MSNBC AND THE THANKSGIVING JAILBIRD -- RAW!

SORRY KEITH, RACHEL, ED & COMPANY, but MSNBC blew it on this one. Allow me to apologize for you. Remember, you can pick your nose and you can pick your friends, but you can't pick the morons in programming. 

THANKSGIVING TRANSLATION

          Ah, Thanksgiving!

          A time when families reunite via feast and festivity, coming together to celebrate the special bonds of blood relations, (we’ll get to the non-blood kind shortly) repair damaged kinships, renew and reaffirm lost love and, most importantly, to “give thanks.”

          What a very special word: “Thanks.”  I’d challenge anyone to come up with another single-syllable, single word in the English language that serves as well.  Used as an interjection, it has no equal:  “Hey, Bob, THANKS for returning my riding lawnmower.  I hope the SNOW in the driveway didn’t slow you up.”

          Other languages also have trouble keeping ‘thanks’ simple -- gracias, merci, danke, grazie -- it’s a word with no equal no matter where you speak it, and will stump your average thesaurus.  If you’re an Ingalik-speaking resident of Northern Alaska, I doubt even a hearty ‘Xisrigidisddhinh!’ will help when you return your neighbor’s sun lamp six months late, but it’s all you’ve got (you can look it up.  I did, and I’m still working on the pronunciation).

          We can “express our extreme gratitude” or we can say ‘thanks.’  We can “show our deep appreciation” or we can say ‘thanks.’  We can “acknowledge our heartfelt indebtedness” or we can return the riding mower in June.

          So, here we are, about to give thanks in our uniquely American way on our uniquely American holiday, by delivering low-cal fruitcakes to uncles-in-law and expanding wives’ nieces whose respective receding hairlines and weight gains we’re under strict orders not to mention.

          My memories of long-past Thanksgiving gatherings are rich with family reminiscence.  Fortunately, the statutes of limitations have gone by on most of them.

          With most but not all kidding aside, here are some things a family I know will give thanks for on this traditional day of thanks-giving.  Your job?  Make your own list:

          Thanks for a great-grandfather’s 1916 New Hampshire license plate found long ago by a grandfather as he fished the property line creek with a father.  No one knows how it got there, but it was hooked instead of a trout.  It may or may not have been attached to a car.  Reasons enough now for it to be mounted above the mantle as a familial high (and low) watermark.

          Thanks for the living room furniture running the gamut from an elementary school desk to a gargantuan overstuffed chair, the kind of chair built for an exhausted toddler drifting off to sleep in the arms of a contented grandmother.  The kind of toddler who has a toilet training milestone in his Baby Book, written by his devoted mother.  The kind of devoted mother who notes such events as:  “He’s peeing outdoors on the rocks!  Now uses the indoor potty for rainy days.”

          And, thanks for the kind of contented grandmother that a young grandson defined in a wintry, child’s-eye metaphor of remembrance not long after she died:

          “Every snowflake now is like a piece of Nana’s heart ... all around us.”

          Thanks for the properly placed inverted horseshoe, open-end pointing up, nailed above the front door and set to catch any good luck passing by.

          Thanks for the wet mittens, hats and boot liners drying above the woodstove, clothes-pinned on coat hangers.

          Thanks for the coffee can piggy bank, the half-mute cuckoo clock missing its koo, the 1916 hand-sewn fishing net (missing its 1916 Packard), the picnic basket/clothes hamper combo, and an array of heirloom dream catchers, glue-framed jigsaw puzzle-paintings and photo collages of relatives long-dead and long-lived.

          Thanks for the son’s and daughter’s mostly all A’s report cards, proudly displayed on the refrigerator where they belong.

          Thanks for the wall chart giving the dates and times that moose, bears, deer and eagles were sighted in the yard, giving credit to who saw them, and perhaps more importantly, discredit to who didn’t, and why.

          Thanks for the invited (and yes, the uninvited) houseguests who’ve used the unwinterized upstairs bedroom known as: “high above the equator.”

          Thanks for the careworn peacock feather oak table centerpiece that no one is quite clear on just how it came to be placed there.

          Thanks for the restored and retouched photo of a notorious distant aunt with one of her airbrushed legs hilariously omitted by the artist.  It still hangs in full view, (the picture) however, because poetic justice should extend into eternity.

          Thanks, as the day will wear on, for the friends and relatives who’ll arrive bearing favorite and awful sweetmeats and sourdoughs.  Thanks for the dessert plates in the laps, bearing Jell-O mold racing cars that will prompt a slurping down Ford versus Chevy time-honored debate.

          Thanks for the family Muttley’s “canine pre-wash” of any plates foolishly set on the floor.

          Thanks for the post-prandial snow tubing and the “only sprained it a little” back injury to a full-grown brother-in-law trying to out-tube the ten-year olds.

          Most of all, thanks for giving us another year to balance the books of faith, charity, hope, love and their visitations.

          Now, if you’d allow me to please offer this readership my Xisrigidisddhinh for the memories, here’s my Happy Thanksgiving, all!

 * * * * *

Copyright 2009 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. Used here with permission. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary internet links to this column at Humorist-On-Loan may be distributed without written permission.

OPRAH? GOPRAH!

" ... OPRAH SHMOPRAH!

WHAT'S WITH THESE TWO-YEAR LIP-QUIVERING GOODBYES from celebrities we know aren't going anywhere?

Ugh. If you're going, GO, already, and spare us the misty-eyed couch trip marathon. Just buy me a car and vamoose ...."

       -- Eponymous

CARLIN DOES PALIN

ALL THIS HOOPLA OVER WHINY PRISSY "AUTHORS" who get rich writing books about how they failed at and quit their jobs? (We won't mention any names; we'll just look in Alaska's general direction and whistle).  How about we instead celebrate (and buy) a book from the comic genius who was dead funny and is still funny dead, and the only thing he ever quit was talking bullshit?  RIP, George. 

THE GROUND'S THE LIMIT. GO, ELEANOR!

Makes me pine for my skydiving days, before I traded-in my rig for a Harley.  Still, I'll come out of retirement to jump with you any time, Eleanor.  Blue skies, baby!