I stole the title of this entry from an email that I received from my realtor. And I quote the following fact from the same communique:
In 1705, the town of Colchester, Connecticut postponed Thanksgiving for a week because there was not enough molasses available to make pumpkin pie.
OK now here's the obligatory image, & then I'll start my confession...
Dear diary,
I wish holidays and get-togethers were based on friendship and common interests rather than on bloodline and tradition. It’s always pleasant to spend time with friends. But family? I guess some people enjoy spending time with family, and I guess I do too, but I still feel wrong to label the occasion pleasant. It’s more like smearing grease all over your hands and then trying to lift a heavy object. Preferably an object made of metal.
That’s why I like animals so much. You’re right, people are animals too; but, c’mon, you know what I mean: animals who do not speak a human language. The fact that we can’t lie to each other attracts me. All we can do is cuddle and pet each other. My friends the alligators or the peacocks, we sit outside, around back of the mansion, while Odysseus and the suitors break bread inside. To sum up: All language is false, and all cuddling and petting is true.
The alligator I call Chaunty sits by my side while I stroke his head, and he blinks at me with his left-side eye, and I gaze at him and wonder what he’s thinking. We hear the festivities taking place withindoors, and we’re thankful to be excluded. We’re thankful to be sitting here in the moonlight. My other friend Bando the peacock approaches, strutting gracefully. And Chaunty eats Bando.
Here I place a star, to indicate that the foregoing text was written just before we attended dinner yestreen, and everything I’m writing from this point forward is…
I’m trying to say that it’s now the next day: the day after the holiday. The morning after. It’s four in the morning, which is early where I come from, and, instead of reclining in bed and dreaming of sugarplums, I’m sitting bolt upright at my desk and recording my thots.
It’s been two full years since we’ve seen my sweetheart’s parents. We like her parents, and we get along with them fine, but we avoid them like the plague because they’re Baptist Fundamentalists. I used to call them Christians, cuz that what they call themselves, but I now think that it’s too insulting to the Christian faith to apply this label to Eddy and Linda. (Those are their names.) I don’t mean this as an insult, when I say that they are Baptist Fundamentalists instead of Christians, for I am anti-Christian myself (pro-Jesus = anti-Christ): it’s just the most accurate way to describe their bright·bulb·ed·ness.
Anyway, so we politely never see my in-laws, but yesterday we joined them for the holiday. What happened is that my brother-in-law Will came to town. He’s the one who lives in Colorado. He drove an airplane here, and he was bunking with his parents in their bunkbed (they slept on top and he on the bottom); then at 3 p.m. he gave me a call on the telephone, saying “Let us meet up and listen to Rockman 2,” by which he meant the soundtrack to Mega Man 2, which is our favorite video game soundtrack. (It is our understanding that the game was originally titled Rockman, that’s why we refer to it by that name when talking privately to each other on the phone with only the NSA listening in.) Yet Will had no car, so he stood at the streetside and hitchhiked. And the first vehicle to stop and offer him a ride happened to be driven by his father. So when Will showed up at my house and said “I have no money to pay for this cab,” I stepped over & greeted Eddy, which, as I explained earlier, is the name of my father-in-law. I invited Eddy to come inside and look at our new-old house. And Eddy answered:
“I will inspect your house, but only as partial payment for this service that I have rendered to my son by taxiing him here. Let it be understood that this home inspection only covers the interest that you owe me. The price of paying off the rest of your debt is to join us for Thanksgiving dinner on the morrow afternoon. We will serve turkey, as per tradition. For we received a coupon in the mail that offered a bargain at our local supermarket—it said: ‘Buy two hams, get one free turkey’; so we did that. It was a really good deal.”
So now fast-forward to the next day. The celebration is in full swing. The attendees are sitting around a large table. Starting at my left and proceeding clockwise, I will give their names. First is Linda (my mother-in-law), then Eddy (my father-in-law), Will (my brother-in-law), Jed (my other brother-in-law; & by the way, Jed and I were born in the exact same year, 1977 — so we’re both in our early 40s — whereas Will is about fifteen years younger, I think… I’m not too good with ages or places names theology or social norms), then to the left of Jed was Annette (Jed’s lover and confidant), and finally my sweetheart, whose name I forget.
The first thing they did was ask what everyone wants to drink. The choices consisted of: water, whole milk, or soda. Here’s where I feel an opportunity was missed; they should have included ABSINTHE on the menu (a potent green aniseed-flavoured liqueur, originally made with the shrub wormwood). Cuz family get-togethers can be stressful; and alcoholic beverages, I have found, can be effective at easing the burden of high-strung nerves. But all Baptist Fundamentalists are teetotalers. Capital tee Total abstinence from alcohol. So I said, “What type of soda do you have?” And they said, “Pepsi.” So I said, “Well I haven’t tasted soda pop in decades, so I’m not accustomed to drinking all that sugar, but I guess I’ll try one.” And, for the record, it made me feel loopy.
Then we passed all the rest of the serving plates around the table, from right to left. The first plate had the turkey, white or dark meat. Then there was gravy for the turkey, greyish-brown. Then there was stuffing for the turkey, sort of tawny colored. Then there was a mixture of cooked vegetables; and a salad with leaves and raisins. Also one pickle, and some carrots, and some olives fresh from the jar. I think that’s all.
Now the conversation went as follows. First, Jed’s lover Annette asked me how I felt about the midterm elections. She and I have a sort of rapport when it comes to politics, because we bonded during the 2016 primaries when we found out that we were both enthusiastic supporters of Bernie Sanders. By the way, back in 2016, which coincidentally was the last time I was present for a holiday meal at the in-laws, as Annette and I were spaz-praising our comrade Bernie, I noticed that one of my uncles-in-law across the table was looking increasingly annoyed; and I thot to myself: “This is what it must mean, in the King James translation of the Bible, when it says that Cain’s countenance fell.”
The LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. (Genesis 4:4)
So I said unto my uncle-in-law who looked so angry: “Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?” And this uncle-in-law answered me, saying “I just think that it might be a good idea to have a businessman as U.S. President, for a change. For a businessman might be able to run this country better than these regular politicians.” So I gauged that he was sticking up for Donald Trump, and that therefore Mr. Trump is my uncle-in-law’s preferred candidate. If I understand right, Trump has done business in the realms of real estate, construction, casinos, golf courses, and television. (I wish that I myself could make money in Manhattan.) And this uncle-in-law of mine also added, as an afterthought: “And I don’t want my hard-earned tax dollars going to pay for no dirty lazy hippies.” I think this remark was a reaction to what Annette and I had been saying about our plans to strengthen welfare and the social safety nets.
But all that was back in 2016. So consider all the above conversation an aside. Here I’ll try again to recount the talk that happened at this year’s Thanksgiving: the one from November of 2018.
So Annette was like “What do you think of the midterms?” And I said, “To tell the truth, my spirit is broken. I don’t think that the system can be changed thru the way we do voting here. My attitude is really low; I’ve lost hope. Bernie got me excited and all fired up about political revolution; and then in these last two years I’ve spent so much time reading about the economy, and about our country’s history, and about politics in general, that I’m now more of a radical commie hippie bastard than even Bernie himself. Bernie seems too right-wing, to me. I still love him, and all these young new democratic socialists and independents that were able to get elected, I’m happy for them; but I don’t think that they’ll be able to make a difference, because the machine is designed to eliminate progress and neutralize democracy. I hope I’m wrong about this, and I’m all ears if anyone thinks they can convince me otherwise. Anway, what’s your take on it — are you happy with the results of recent… stuff?”
Then Annette said, “Well I’m exhausted. I’ve been out knocking on doors trying to get the vote out for the non-corporate Democrats; and meanwhile our dear father-in-law Eddy here acted as a delegate for the Republicans—can you believe that!? And the whole Supreme Court Judge Debacle pissed me off so much… It’s hard to talk here as a family, cuz the parents are so far right and I’m hard left; so we’ve had a lot of arguments.”
Then Annette had to leave for work, so our grassroots leftwing firestorm died down, and the conversation became more general. Eddy said to me, “Do you see these people out on the streets holding signs that say ‘I am homeless’? We never used to see that in Apple Valley. You know what it is? They have networks, where one ringleader will command each member of the group to go and stand at a different corner in town, so it’s a strategy and none of them are really what they say: they’re all lying; they’re all trying to pull a fast one and make a buck, posing as needy. What do you think of that?”
And I said, “I wish we would all agree to pool our money together and eradicate homelessness once and for all; we should have a system that automatically and without question meets everyone’s basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, medical...” Then Linda interrupted and said:
“But people will take advantage of your system: con artists will find a way to get more than they deserve.” And I answered, “Let us solve homelessness and meet all of people’s needs, and if some con artists take advantage, then so be it: we are strong enough to help everyone AND allow a few people to use the system dishonestly. The richest corporations are using the current system far more dishonestly than we can imagine, and we’re not even helping humankind. Let’s stop worrying about individuals here or there abusing the system; let’s just solve our problems: poverty in general; hunger, homelessness... Did you know that there are more vacant homes in existence than there are homeless people? This shouldn’t be difficult.”
And Eddy said, “The national deficit is already astronomical, not to mention the debt! How are you gonna pay for all this ‘help’?”
I said, “We’ll pay for it the same way we paid for the bank bailouts. The same way we pay for the yearly increase in our military budget. When we need trillions for that type of stuff, nobody asks ‘How can we afford this?’; the money just magically appears. Instead of bailing out banks, bail out the people who owe on their mortgages: the cash ends up in the same place anyway. And by the way, you claim you’re Christians—have you read in the Bible about the concept of Jubilee? Every fifty years, all debts are forgiven. Why don’t we do that — that’s a scripture-based solution!” And Linda said:
“But I think those debts were just between members of families, like a brother would lend his own brother some money, or a father would lend to his son.” So I just rolled my eyes at this and breathed slowly and calmly, while telling myself: It’ll all be over soon; you can go home and drink a cup of vodka.
Then Jed asked me what I thot about Mr. Trump’s “Space Force”. And I said, “Space Force?” And he said, “Yeah, Space Force: what do you think about it?” So I said, “Whatever they’re claiming is the purpose for this program, I can’t believe that it’s anything other than the attempted weaponization of Earth’s atmosphere, which I say is wrong: I am wholly against all war.” Then Eddy said, “But God told his people to go to war — remember Joshua?” And I said, “I am against that too.” And Eddy said, “But... then are you saying that you’re against God?” And I said, “I am alive in the 21st century; it is not my prime desire to fight ancient Canaan. And I have no problem being against God, when God is wrong.”
(Keep in mind that I am an atheist and I do not even accept this fuck they call God.)
And we had many more little spits and spats, but you get the picture. The whole conversation was constantly like this. No poetry, no love; just a persistent effort to convince ourselves that we need to sacrifice our own betterment, and deny helping anyone, for the sake of honoring and obeying the ultra-rich. Uphold the system that keeps us all isolated and enraged at each other. And somehow this is all the way God wants it. And when Jesus says “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” he means something mysterious that’ll only become intelligible after death. He’ll explain it to us when we all fly up and meet him in heaven. I just hope the space lasers don’t zap us out of the sky before we get there.
So I finally figured out the genius of this Baptist Fundamentalism. They make life so unbearable that death no longer seems scary.
P.S.
I am writing all this on Friday. Black Friday, they call it, because it was on this day, in 1869, that an attempt by a few speculators to corner the U.S. gold market was thwarted by President Ulysses S. Grant’s release of government gold into the Inferno, making gold prices plummet and creating a panic in the stock market. The term was originally employed as a reference to the congestion created in the local rivers by the corpses of self-slain shareholders; but it was later explained as a day when retailers’ accounts went from being “in the red” to “in the black” (idioms from the world of accounting, meaning “negatively charged dollar sign” and “positively charged dollar sign”: similar to the concepts of lousy sex versus kinky sex) the day after Thanksgiving, regarded as the first day of the traditional Christmas shopping season, on which retailers offer special reduced prices, because Jesus is LORD:
“Shoppers were snapping up deals on Black Friday.”
(Matt. 21:12ff.; Mark 11:15ff.; Luke 19:45ff.; John 2:13ff.)
And tomorrow is my own biological family’s No Thanks Day. So I’ll try to remember to tell you how that went, if I survive.
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