I will try to write about my personal experience with this so-called holiday that catches me off guard more than once per year. And please note that I almost titled this blog post “Chicken Soup for the Soul of the Soup's Own Chicken.”
Black Thursday?
I know exactly what you mean when you say that you feel like an alien from the outer spaces who has traveled to this planet with the goal of learning how to mimic human behavior.
Perhaps residents of your home planet are making a fantasy film in which you shall play an earthling, and you are now researching the ways of humankind, in order to achieve a more believable performance; like when Robert De Niro worked as a real taxi driver to help him play the role of the taxi driver in the movie Taxi Driver.
I wrote ‘so-called holiday’ in the initial paragraph above. Why ‘so-called’? Because I can’t get a consensus from earthly inhabitants about whether or not this day belongs among those days that are prefixed ‘holi-’.
I’ll tell you some of the names that I’ve heard this day called. I’ve heard it called ‘T-Day’ (note that this rhymes with ‘D-Day’, which does not mean ‘Doris Day’ – for that is abbreviated with dots rather than a dash, like so: ‘D.D.’, same as ‘Doomsday Device’), which I assume means ‘Turkey Day’. I’ve also heard it called just regular ‘Thor's day’. Those are the names I’ve heard.
So what happens?
Members of a family gather at 11 a.m. One family member must bring a personal supply of gin for himself in an orange plastic cup. (The gin can be mixed with vermouth, but the olive garnish should be consumed beforehand or simply abandoned along with the high-stemmed cocktail glass: for one should always appear to drink only water.) First, the family members should gather around a single laptop computer to view photographs for exactly one hour. As soon as the church bells begin striking 12 o'clock noon, two egg-based dishes should be served. The dishes should taste delicious. The members of the family should eat these dishes. Most importantly, while eating, all family members should refrain from thinking about any scene from Luis Buñuel’s film The Phantom of Liberty.
If you are forced to utter something for which you feel thankful, simply repeat as follows: “I am thankful that the NFL hashtag will keep me in the center of the action today, even during small talk.”
The acronym NFL stands for National Football League. (From what I understand, football in the US differs from football in Europe; and the acronym US stands for United States.) The hashtag is a literary device that was popular from 2004 to 2018 of the Inhuman Era on the micro-blogging platform known as T.W.E.E.T. (The most fashionably attired computer biologists assure us that the hashtag’s exact purpose and function shall remain a mystery until Paradiso goes bad again.)
Seriously, though: my favorite part of the day was when we all slipped into a riveting conversation about religion. But wait – right here, I feel that I should break up this long post with a photo of the grave of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, so that it will seem like this blog got interrupted by a commercial. (Here's the source.)
Blog post, continued:
As I was saying, my favorite part of the day was when we all dove into a riveting talk about religion. (As long as everyone remains deferential, there are few things that I enjoy more than a religious conversation – and note that I do not call it a ‘debate’; I dislike debates as much as I love conversations.) The talk flowed freely and easily, and I learned much about how each one of my siblings and their spouses, partners, and co-pilots feel about life's meaning or lack thereof.
My mother revealed her prime concern to be for the bright ideas of St. Paul the Apostle (A.K.A. Saul of Tarsus). She admitted to fearing that Paul's idea of "Father Time" might lock me up in Paul's idea of "Hell" when he finds out that I do not trust the effectiveness of Paul's own "Salvation Mechanism".
My reaction to this was to note that her own God's son—St. Mark’s Jesus—says quite different things than Paul, regarding salvation; and I couldn't help adding that I wish people would not let St. Paul’s views trump the Nazarene’s.
OK! I vowed that I’d write until the timer dings, and it just dang, so I’m done. Sorry that my funds of knowledge proved insufficient.
P.S.
More of my religious balderdash can be found in this post and this book.
P.P.S.
Yesterday, prior to the abovementioned festivities, I recorded a short reading from my text called Impatiens, which is part of my big blue collection of self-amusements that can be captured in the amazon or otherwise.
TRANSCRIPT:
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