When times are tough, when the weight of the world’s suffering and injustice come crushing down around us, the journey we’re taking together on Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot can feel like a precipitous headlong trip to oblivion. But that’s just till we consider the alternative, isn’t it? Is there someplace else in the universe we’d rather be than planet earth? Some luckier corner of the galaxy? Hardly. We’re riding on an precious oasis 8000 miles wide in the middle of endless inhospitable infinity — and we complain about the rain?
That’s messed up. What kind of thankless ingrate grumbles about struggle or trouble after all the gifts we’ve been given? Surrounded by the wonders all around us, what sort of crass tactless brat would focus on inconsequential shortcomings disappointments and flaws? Who acts like that? We humans, that’s who. So thank heaven for Thanksgiving, the one official day of the year when Americans get to take a break from our steady pursuit of consumption to indulge in a few hours of truly stupefying over-consumption. um, wait a sec, let me rephrase that; that’s not where I meant to go with this train of thought… Thank heaven for Thanksgiving, the one official day of the year when Americans (and everyone in the world who can find it in their heart to tolerate Americans) take a break from griping about everything wrong with existence and take a good mushy look at everything right in our lives. To stop moping, brooding and moaning long enough to say thanks.
Thanks. Thanks to my mom and dad for doing some sex and making me, and thanks for then looking after me all those years till I was grown up enough to pretend that I don’t need anyone to look after me anymore, and thanks even more for giving me the chance to repay that extravagant gift by letting me now look after them in return.
Thanks to my cat Taji for picking me to be the person to look after him and for going along with the kinky roleplay where he pretends to be a puppy, and for letting me think I’m worthy of his puppylike kitten companionship.
Thanks to wise tenacious men and women like Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren who try to take care of everyone all across the country, from those who need looking after the most to those who try to pretend we don’t need society to look after us at all.
Thanks to Al Gore for inventing climate change because, yeesh, like we didn’t have anything to worry about already, and then thanks to Al Gore for inventing the internet so we can all work together to solve problems like climate change with social media, and also the porn turned out to be a cool side benefit.
Thanks to the several many partners who have crossed my path on the streets and in the sheets for doing some sex with me, gosh I wish I could remember some of your names, but anyway special thanks to the several special few whose names I can recall who would probably rather not be name-dropped, and thanks most of all to the most special partner who looked after me so well one night in Bangkok and then 2555 more nights in Bangkok after that.
Thanks to my best friend Sasha Stone for going along with the kinky roleplay where I pretend to be a puppy and for letting me think she needs me or anyone else as a sidekick; thanks to Sasha for taking me in under her wing when I was orphan kitten expat trying to adjust to the culture shock of coming back to the States by reconnecting me with the culture of Hollywood, such as it is, and thanks to the world of world cinema for turning out to be pretty damned brilliant in spite of all the ways we wish it would be a little bit better.
Thanks. Thanks to everyone else here at AwardsDaily for going along with the kinky roleplay where we all pretend to be puppies and kittens in the same animal shelter (and all the special attachments I have with several many of you, whose names I won’t list because the list is too long and it would be a bitch to try to rank in the right order). Thank heaven the shelter we find at AwardsDaily exists to give us so many good reasons to daily give thanks, for being such a great place to come congregate and associate and advocate and overrate and navigate our various paths through the world’s precipitous problems using movies as our milestones, touchstones, signposts and beacons.
Thank you mom and dad, thanks Barack and Elizabeth, thanks Al and Taji. Thanks to all of you readers here, and thank you, Sasha. Thanks to all you for looking after me.