Thanks

Well Butterball® boys and cranberry sauce girls you lucked-out. Today I was going to write a scathing pre-Thanksgiving smallpox blanket day joint. I say "was" because I can't type anymore. The pain in my left wrist is too bad to type anymore. Or play guitar, or drums, or banjo, or piano. Maybe I can still hold a camera. We'll see. I have an extraordinarily high threshold for pain; a blessing and a curse. I know. I know. I need to rest it, take ibuprofen, rest, ice, rest, soak, rest, stretch. And rest. So I'll try taking the rest of the week off, OK mom? I might even deserve it. I try to be productive. I've paid some dues. I know, "Take care of your tools, don. Take it easy." But I'm not the take-it-easy type. I'm the fight-through-the-pain type. I've lots of shit to do before I give up. No time for rest. No rest for the wicked. But, my hands are wrecked from the years of your production. So Thanksgiving...

I know you don't like Thanksgiving--is it because you feel an artificiality about there being A Special Occasion On Which We Are Supposed To Give Thanks, and that's bullshit because we can be thankful any time/all the time ?? --but I hope you do have a good, albeit short, week, and a very happy Thanksgiving. - H.S., Portland, OR

I was going to write about how much I hate Thanksgiving. But my forced-break gives me pause.

I work real hard for my living But I don't celebrate bullshit Thanksgiving Sit up like some fool and eat turkey That's the day your forefathers jerked me - Ice-T, 1991

And while I 100% absolutely agree with my man, Tracy Marrow, about bullshit Thanksgiving--just ask my brothers and sisters in Wounded Knee, SD--I have a lot to be thankful for. I do. And I realize it. Aside from this so American of holidays, I thank people So, uh, thanks? Back Monday after Black Friday. Catch up with some of the old posts; they're over 5,000 of 'em (and that's why my wrist is jacked). So I'll end here (so I can go mind my shingles, TGAs, and ruined hands).

Happy Smallpox Blanket Day! Who's to judge? Me!