Thanks for Nothing

I HATE Thanksgiving!

Why, you ask?

Because I hate my family; not only that but I hate gatherings as well. I especially hate family gatherings, so you can see that Thanksgiving in general is a train wreck waiting to happen. Christmas is just as bad,and oftentimes worse, but that's not what I'm going to talk about here.

No. I'm talking about Thanksgiving.

This Thanksgiving in particular has been the proverbial straw that broke this camel's back. As of today I will never spend another national or religious holiday with more than one member of my immediate family. Extended family can kiss my ass, as they're all just a bunch of psychotic leeches and I want nothing to do with any of them regardless of whether it's a holiday or not. Maybe I'm just a bitter old man, but that's one of the perks of being an old man I'm entitled to be bitter, and jaded, and angry and pretty much anything else I want to be. Now you're probably asking why am I so vehement about my feelings toward my family. Well, let me tell you. It all started with a ham. Yes. That's right. A HAM!

Well okay, it didn't start with a ham but there is a ham involved.

I had this thought that I would be magnanimous this year and cook thanksgiving dinner for the family. Invite the immediate and some extended relatives over and have a nice meal and a leisurely afternoon with some wine and football. I made the obligatory phone calls and let everyone know what I was planning and said get back to me if you were going to come. The Monday before Thanksgiving I havent' heard anything from anyone so I start calling again just to confirm that everyone is coming. As it turns out my brother decides since he doesn't want to come to my house for dinner he would cook at his place and invite everyone, assuming that I'd be so pissed off that I wouldn't show up. Having done that, the rest of the family wasn't sure who was doing what so they didn't respond to anyone.

Now just to show my brother that I wasn't going to let him get away with his bullshit antics I showed up for thanksgiving dinner; even though almost no one else did. In the end the only people who showed up for this 'feast' (which consisted of the most horrifying food I've ever eaten in my life) was me, my brother, his wife, their son and his wife's mother.

This is where the ham comes in.

I need to tell you that my brother is on the Atkin's Diet and eats nothing but meat and fat. You'd think then that I traditional turkey would be the main course of thanksgiving but no -- it wasn't; it was a ham. It was the greasiest, saltiest bastard brine of a ham I've ever eaten. On top of that there were no potatoes, no bread or rolls, no cranberry sauce. There was a ham, pork gravy, corn, butter, salad with the nastiest mayonnaise dressing ever created and grey broccoli. I could feel my cholesterol levels going up exponentially just looking at that food. I hope Robert Atkins has a stroke and dies. At the very least I hope he has some sort of horrible kidney failure from all the excess nitrogen in his system after digesting all that damned fat and protein.**

You'd think that something like this would be easy, simple and relatively stress free. If you thought that you're wrong; at least you are if you're thinking about my family.

So, that's it. I'm done. My family can go to hell and take their repugnant oleaginous pigs ass with them.

Next year I'm just going to get drunk in a cornfield... by myself.

**FOOTNOTE: According to reports Dr. Atkins died in April 2003 at 72 years old, nine days after sustaining a head injury caused by slipping on ice.

(If I was his son I'd have pushed him down on the ice too. Think about it, if Atkins WAS dying of kidney failure or some other health problem that's not going to do too well for his book sales and his son, the sole heir of his estate, would be left with jack shit. Yeah I'd had probably made it look like an accident too.)