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Topic: Happy Thanksgiving! (Read 725 times) |
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Blunderov
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"We think in generalities, we live in details"
  
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Happy Thanksgiving!
« on: 2008-11-27 12:02:57 » |
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[Blunderov] I believe it's thanksgiving in America.  Happy holidays y'all. Let's us cast our minds back to those tenuous times when an embryonic settlement struggled to establish a foothold on a craggy and forbidding shore...imagine what we would have been spared...no, I mean imagine what we would have lost if only...
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/happy_thanksgiving.php
Happy Thanksgiving!
Category: History
Posted on: November 27, 2008 8:51 AM, by PZ Myers
Or, for you non-Americans, happy Thursday! Or, for you Australians, happy Friday or Tuesday or whatever it is down in your topsy-turvy country where you've even got your seasons reversed.
Oh, heck, forget it. Happy Day! Find whatever reason you want to celebrate.
Again, for you non-Americans, this is a peculiarly American version of a fall harvest festival. We are supposedly celebrating an event in our history from the 17th century: the fellowship and cooperation between the Pilgrim immigrants and the native Americans that culminated in a shared feast. The truth is a little uglier and perhaps a bit more representative of our political reality. A gang of Puritan religious kooks who were too wacky and weird for their homeland emigrated optimistically to the new wilderness to the west, hoping to found a utopia for repressive fanaticism. They proved to be incompetent as well as crazy, and nearly died off completely in their first few years, but survived thanks to an affiliation with local tribes who were quite competent at successfully thriving in that environment, but were unfortunately strategically unwise in allowing these parvenu lunatics to persist in their midst.
So, yeah, we're celebrating the survival of Republicans Mark I in the founding of our country. It was nice that they got along with the Indians while they were hungry, but don't worry — it wasn't long before the colony was stabilized, and then they resumed the habits of genocide, warfare, witch-burning, rebellion, empire-building, civil war, habitat destruction, and exploitation, i.e., normal history.
We traditionally celebrate this day with indolence and gluttony. Even better, since the holiday is always on a Thursday to give us a four-day weekend, the Friday after has evolved into something called Black Friday, in which stores offer sales to entice mobs into the malls for the biggest shopping day of the year, so we also celebrate with naked greed and commercialism. Like I said, it is a very American holiday.
I'm planning to spend it with a quiet family day — we're getting together with my sons — and eat in moderation. Then tomorrow I'm not going anywhere near a mall and won't be spending a penny…I'll be catching up in much delayed office work. One nice thing about the holiday is that you can spend it any way you want.
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Happy Thanksgiving!
« Reply #1 on: 2008-11-27 14:20:38 » |
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Yeah, I'm with the author. I don't really need the gluttony :::Mo gazes at his considerable beer belly::: And I already don't do Christmas, so black Friday isn't too interesting to me either. Personally I think all the higher end retailers are going to take a butchering this season, the economy being in as bad a mood as ever in my lifetime. WalMart will do fine, maybe even better than usual, Target will survive. I know there was a bogus list of store closings circulating the internet, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if a lot of that list comes true.
Anyway, I'm going to go eat with my parents in about an hour. That's about all the holiday spiriting I'm doing this year.
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Happy Thanksgiving!
« Reply #2 on: 2008-11-27 19:03:49 » |
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Quote from: MoEnzyme on 2008-11-27 14:20:38
Yeah, I'm with the author. I don't really need the gluttony :::Mo gazes at his considerable beer belly::: And I already don't do Christmas, so black Friday isn't too interesting to me either. Personally I think all the higher end retailers are going to take a butchering this season, the economy being in as bad a mood as ever in my lifetime. WalMart will do fine, maybe even better than usual, Target will survive. I know there was a bogus list of store closings circulating the internet, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if a lot of that list comes true.
Anyway, I'm going to go eat with my parents in about an hour. That's about all the holiday spiriting I'm doing this year.the
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Okay. It seems I've survived my yearly bout of family bonding. Perhaps we won't kill each other before the new year in any case.  It does seem that in some predictable as well as odd ways, most of the parents friends seem somewhat optimistic about the soon-to-be new administration. I have been careful myself to realize and to warn people that this really isn't a done deal until he's inaugurated, and even then there will be crazies fantasizing about taking a pop shot at the first non-white president for their own screwed up ideological masturbations. There has already been at least one confirmed and thwarted plot. So with that in mind, happy Thanksgiving, everyone 
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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MoEnzyme
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Re:Happy Thanksgiving!
« Reply #3 on: 2008-11-29 05:05:58 » |
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NEW YORK, Nov 28 (Reuters) - A man working for Wal-Mart (WMT.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) was killed on Friday when a throng of shoppers surged into a Long Island, New York, store and physically broke down the doors, a police spokesman said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN2841778420081128
Not what I'd consider the most dignified way to go, but then . . . it did make the news. 
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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