To William S. Burroughs and hope he remains excused.
Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 2021
A warm McNeil welcome to our guests and thank you so much for the Michigan Merlots. Thank you for the deviled eggs and sugar cream pie.
It’s good to see you again this year, and to see your faces.
A special welcome to my fellow members of Generation X. I hope it’s still working out, with or without the stock options. It’s been a tough couple years but I think you’ll agree, we’ve never had it so good.
You remember the end of the ‘70s.
I’d like to remember my brother Tim, Class of 1993, who died late last year. This is our second Thanksgiving without him.
In sorting through Tim’s things I was struck by how tactile and analog his world was and always remained, and how far removed we now live from the handmade, typewritten and often happenstance world of our youth.
It was a slower but more serendipitous time and it’s not coming back. A lot of things aren’t coming back. I guess the backlash is always coming back.
You remember the end of the century.
So a quick toast, to what? A brighter future. Why not? It’s a holiday.
But to my young son and the other children here: May you always know when you’re being insulted.
Let us give thanks for the bounty we are about to receive. Let us give thanks for this Land of Liberty, where nobody better tread on me.
Let us count our blessings.
Thank you for open carry and a gun in every glovebox.
Thank you for the home guard and posse comitatus.
Thank you for the right to remain silent and to live and die poor.
Thank you for employer-based health care and prison-based health care.
Thank you for billionaires who share their Tweets.
Thank you for separating winners from losers.
Thank you for Black Friday at the Dollar Store.
Thank you for Dollar Menus at the drive-through.
Thank you to everyone who did their own research.
Thank you for ensuring election integrity.
Thank you for letting the Ivory-billed Woodpecker go quietly.
Thank you for corn ethanol and clean coal.
Thank you for your service to all the crisis actors.
Thank you and let’s go, Brandon!
Thank you for the forever wars and culture wars and all their profiteers.
Thank you for good, old American ignorance, belligerence and hypocrisy.
Thank you for the simple fictions.
But now look at that old cowboy dying in the dirt. Shot off his own feet, cut off his own nose.
What a mess. What a fool.
You always were a headache and you always were a bore.
Thanks for false promises.
Thanks for just desserts.
Thanks for the memories
of an almighty dollar.
Let’s eat.
Music: “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?” by Ramones
