah Palin NOT elected to high national office of any kind.

So why do we need to pretend to have a national anything of anything just so you all can save a few bucks on a new widescreen tv? (“The one we have in the store, not the one we advertised, which was sold out, if we even had THAT one in the first place. Totally legal, by the way. Buy it or I’m calling security.”) Thanksgiving was HUNDREDS of years ago, and if it happened like we SAY it happened, has this huge, terribly ironic statement about what we consider to be ‘togetherness’ and a ‘celebration’ considering how one group at the party were there because they had fled persecution, and then shortly thereafter began persecuting. The Bears winning the Superbowl was almost 25 years ago, where’s the national holiday for THAT?

Some of you have questions about Thanksgiving and its role in American society and culture, especially if the history of it might change the meaning of it. I offered to answer some of these non-coupon-clipping doorbuster questions for you, and here are a few submitted by REAL readers (who may or may not be close friends of mine, and certainly not Bill of Hired Goons, my hetero-lifemate who certainly doesn’t pretend to be other people when asking questions like these so that it appears I’ve got a lot of people asking me these questions…).

Little Chrissy from Pennsylvania asks: “What is squash?”

Chrissy, that’s a great question. Squash is one of those foods that you hear about being eaten at Thanksgiving. Now that we know more about what really went on, I would guess that most squash is poisonous. Possibly explosive. Also, I have very little interest in eating what our ancestors ate. Have you ever seen the anonymous rock hard candy in your oldest relatives’ candy dishes? I mean, seriously. That’s probably squash, petrified.

Steve in Chicago asks: “Can we do this every day?”

If you’re referring to these question and answer sessions, the answer is no, I’ve convinced my employer that I’m a very busy man and he’s already suspicious of my constant market research in MLB scores.

Oh, I think you mean Thanksgiving. Well, you know those imaginary tales of kids who wish that Christmas or their birthday would be EVERY DAY? And they enjoy it for a few days, then it becomes tiresome, and then it becomes a living hell? Imagine that, but with relatives complaining about a black guy being President and with the Detroit Lions. No one wants that. The only holiday you want to repeat itself is Secretaries Day. Or, if you’re Andie McDowell, Groundhog Day, as then you wouldn’t have to get plastic surgery.

Scott W. in Chicago asks: “Will you pardon my turkey? New evidence regarding his case has recently surfaced.”

Scott, DNA evidence can be a double edged sword. The state might not be willing to test this evidence if another suspect can’t be produced, but it can also introduce the theory that the turkey had an accomplice, who left behind the DNA. I would do your best to focus on false confessions, the courts seem to be more lenient on reviewing police misbehavior and incompetence in these kinds of hearings. Keep filing appeals!

Chrissy in Pennsylvania asks: “Do I have to sit at the kids’ table, even though I’m 34?”

Before I answer that, could you ask your daughter to pass the salt? My envy of those at the adult table has decreased, even as I got older. NONE of those people want to go see Deicide with me. The kids can clue me in on what’s going on with cartoons I’m not supposed to be watching at my age, plus explain what “p’wn’d” means. And the people at the older-people table are now even OLDER, and thus crankier, and I can only excuse myself so many times to check on the football score.

Jim in central Illinois asks: “Why do they always let the Lions play?”

Jim, someone’s gotta eat those Christians.

And finally, Zach in Australia and Chrissy in Pennsylvania and everyone else reading this and waiting for it collectively asks, “Did you (screw) up the turkey like you (screw)ed up my life?”



MOVING ON: So, Chrissy, Jim, Scott, Steve, Zach and myself are sitting at the kids table with the younger kids (some of them OUR OWN) talking about cartoons and waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to excuse ourselves and, if not see a terrible movie released on a holiday because it’s the only weekend that that movie would make any money because bored and restless family members will see ANYTHING just to get out of the house, go stand in line at a Best Buy and hope for a discount on an iPad. (I wouldn’t be surprised if any of those people in line have more meaningful conversations with each other in that moment than they do when feeling trapped with their families earlier in the day. Or at the movie theater.)

Is this really the best we can do? Just have a national Day Of Waiting so we can buy more junk? Granted, COOL junk, but still, just to buy stuff, and in the mindset of buying to express LOVE to each other in just a month later? “Here, I love you. I helped kill an old greeter guy, possibly one of your grandparents who had to leave dinner early to get to that job at Walmart, when I stampeded in to buy you a knock off BlueRay player. Oh, wait, it’s HD. Anyway, Merry Hijacked Solstice. I mean Christmas.”

Not me. Not because I’m beyond all that. Not because I’m above the consumer mindset that we’ve cultivated in this great nation of ours as a way to celebrate our culture.

It’s because…I died, and that’s why I can’t make dinner this afternoon at Nana’s.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Send money,

-Paul

Friday, November 12, 2010

The Paul Show #2: Paul vs. The Silverfish

The latest Paul Show comic is available at:

G-mart Comics
Chicago comics
Graham Crackers (downtown, lakeview)
Challengers Comics

-Paul