In the United States it’s traditional to get together with family on Thanksgiving and share the important things you’re thankful for before gorging yourself on a meal centered on the large, dead carcass of the ugliest bird in North America. Every year everyone shares the usual platitudes about being thankful for family, friends and good heath. Duh! Who can’t come up with that? When I decided to write this I set out to write a positive, uplifting post so that my loyal readers don’t think that my every thought and written or spoken word are tinged with biting sarcasm. So without further adieu, here are some of the everyday things I am thankful for:
1. Youtube. Never in human history has anything allowed anyone to share in graphic, vivid, visual detail virtually anything you want. If you’re feeling down there’s sleepy kitten videos. If you need a laugh look up the Cinnamon Challenge or Gangnam Style. And if you’ve just inadvertently recorded video of an impossibly awkward groin injury to a friend what else are you going to do with it? Yes, I know it’s not new, but I’ve grown to appreciate it more lately. Do you think I should expand my internet Phil empire to include video blogging?
2. Girl Scout Cookies: Holy crap! Paradise in cookie form! Thin Mints, Do-Si-Dos, Tagalongs, Samoas, Dulce de Leche and many more. Most of the names are completely meaningless in relation to what the actual cookie is, but who the hell cares? I think the mysteriously weird names add to our desire for them. Great cookies, but the Girl Scouts organization is one of the dumbest businesses in existence. They have a product that is universally loved and they only sell it one month a year? Morons! All of them. Their stupid little badges certainly aren’t in business administration. If they sold those cookies year round they’d be a multi-billion dollar operation listed on the New York Stock Exchange. If they sold those cookies year round they could put crack cocaine out of business.
3. The Keurig Coffee Maker: I don’t give a rat’s ass if they price those stupid little “pods” at $5.00 each, it will be well worth it if I can keep getting my morning cup of joe in 30 seconds. My time is valuable and Keurig gave me back about 5 minutes of every morning where I don’t have to stand there staring a a gurgling coffee maker.
4. Screw cap wine bottles: How does it make the wine better if you have to use a separate device that looks like it was designed for medieval torture to open it? And how often have you had the cork break and you have to use all sorts of improvised techniques to get it out and then the wine still has a bunch cork pieces in it that you fish out with your fingers? My wine sources tell me the screw cap is coming back. Simpler is better. Leave the corks for the French snobs to wrestle with. When I’m elected President, or Sexiest Man Alive, whichever comes first, all wine bottles will have screw caps.
5. Thruway E-Z Pass: Since I got a thruway E-Z pass about 4 years ago I think I’ve saved so much time not stopping at toll booths or waiting in toll lines that I’ve probably gotten back an entire extra day worth of time each year. I’m sure that some day they’ll discover that the little invisible beams that read my E-Z pass cause cancer, but because I’ve accumulated so much extra time from not stopping it will all even out as far as my life expectancy goes.
Lastly but most importantly I’m thankful for all my wonderful, loyal friends who keep reading my blog and clicking the Facebook Like button. I’m not writing for you, I’m writing for me, but having someone laughing with me makes it so much better. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you and your families are well this holiday season.
As always, if you want to join the fun you can add comments below and click the Facebook like and Share buttons to let your friends in on the joke. You can find me on Twitter @ThePhilFactor and my humorous, murder mystery novel White Picket Prisons is available for Kindle, Nook, and iPad.
