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November 24, 2006
black friday is safe for another year
I was going to take a longish swipe at "Black Friday". About how it's hyperbolically named, etc. But I didn't. I guess it'll have to wait until next year.So until then, keep shopping when they tell you, America! Leave no Big Box unturned! Remember: there is no right more inviolate than the American right to give your money to organizations that want to see you docile and nearly impoverished, and if anyone tells you different, they are a Trotskyite. (Whatever that used to be -- think, 'Islamic fascist').
The more you spend, the more patriotic Joe Lieberman will say you are, jowl-ly.
Posted by mrbrent at 8:08 PM
November 23, 2006
turkeys are safe from me today
By now the turkey is kicking in. Watch now the American game of Professional Football, please, unless you hate America, in which case you probably entertained the table with stories of how the Pilgrams and the Indians weren't exactly hunting turkeys at the time of the First Thanksgiving.Which is what I would have done, had I a turkey, or a table, and I definitely would have landed somewhere around "cholera-ridden blankets". That's what makes America great -- the moral rectitude to proudly ignore a national origin built on genocide.
Here is what I am thankful for: the abundance of lists of things people are thankful for. Even the sincere ones. It is most useful to make lists, especially if you are only capable of giving thanks once a year.
But if I have to be thankful, in this venue, for one thing then I will say that I am thankful for you, because you are by far the most attractive and generous readership that could be wished for.
Now I go read Mallard Fillmore and see what that crazy ACLU is up to now!
Posted by mrbrent at 4:51 PM
November 22, 2006
hello you mid-atlantic suburbs
I'm back out of town. So burglars -- go get me. Everything of value there is either with me or booby-trapped, so, do you feel lucky, etc.?This trip has taken me to a couple-day stand in a Holiday Inn in a suburb of Bawlmer, along with a wife and a little dog. I'm doing a lot of reading (which I apparently had stopped doing years ago, as I feel the instasnark drain happily out of me), though I am getting out into the world of chain restaurants and shopping plazas, so feel sorry for me at will.
I have a long litany of complaints and observations about life out here, but they can all be filed under "City Mouse Patronizes Suburb Mouse", which is a meme as ubiquitous as it is boring. I'm sure that some dude my age that lives out here -- big house, ouple kids, manages a successful Hollywood Video -- would find public transportation and mom-and-pop kabob joints as stultifying as I find the American Music Awards. There is equality even among inequities, after a fashion.
So, shorthand: Glenn Beck is a Father Coughlin for our age, traffic is not just a problem in the Megalopolis and "organic" is being leveraged as just another clever brand by the agro-industrial complex.
Also, on the sausage biscuits and gravy front, I broke down and went to Bob Evans for breakfast. I will call their sausage biscuits and gravy a "comforting fake", though sadly better than the three unnamed local spots whose sausage biscuits and gravy I sampled in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And to make myself better for giving my money to whatever multinational bought Bob Evans name, I stole a biscuit for later.
So, prepare to initiate Giving-Thanks Protocol tomorrow, you all. Biscuit for later!
Posted by mrbrent at 5:24 PM
November 20, 2006
i am not humbug
A half hour ago, I was in the supermarket. I stop there sometimes, on the way to work. The Musak that normally plays was not playing. Instead, the in-house PA system was tuned to whatever radio station is playing Christmas songs 24-7.Today is November 20.
Not for nothing, supermarket/radio station, but I really don't want to get into the whole Christmas spirit until some time after I've roasted the T-Day bird. Kind of in the same way that I've taken down the Columbus Day decorations in my office, and that I haven't sent out a Valentine in, why, it must be six months now! So please find a way to make your filthy money in a way that makes me hate you less.
Nothing Scrooge-y about my sentiments. I love Christmas. I fell for it hard as a kid, and as I got older, I fell harder for its trappings. But you rip these things out of their context, and it's hard to not feel you're in an episode of The Simpsons.
Or maybe I've just crossed that generational rift after which all current culture seems to isolate and propagate the vulgarities of the previous iterations.
Today I am cranky grampaboy.
Posted by mrbrent at 9:30 AM