The death of Thanksgiving?

[Pogo]

You aren't respecting the lives of turkeys. You're pretending they're human, you nitwit. You are negged for being a fucking road hazard.

If I found you out wandering around the road trying to shoo turkeys out of the way, on any of the backroads that I have traversed, I would chew your ass and probably call the cops on you. You pose a bigger threat to the safety of motorists than the turkeys do, and your method is a lot less effective, and therefore less safe, than mine.
Moron.

And you'd get locked up in the loony bin, preferably the same one you broke out of.

It was the Blue Ridge Parkway. There was no other traffic.

Again, if that rubs your tiny little world of death and depravity the wrong way, that's too damn bad isn't it?

It was the Blue Ridge Parkway. There was no other traffic.

then you really didnt need to help them off the road

Correct. And I didn't. I simply waited and they took it from there.
You have to understand I'm being baited there by a contrarian troll. And she made up the part about getting out of the car because she's a fucking liar.

btw

those deer whistles that you can put on your cars

do not work

it is a scam

I agree. Even if they did astound the deer there's an equal chance they would astound them right into traffic.

So tell me Jon Berzerk

why is it that all your posts

look like something between

a haiku and a sonnet

?

 

[syrenn]

One thing that is interesting to me is that Americans say how bad the economy is, how broke they are, etc., yet they seem to have plenty of money for shopping. Can anyone explain that to me? If things are so bad, economically, they why is everyone so keen to go shopping?

it could be those very people who don't have much money that will be out shopping the sales on thanksgiving......

why do people hate the poor? I am sure the poor will be very thankful for the sales.

Does my post suggest any dislike for people without much money? It certainly wasn't meant to. I lived half my life having almost nothing. I just find it a conflict to say you want to go spend a lot of money shopping when at the same time you don't have much. There were times when I was broke and wanted a little 'retail therapy.' I would go out and chase down garage sales or go to a second hand store. Maybe in all I'd spend $5 or $10, retail therapy accomplished! I didn't have the $ to buy new things or go to a mall or anything.

no, the comment was not directed at you.... but in general terms.

 

[Sunshine]

Good paraphrase. I find it rather ironic that liberals who don't want anyone's values dictated to them, nor any religion whatsoever make such an effort to dictate the value that Thanksgiving supposedly holds, particularly since it IS a religious holiday. It is not particular to any one religion, but giving thanks is a religious rite.

Keeping the store open that day is completely secular and non religious.

WTF? Liberals most assuredly want to dictate values and religion. The ones they approve of.

I'm not a liberal, I'm a moderate. Nice try though.

Oh, and I'm right. Opening the department stores on Thanksgiving is going to lead to the end of Thanksgiving as we know it. It will just be another Christmas shopping day. This does not mean that all families will do this, but eventually, Thanksgiving just won't hold the same meaning for the majority of Americans as it does now. Again, it's a national holiday and the American thing to do would be to close anything that isn't a necessity on those days.

does it have to hold meaning? Who is to be the judge of what that meaning is supposed to be? Who is to be the judge of what is a "necessity" and what is not?

I wish you had lived in KY when they deemed toilet paper to not be a necessity! You would have ROFLYAO! That bit of legislation spawned some of the funniest 'letters to the editor' that I have ever read! Toilet paper. It's what Kentuckians use when the Sears Catalog just won't do! (No online shopping back then)

 

[Pogo]

So he actually ENCOURAGED them to come up on the road, based upon their INTENT, as he saw it.

He's the bird whisperer. And he taught them to commit suicide.

isnt that nice

the road to hell is paved with liberal good intentions

--LOL

--- Once again, you're responding to a troll spewing fabrications, because nothing of the sort took place. This is a hatemonger who needs to rewrite histories to fit her warped fantasies. What she respects is death and roadkill, whereas I'm the opposite. So she attacks those who don't fall in line with death lust.


What I did in reality was less than what you did here:

You aren't respecting the lives of turkeys. You're pretending they're human, you nitwit. You are negged for being a fucking road hazard.

If I found you out wandering around the road trying to shoo turkeys out of the way, on any of the backroads that I have traversed, I would chew your ass and probably call the cops on you. You pose a bigger threat to the safety of motorists than the turkeys do, and your method is a lot less effective, and therefore less safe, than mine.
Moron.

i used to be a big ol snapping turtle hunter

scored lots and lots of them when i was young

over the years i have felt bad about this

so one morning a couple of years ago

i spotted a big ol snapping turtle trying to cross the road

i pulled that turtle off the road by her tail hissing and snapping at me the whole time

i got back in the truck happy with myself for saving her life and the lives of her eggs she was going to lay

only to discover on the way home later that day

in about the same spot

was that turtle squashed in the road

-- and the moral is.... what? Let's throw up our hands and give up? Because I tell you what, you did the right thing.

 

[Esmeralda]

You aren't respecting the lives of turkeys. You're pretending they're human, you nitwit. You are negged for being a fucking road hazard.

If I found you out wandering around the road trying to shoo turkeys out of the way, on any of the backroads that I have traversed, I would chew your ass and probably call the cops on you. You pose a bigger threat to the safety of motorists than the turkeys do, and your method is a lot less effective, and therefore less safe, than mine.
Moron.

i used to be a big ol snapping turtle hunter

scored lots and lots of them when i was young

over the years i have felt bad about this

so one morning a couple of years ago

i spotted a big ol snapping turtle trying to cross the road

i pulled that turtle off the road by her tail hissing and snapping at me the whole time

i got back in the truck happy with myself for saving her life and the lives of her eggs she was going to lay

only to discover on the way home later that day

in about the same spot

was that turtle squashed in the road

Death Of A Naturalist

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.


Seamus Heaney

 

[syrenn]

I'm not a liberal, I'm a moderate. Nice try though.

Oh, and I'm right. Opening the department stores on Thanksgiving is going to lead to the end of Thanksgiving as we know it. It will just be another Christmas shopping day. This does not mean that all families will do this, but eventually, Thanksgiving just won't hold the same meaning for the majority of Americans as it does now. Again, it's a national holiday and the American thing to do would be to close anything that isn't a necessity on those days.

does it have to hold meaning? Who is to be the judge of what that meaning is supposed to be? Who is to be the judge of what is a "necessity" and what is not?

I wish you had lived in KY when they deemed toilet paper to not be a necessity! You would have ROFLYAO! That bit of legislation spawned some of the funniest 'letters to the editor' that I have ever read! Toilet paper. It's what Kentuckians use when the Sears Catalog just won't do! (No online shopping back then)

sorta the point....

what some feel is unnecessary.... others may not feel the same way. If you work in retail.. you work when the shop is open, not when you want it be open and closed when you want to be off. To bad so sad.... get out of retail if you don't like it. In my opinion retail sales is a service industry just like any other service industry...... It is there to provide what we want when WE the shoppers want it.

 

[Againsheila]

 

[Esmeralda]

To me it's just the idea of setting aside days to spend with family and/or friend groups. Perhaps to preserve tradition, but mainly the tradition of people spending time with those they value most. It's too bad that it has become, for many, what it has become: only a day to watch football and over eat, for people to feel compelled to spend the time with people they don't really like, etc. Is this an example of American culture having become an 'it's all about me' culture -- ego-centricity? Is that what is causing American culture to function so poorly nowadays? Not liberalism, not secularism, not technology, but ego-centricity? It's all about me and what makes me happy? I'm just wondering because the amount of social issues does seem to signal there is something truly rotten in the social fabric of the US.

 

[Sunshine]

does it have to hold meaning? Who is to be the judge of what that meaning is supposed to be? Who is to be the judge of what is a "necessity" and what is not?

I wish you had lived in KY when they deemed toilet paper to not be a necessity! You would have ROFLYAO! That bit of legislation spawned some of the funniest 'letters to the editor' that I have ever read! Toilet paper. It's what Kentuckians use when the Sears Catalog just won't do! (No online shopping back then)

sorta the point....

what some feel is unnecessary.... others may not feel the same way. If you work in retail.. you work when the shop is open, not when you want it be open and closed when you want to be off. To bad so sad.... get out of retail if you don't like it. In my opinion retail sales is a service industry just like any other service industry...... It is there to provide what we want when WE the shoppers want it.

I agree. I wonder if they think Amazon should shut down too! And all other online businesses that require someone to be minding the cyber store.

 

[Katzndogz]

Until he got too sick to go, my husband used to spend holidays with his ex, her family and their daughter. I chased him out of the house to go. I stayed home alone. He'd bring me a doggie bag back. It was a very workable arrangement. No one should feel compelled to spend time with others.

 

[Esmeralda]

Until he got too sick to go, my husband used to spend holidays with his ex, her family and their daughter. I chased him out of the house to go. I stayed home alone. He'd bring me a doggie bag back. It was a very workable arrangement. No one should feel compelled to spend time with others.

You shouldn't be expected to spend the day with you husband's former wife and in-laws, that's reasonable, but not wanting to spend the day with your husband, or your husband putting them first over you, that's very sad. Really sad.

 

[Katzndogz]

Until he got too sick to go, my husband used to spend holidays with his ex, her family and their daughter. I chased him out of the house to go. I stayed home alone. He'd bring me a doggie bag back. It was a very workable arrangement. No one should feel compelled to spend time with others.

You shouldn't be expected to spend the day with you husband's former wife and in-laws, that's reasonable, but not wanting to spend the day with your husband, or your husband putting them first over you, that's very sad. Really sad.

It's not sad at all. I wanted him to go. There is no reason why he should have to stay with me when he really wanted to be with his daughter. It wasn't like I wasn't invited. I declined. Except once when he badgered me into going on Christmas. I gave them a Christmas they will never forget, it will go down in family legend. After that, they left me alone. I've never been invited back for a holiday to anyone who imagined they could pressure me into going. I'm not ten years old any more and have to put up with what I don't want to put up with.

 

[koshergrl]

Liberal nutbags spend a lot of time worrying that other people don't feel exactly the same as they do, and they spend a lot of energy trying to figure out how to compel others to abide by their feelings of *right*.

For example, they don't think poor people should be shopping, and they think everybody should spend family locked up at home, with their families, and no football, on Thanksgiving. So they are busily thinking of how to force poor people, and others who don't celebrate properly, to get with the program.

Ironic because at the same time, they completely miss the point of the holidays they seek to force upon others.

 

[Againsheila]

I wish you had lived in KY when they deemed toilet paper to not be a necessity! You would have ROFLYAO! That bit of legislation spawned some of the funniest 'letters to the editor' that I have ever read! Toilet paper. It's what Kentuckians use when the Sears Catalog just won't do! (No online shopping back then)

sorta the point....

what some feel is unnecessary.... others may not feel the same way. If you work in retail.. you work when the shop is open, not when you want it be open and closed when you want to be off. To bad so sad.... get out of retail if you don't like it. In my opinion retail sales is a service industry just like any other service industry...... It is there to provide what we want when WE the shoppers want it.

I agree. I wonder if they think Amazon should shut down too! And all other online businesses that require someone to be minding the cyber store.

Why would someone have to mind a cyber store? It's cyber, it's programmed, it's a computer...it's not like the orders are going to go out that day.

 

[Pogo]

To me it's just the idea of setting aside days to spend with family and/or friend groups. Perhaps to preserve tradition, but mainly the tradition of people spending time with those they value most. It's too bad that it has become, for many, what it has become: only a day to watch football and over eat, for people to feel compelled to spend the time with people they don't really like, etc. Is this an example of American culture having become an 'it's all about me' culture -- ego-centricity? Is that what is causing American culture to function so poorly nowadays? Not liberalism, not secularism, not technology, but ego-centricity? It's all about me and what makes me happy? I'm just wondering because the amount of social issues does seem to signal there is something truly rotten in the social fabric of the US.

Ah I dunno, the whole deal with couch-potato football and being with people that may not be our first choice, that's just the foibles of human dynamics. They're going to ebb and flow.

About the me-centrism though... I wonder if that's just the natural evolution of our hyperconcentration on the individual (as opposed to the community)... we've evolved to a species that isolates itself in an individual cell-house and then further isolate ourselves within that cell in front of a boob tube. For this we trade the evening in the town square with our neighbors and the feel of community, even extended family.

And of course the merchant, seeing an opportunity in this individualism, first gets a football game moved from Sunday to Thursday and hypes it into an "event" (because that means more $ for "me", the merchant), and then starts opening stores on a holiday and hyping that up as an "event" too, so that "I" (not we) can go to a big box store at midnight, trample over my neighbors and buy myself a blender as a sacrament to personal commodity-worship and an abstract one-upmanship.

I dunno, there's something intangible that seems to be lost there...

 

[BullKurtz]

We all have unruly relatives, relatives we'd rather not be around, and relatives who can't wait to start a dust-up because they have no social skills or can't stand the other's political party. When the liquor comes out, the situation escalates accordingly. Why this should be AVOIDED baffles me. What the hell, families do what families do....and since the 1960s the family is not what it once was when respect and tolerance were what counted.....we ignored the occasional taunt and that usually worked. Making family gatherings a politics/religion free zone is the best approach. And maybe a drink maximum...the homeowner deciding who'd had enough by popular vote. My family members are mostly crazy Italians, ex and current Military, and some who may....well, live a little outside of the law. We are mostly afraid enough of each other to stray far from a friendly decorum and so we don't. The one rule that is never broken is to upset the woman cooking dinner....in my family that can get your ass kicked.

 

[Againsheila]

Until he got too sick to go, my husband used to spend holidays with his ex, her family and their daughter. I chased him out of the house to go. I stayed home alone. He'd bring me a doggie bag back. It was a very workable arrangement. No one should feel compelled to spend time with others.

You're right, no one should feel compelled to spend time with others. I just don't think people who are in retail should be compelled to work on Thanksgiving either.

 

[koshergrl]

Again, they aren't "compelled". They are free to quit.

 

[koshergrl]

I've worked many holidays, and welcomed the extra $$. I also enjoyed the shifts because it's a holiday...people are a little more relaxed, there isn't quite as much traffic, and the boss is ALWAYS thankful. Plus you get holiday pay.

 

[Againsheila]

Again, they aren't "compelled". They are free to quit.

In this economy? MW jobs are akin to slave labor, they don't dare quit or they would have no money to put a roof over their heads or food, or heat, or anything else. Of course if the owner opens the store they are "compelled" to work. I suppose you never went to work a day that you weren't thrilled to go?