Happy Thanksgiving

Ya filthy animals.

by Vincent Francone, Editor-in-Chief

As we descend headfirst down the holiday rockface, let us pause to consider scrape number one before the big plunge into bloody Xmas and the giant crash landing of NYE. I’m talking Thanksgiving.

This is a time to give thanks. My European contacts tell me they feel no such compulsion, being European and not subjected to the edicts of this uniquely American holiday. The rest of the world, appearing godless to much of my countrymen and women, is of less concern, so we won’t bother, but suffice it to state that we here in the good old U. S. of A. are duty bound to give our thanks, and Jabber is no exception. So here goes:

We are thankful for everyone who bought this book. Those who have yet to do so are not only dead to us, we have had all memory of their existence wiped from our brains.

We give thanks to the beneficent rule of our social, political, and spiritual betters. Anthony being housed in the wilds of California and I being forever moored in Chicago, our social, political, and spiritual betters differ slightly, the west coast being more afflicted with yoga and mudwater drinking than the midwestern environs from which I write you, thus his betters wear athleisure wear and say “disruptor” while mine hector me endlessly on proper hog butchering techniques. (Pardon me… nearly time for my 1:00 PM Malort. Ah! Okay, back.) As for Caleb… can’t be sure about him, as he only communicates through smoke signals, and infrequently at that.

We give thanks to evolving mores and dying decorum. We’re sick of behaving ourselves.

We give thanks for how nice it is to put things into our mouths. Again, what we put into our mouths differs, as we are span generations and possess organs of varying degrees of health, but the act of placing things into our mouths is universally lovely, and this holiday being predicated on putting things into our mouths, it seems only right that we stop and truly consider how much joy this act brings. Pie and flesh of dead creatures and stuffing, which we only get this time of year for some reason—why?—and broccoli so covered in melted processed cheese one can barely spot a speck of green and cranberry sauce that we will briefly put into our mouths before recalling why that is never trotted out any other time of year… so much yum. And then there’s the booze, not to mention other fun things we put into our mouths. Almost as fun is the removing of things from one’s mouth, namely socio-political opinions regardless of background reading, understanding, awareness of context or history, and effect.

We give thanks to football, the dumbest of American sports, but how else—outside of a time machine trip to the good old days of the Roman Empire—is one to witness the sacrifice of human safety for the amusement of the overfed?

We give thanks to God even though we have no idea if he exists. But if he does, he is certainly a he. Would a woman fuck things up this much?

We give thanks to the hellscape of contemporary publishing and look forward to another year of dancing atop the scorched earth and savoring the acrid brimstone.

We give thanks to the planet that affords us air and water and space to live our all-important lives. For the time being.

We give thanks to the universe, its emptiness onto which we pin our meaning like good little existentialists. We give thanks to our understanding of the pointless of this endeavor, like good little nihilists. We give thanks to our endurance and struggle and laughter, like good little absurdists.