Thanksblogging
This post was first made on November 21st, 2007, on Facebook.
In chronological order:
1) Greyhound sucks. No, really, I mean it, it’s like a black hole in its pure suckitude. I got to the Greyhound station in downtown Eugene and for a second I thought it’d been caught in the middle of a race riot or something, what with all the graffiti and burned out parts and broken windows. You know in movies when they’re in a really crappy bus station, and you look at it and think, “Oh snap! That’s got to be artistic license, bus stations couldn’t possibly get that bad!”? Well, I waited in that bus station for an hour and a half. I think I’m a heroin addict just for breathing the air in there. Also, I’m pretty sure they have cockfights in the men’s bathroom. Chickens or penises, whatever – I wouldn’t be surprised. It stinks like both.
2) My parents moved to Portland after I went down to school, and this is the first time I’ve seen the new house now that they’re in it. It’s strange to come home from school to a house that you’ve never slept in before, especially when your parents aren’t finished making it their own. For example, my room is a dark shade of purple that seems to suck up all the light from the single 3-watt light bulb in the ceiling. It’s like having a sleepover, only instead of going to a friend’s house by yourself, you go with your parents to a stranger’s house while they aren’t there and go through all your holiday rituals like it’s your house, but we haven’t done that since the restraining order.
3) Our new house is in a very trendy neighborhood, the sort of neighborhood that’s still converting from ghetto-ish to yuppie-tastic. Example: today I took a walk to our beautiful new branch library, which was nice, and then I bought a taco from a taco stand nearby* and walked back toward the house while eating it. Three blocks away from the house, a homeless guy asked me if I could spare any change. There I was, half a taco in my mouth and half a taco left on my little paper plate, and since I’ve been conditioned by my father not to give money to bums on the street lest they use it to buy drugs, I told him through a mouthful of delicious savory meat that I didn’t have any money. I felt really bad as I walked away, because I still had half a taco, and a real saint would’ve given it to him because after all, you can’t buy drugs with a half eaten taco (to my knowledge). This would never happen in South Salem: a library, good food, and homeless people.
*You couldn’t do that in Salem, let me tell you. The only time I saw a food stand in Salem was during the summer when I was in 6th grade, and a guy had a hot dog cart at the transit mall. I remember that at the time I was fascinated by the concept of food carts because I assumed they’d all sell delicious, hearty, ethnic food like the ones in New York, so one day I went up to him and bought a hot dog. I don’t remember what I put on the hot dog, or if there were any other kinds of food available from the cart, or even how it tasted – I just remember that when I walked up to the guy he grinned at me and said, “You a hungry man?” A few weeks later he disappeared and I never saw him again. My experience with the tacos was much less frightening.
4) My new neighborhood is also chock full of antique shops, just lined right up next to one another. You really would not believe how many damn antique shops there are here until you see it for yourself. This is probably where some language-hating bastard coined the phrase ‘antiquing’. 100 years ago they didn’t have antique shops, they just had really cheap shops, and then all the other shops started paying top dollar to stock new crap, while these shops kept keeping the old stuff, and eventually they just stuck the word ‘ANTIQUE’ on the sign (in front of ‘SHOP’), and then people magically started buying stuff that had once been considered a cut above garbage. I mean, what, old rusted Coca Cola signs that people hang up in their houses now? In 50 years they’ll be hanging up AOL CDs, mark my words.
5) Since most of my extended family has much better things to do on Thanksgiving Day than spend time with one another, they and my parents agreed to have Thanksgiving with my grandparents at our new house last Saturday, while I was still at school. This worked out fine for me, because frankly I’ve got much better things to do on Thanksgiving Day than spend time with my extended family. They did the whole Thanksgiving thing: turkey, stuffing, pie, ritual slaughter of a virgin, cranberries… Naturally, they couldn’t finish everything, which means that our refrigerator is full of Thanksgiving leftovers on the day before Thanksgiving. My parents have been eating turkey all week. I had turkey lasagna for dinner tonight. We’re probably going to be having turkey on the Fourth of July. If I lapse into a coma, it’s from the tryptophan.
6) I love Thanksgiving – my Thanksgiving memories each year are more vivid than my Christmas ones. Every year my parents and I watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which is one of the funniest movies ever and if you don’t agree you’re stupid. Every Thanksgiving my family finds a way to shirk our duties with the extended family (see #5) so that we can do something fun – last year we rented a nice cabin on an island in Washington, and for two years before that we went to the coast with friends. So in a way, I guess, it is a holiday tradition for me to spend Thanksgiving in a place I’m not used to.
Truman Capps wants you to know that his birthday is November 27th, and talking about Christmas before National Truman Capps Day is a federal offense, punishable by fines of up to $200 (which, as usual, double in a school zone).
In chronological order:
1) Greyhound sucks. No, really, I mean it, it’s like a black hole in its pure suckitude. I got to the Greyhound station in downtown Eugene and for a second I thought it’d been caught in the middle of a race riot or something, what with all the graffiti and burned out parts and broken windows. You know in movies when they’re in a really crappy bus station, and you look at it and think, “Oh snap! That’s got to be artistic license, bus stations couldn’t possibly get that bad!”? Well, I waited in that bus station for an hour and a half. I think I’m a heroin addict just for breathing the air in there. Also, I’m pretty sure they have cockfights in the men’s bathroom. Chickens or penises, whatever – I wouldn’t be surprised. It stinks like both.
2) My parents moved to Portland after I went down to school, and this is the first time I’ve seen the new house now that they’re in it. It’s strange to come home from school to a house that you’ve never slept in before, especially when your parents aren’t finished making it their own. For example, my room is a dark shade of purple that seems to suck up all the light from the single 3-watt light bulb in the ceiling. It’s like having a sleepover, only instead of going to a friend’s house by yourself, you go with your parents to a stranger’s house while they aren’t there and go through all your holiday rituals like it’s your house, but we haven’t done that since the restraining order.
3) Our new house is in a very trendy neighborhood, the sort of neighborhood that’s still converting from ghetto-ish to yuppie-tastic. Example: today I took a walk to our beautiful new branch library, which was nice, and then I bought a taco from a taco stand nearby* and walked back toward the house while eating it. Three blocks away from the house, a homeless guy asked me if I could spare any change. There I was, half a taco in my mouth and half a taco left on my little paper plate, and since I’ve been conditioned by my father not to give money to bums on the street lest they use it to buy drugs, I told him through a mouthful of delicious savory meat that I didn’t have any money. I felt really bad as I walked away, because I still had half a taco, and a real saint would’ve given it to him because after all, you can’t buy drugs with a half eaten taco (to my knowledge). This would never happen in South Salem: a library, good food, and homeless people.
*You couldn’t do that in Salem, let me tell you. The only time I saw a food stand in Salem was during the summer when I was in 6th grade, and a guy had a hot dog cart at the transit mall. I remember that at the time I was fascinated by the concept of food carts because I assumed they’d all sell delicious, hearty, ethnic food like the ones in New York, so one day I went up to him and bought a hot dog. I don’t remember what I put on the hot dog, or if there were any other kinds of food available from the cart, or even how it tasted – I just remember that when I walked up to the guy he grinned at me and said, “You a hungry man?” A few weeks later he disappeared and I never saw him again. My experience with the tacos was much less frightening.
4) My new neighborhood is also chock full of antique shops, just lined right up next to one another. You really would not believe how many damn antique shops there are here until you see it for yourself. This is probably where some language-hating bastard coined the phrase ‘antiquing’. 100 years ago they didn’t have antique shops, they just had really cheap shops, and then all the other shops started paying top dollar to stock new crap, while these shops kept keeping the old stuff, and eventually they just stuck the word ‘ANTIQUE’ on the sign (in front of ‘SHOP’), and then people magically started buying stuff that had once been considered a cut above garbage. I mean, what, old rusted Coca Cola signs that people hang up in their houses now? In 50 years they’ll be hanging up AOL CDs, mark my words.
5) Since most of my extended family has much better things to do on Thanksgiving Day than spend time with one another, they and my parents agreed to have Thanksgiving with my grandparents at our new house last Saturday, while I was still at school. This worked out fine for me, because frankly I’ve got much better things to do on Thanksgiving Day than spend time with my extended family. They did the whole Thanksgiving thing: turkey, stuffing, pie, ritual slaughter of a virgin, cranberries… Naturally, they couldn’t finish everything, which means that our refrigerator is full of Thanksgiving leftovers on the day before Thanksgiving. My parents have been eating turkey all week. I had turkey lasagna for dinner tonight. We’re probably going to be having turkey on the Fourth of July. If I lapse into a coma, it’s from the tryptophan.
6) I love Thanksgiving – my Thanksgiving memories each year are more vivid than my Christmas ones. Every year my parents and I watch Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which is one of the funniest movies ever and if you don’t agree you’re stupid. Every Thanksgiving my family finds a way to shirk our duties with the extended family (see #5) so that we can do something fun – last year we rented a nice cabin on an island in Washington, and for two years before that we went to the coast with friends. So in a way, I guess, it is a holiday tradition for me to spend Thanksgiving in a place I’m not used to.
Truman Capps wants you to know that his birthday is November 27th, and talking about Christmas before National Truman Capps Day is a federal offense, punishable by fines of up to $200 (which, as usual, double in a school zone).