Not-So-Happy Thanksgiving

You've gotta love Thanksgiving. No really, you have to or else Federal authorities come beating at your door, demanding you visit one of their certified Thanksgiving Appreciation Clinics. The easiest way for them to break your spirit is through nonstop exposure to Hallmark holiday cards, the ones that feature bug-eyed children with heads the size of major state landmarks, playing in a field with a turkey and saying "GWANDMA, YOU'RE THE BESTEST GRANDMA EVER!" Stage two involves watching every "Peanuts" cartoon ever created, including the one where Snoopy hallucinates that the Red Baron is chasing him, causing him to shoot up a convenience store.

Welcome to Kansas City, enjoy your dirt.

Like every Thanksgiving, I had to fulfill my contractual obligation to visit my parents in beautiful Hawaii. Now replace the word "Hawaii" with "Lee's Summit, Missouri" and "beautiful" with "godawful," and the previous sentence will be true. Yes, Lee's Summit, Missouri. One of the few cities that has a yearly celebration dedicated to Cole Younger, a notorious murderer and bank robber that was part of Jesse James' gang. Yup, that's how hardup for celebrities Lee's Summit is. However, the positive side is that the "Cole Younger Days" celebration attracts the same caliber of people that would've felt at home in the James gang, so it all works out.

Not that I'm bitter about having to return to Lee's Summit or anything. I think the whole Thanksgiving weekend got off on the wrong foot when I entered my parents house and noticed every television was tuned to the Florida recount on CNN. Yup, they were sitting around the table, watching other people sit around a table and frown at punchcards. I can't imagine how in the hell anybody can put up with the "Democracy in Action" coverage that CNN has been proudly trumpeting for the past few days. Folks, if staring at 60-year old men as they pick up a white punchcard and mumble something to the half-asleep grandmother of six next to them is considered "democracy", I bet Castro is laughing his ass off right now.

So now, while I'm trapped in the land of warehouses and mud, I get the added bonus of being forced to overhear the exciting CNN "play by play" coverage of the Florida voting recount idiocy.

To counteract this assault of democracy I've been under, I have been leaving the house a lot and seeing how many White Russians I can drink without forgetting how to get back to my parents' house. I haven't discovered the magical number of drinks yet, which leads me to believe it's a number greater than ten. Since I don't have my work computer here and don't even have email access, I'll continue to keep everybody updated with these wonderful, e/n style updates until I get back home on Tuesday. What a magical post-Thanksgiving treat!