Well, of course I’m not shopping the Black Friday sales today.  Black Friday was last Friday. The Thanksgiving week lingers on in my mind; having K and Belle home from school threw off my calendar sense. When all else fails, blame the fruit of your loins.

On the actual Black Friday Day (BFD?), we observed our traditional ode to consumerism:  Buy Nothing Day. Getting lunch at a local sports pub doesn’t count, because…well, because.  I hadn’t pledged to observe Eat Nothing But Leftovers Day.

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I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.
(Jon Stewart)

pilgrims

Even as a child I was skeptical toward the Disney-fied version of what my school taught about The Pilgrims. The idea that, to this day, there are still people who celebrate the survival of the Plymouth colonists trespassers by thanking a god who supposedly protected and championed the European offensive makes my mouth feel as if I’ve been sucking on a cotton ball.[1]  Nevertheless, faced with the mythical vs. factual scenarios –

☺ Pilgrims invited the locals to a feast after surviving their first year in New England.

☺Indigenous Americans broke bread with the invaders they’d saved from starvation, those who later stole their land and decimated their numbers via murder and disease.

– which image would your grandparents favor for their Hallmark holiday greeting card?

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Ah, but I’ve mellowed in my dotage. I am pleased that the observance of the third Thursday of November has evolved into a special day set aside for gluttony gratitude. There was much to be grateful for this Thanksgiving, including last week’s politics/world affairs-free blog from moi.

It even seemed as if there were several days (as in, maybe two) that were rant-free. Silence from the Repugnicans – what gives?  I began to wonder if the sore losers of the election finally decided to just go away.  But, nooooooo. Like a recurrent arse pimple or a psychotic, spurned lover, the acumen-free, neo(lithic) cons are not going to be ignored.

But the latest rightwing hysteria cause caught me by surprise. I’d thought the kind of minds attracted to the secession twaddle would have so many other things on their agenda. After all, they’ve got crosses to burn, mayo-on-white bread sandwiches to eat, pro-wrestling matches to watch, and there are sheep out there, somewhere, in desperate need of lovin.’

But really, some of them sound like they’re serious.  And the loudest-sounding seem to be (surprise!) from Texas.

Now, I acknowledge the majority of the whining comes from fringy-wingnut element of politics and punditry. There are many decent, rational, realistic, intelligent and compassionate people from Texas, even some political and media figures I admire, including Ann Richards, Barbara Jordan, Walter Cronkite,[2]  Molly Ivins [3] ….

Oh yeah, they’re all dead. Anyway….

Memo to Texas Nationalist Movement President Daniel Miller and like-minded loonies: Stop holding your breath and kicking your feet and otherwise throwing the political equivalent of a marginally potty-trained toddler’s tantrum.

And, hey you — any state claiming to be serious in your girly-man threat to secede: go ahead, make my day. After your residents have ponied up for their share of the national debt[4], don’t let the information highway[5] hit you in the ass on your way out.

Cleverer minds than mine® have taken the secession speechifying seriously enough to come up with about twenty Declarations on the matter.  I’ve seen so many variations I can only offer attribution to the version[6] brought to my attention by my alert Swednadian friends.   Here it is, with just a bit o- tweaking from yours truly.

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The Declaration of Oh please, are you serious? November 2012

From: Red/Slave State Secession Support Group, aka The E.S.A.

To: the Red States Threatening Secession

Dear Red States:

We’re sick of your Neanderthal beliefs and 47% politics. We who support your secession intended to form our own country anyway, and we’re taking all the Blue States with us. In case you aren’t aware, that includes Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New York, and all of the Mid Atlantic and Northeast states (as per the most recent election, Florida and Virginia have a two-year probationary status).

We believe this split will be beneficial to the hopelessly polarized nation, and especially to the people of our E.S.A., The Enlightened States of America.

You wanna secede?  Go for it. A brief summation of the results of your departure:

  • You get Texas, Oklahoma and almost all of the other slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches.
  • We get Barack Obama and Joe Biden. You get Bobby Jindal,  Richard Murdock, and Todd Akin.
  • We get the Statue of Liberty. You get OpryLand.
  • We get Harvard. You get Ole’ Miss.
  • We get Tahoe and Vail and Aspen. You get Utah.
  • We get Intel, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. You get Chic-fil-A.
  • We get 85 percent of America’s venture  capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama.
  • We get two-thirds of the tax revenue. You get to make your states pay their fair share.
  • We get science. You get myth and fantasy.

With the Blue States in hand we will have:

  • firm control of 80% of the country’s fresh water,
  • more than 90% of the pineapple[8]  and lettuce,
  • 92% of the nation’s fresh fruit,
  • 95% of America’s finest wines (y’all can serve French wines at your state dinners)
  • 90% of all cheese,
  • 90% of the high tech industry,
  • most of the US low sulfur coal,
  • all living redwoods, sequoias and condors,[9]
  • all the Ivy League and Seven Sisters schools, plus Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT,
  • the Rose Bowl

With the Red States you will have:

  • 88% of obese Americans and their projected health care costs,
  • 92% of US mosquitoes,
  • nearly 100% of the tornadoes,
  • 90% of the hurricanes,
  • 99% of Southern Baptists (without counting our provisional states),
  • virtually 100% of televangelists,
  • the philosophers Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilley, and Sean Hannity
  • Bob Jones University, Liberty University, ‘Bama, and the University of Georgia.
  • 90% of all deep fat fried foods.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite – jackpot! Thank you!

Here’s just a sampling of the cheap entertainment provided by y’all; in other words, what we may actually miss about you when you go:

  • the 38% of you who believe there was an actual dude name Jonah who was actually swallowed by a whale,
  • the 62% of you who believe life is “sacred,” except in cases of war, the death penalty, and shoot-first laws,
  • the whopping 5% of you Republicans (according to Gallup Polls, really) who even partially understand the scientific theory of evolution.
  • the 61% of you crazies who believe that you have higher morals than we lefties.

Oh, and BTW, we’re taking the good weed from Oregon, too. You can have that crap from Mexico.

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Revisiting the subject of gratitude, I am thankful to be able to confer a Pretty Purple Toe award this week, to my most deserving friend and blogging mentrix,[10] SCM.

I’ve always loathed “ess” or “ette” or other attachments to what should be gender-neutral nouns. Such suffixes add a diminutive/diminishing effect, and presume – and teach, IMHO – that there are male “defaults” for certain occupations. If I act in a play I call myself an actor, not an actress. My family (MH, K, Belle and I) has a family practitioner who sees us for our respective medical concerns;[11] when we have our annual exams we see our doctor, not our doctress or doctrette.  When I had friends over for Thanksgiving dinner I was their host, not their hostess.

However….

A day or so before I was to host the Tday dinner I e-queried one of our dinner guests, SCM (also an attorney), re questions I had about updating MH’s and my wills.  I mildly tweaked SCM for using the term “executrix” in her reply.  She was, as always, succinctly witty in her own defense:

I like executrix instead of a gender-neutral executor, or administratrix instead of g-n administrator. It just sounds faintly naughty and it’s more precise. Maybe you should be a hostrix?

Hostrix.  I think I could get used to the sound of that.

Hijinks ensue.

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Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

[1] Or on a piece of overcooked turkey breast. I was the cook. The legs & thigh portions were fine. Sound familiar?

[2] Beloved by most Americans for his “most trusted man in America” journalism, and by moi because I was able to get the traffic court judge to drastically reduce  my one-and-only speeding fine when I explained how, mesmerized by an Uncle Walter radio interview, I failed to notice the lowered speed limit and thus was driving “under the influence of Water Cronkite.”

[3] One of my fave MI witticisms: “I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.”

[4] A whopping portion of it run up by the war now pay later policies of a president from Texass

[5] As well as those pesky Federal $$  paying for your Social Security, Medicare, Johnson Space Center and other defense contract businesses, highway improvements and fee-free interstate travel, the defense of your borders from illegal immigrants….

[6] Paul Magnusson, Spokesman for the Red/Slave State Secession Support Group, The Enlightened States of America (E.S.A.)

[7] Swedish-Canadian

[8] I like pineapple

[9] I like condors, too, but wish they smelled more like pineapple

[10] Not mentor or “mentoress”

[11] It’s a good thing our good Dr. MM can write her own Xanex prescriptions.