Rick's November Tirade
A Cynic's Thanksgiving
Here in the northeast provinces of our famous republic, every
gust of wind now sends red and gold leaves swirling across the sky.
They dance, they flutter, they fall poignantly to the ground —
precisely as they've been doing every year since the gods invented
deciduous trees.
The chill of November has arrived, and nature is withering away
before our eyes. Of course, that means it's time to celebrate
another Thanksgiving.
An entire generation of turkeys is destined for the guillotine.
Once the deed is done, millions of extended families will be
gathering together for a few hours of gustatory overkill. They
bustle about the kitchen, they chatter at the table, they fill their
innards to capacity. But how many of these stout Americanos look up
from their well-heaped plates long enough to render more than token
thanks? How many of them actually count their blessings between
helpings of dead fowl, canned cranberry sauce, and
marshmallow-topped yams?
I say it's time we celebrated Thanksgiving in the spirit of its
founders, who were grateful merely to have survived a brutal year
with their bodies and souls intact.
Think about those steadfast Pilgrims for a moment. Here was a
ragtag band of dissenting Englishfolk thrust upon the shores of a
savage continent, their ranks already thinned by cold and disease,
their relations with the native inhabitants uncertain at best, their
future viability as living organisms subject to the whims of
Providence.
They had every right to curse the heavens and cast a cynical eye
at their foolhardy leaders. But instead, they rejoiced in the meager
comforts and provisions they had managed to wrest from their stony
land. So let me announce my intention to do the same — right here,
right now. My friends, I am about to give thanks.
Mind you, this hasn't been the sunniest year in my recorded
annals. I had to watch my father, a gentle and dignified man, die a
lingering death. Freshly orphaned, I was forced to put my boyhood
home on the auction block. My book has all but vanished from the
stores, its author still a no-namer. I've been without a woman for
considerably more than a year, and I'm growing crotchety. Yes, I was
promoted at work — but my five percent pay raise has entitled me
to approximately a hundred percent more headaches. My current stress
level is sufficient to make me a likely candidate for premature
burial, if not the postal hall of fame.
So what do I have to be thankful for? For one, I haven't died
yet. Nobody has tried to embalm me or write my obituary. My lease on
this particular body has yet to expire. For the time being, I can
continue to enjoy galumphing around this intriguing planet, eating
broccoli and pretzels, getting caught in the rain, and watching
green lights turn red as I approach. I wouldn't have it any other
way.
Just as important, my body has survived the year in reasonably
pristine condition. I still have my original arms, legs, and head. I
don't suffer from pernicious anemia or St. Vitus' dance. Except for
a hopeless case of chronic eyestrain, a probable accretion of suet
in my aging arteries, and a number of minor discomforts, I'm still a
functional machine.
In fact, I'm continually amazed that these fragile two-legged
vessels continue to serve us under the most adverse conditions.
Imagine if our ears and noses sloughed off in the shower, or if our
backbones collapsed like Lego blocks when we climbed out of bed in
the morning. That would be no kind of life, would it?
My mind, too, has proven to be sturdier than expected, having
weathered the storms like a proud old ship: sails tattered here and
there, the hull a bit leaky in places, a few guns out of commission,
the rigging in need of adjustment. But it could have been worse. At
least I haven't sunk.
I must remind myself that I'm fortunate to be who I am. After
all, I might have entered this world as a horned toad or a wombat.
Or a mollusk. Or one of those blind, hairless molelike creatures
that spend their entire lives in underground burrows. Or a
bureaucrat, which is essentially the same thing. On the whole, I
can't say that any of these alternatives would have been a
significant improvement over my current life.
I'm not a werewolf, either, and I give thanks for that quirk of
fate. I don't have to worry about sprouting fangs or excess facial
hair while I'm comparing breakfast cereals at the local supermarket.
I'm relieved that I've never been bitten by a vampire or converted
into a zombie — though my job continually threatens me with the
latter possibility.
I'm grateful that I don't live in Lubbock or Fargo or Novosibirsk
— or a lot of other places I'd rather not live in. I only live in
ONE place I'd rather not live in. That much I can handle.
I'm thankful, too, for the petty abominations that give me
sustenance as a cynic. I'm indebted to all those American students
who can't place the Civil War in the correct century or locate
Canada on a map. With abundant good cheer do I salute the precious
menus of nouvelle-yuppie restaurants, with their caper-encrusted
meat entrees, drizzled jackfruit sauces, and lemon-dill sorbets
bathed in balsamic vinegar. I'll have the medallions of liverwurst,
please.
Yuppies, of course, merit my cynic's gratitude simply for being
their lovably unlovable selves: hiding out in gated communities,
working 12-hour days with strangely passionless zeal, enrolling
their offspring in fast-track pre-schools, and arming themselves
with all manner of portable electronic instruments that keep them
productive while they're sideswiping me on the freeway.
And let me not overlook the business world itself, with its
mission statements and leadership teams and cubicles and downsized
staffs and upsized workloads. Thank you for introducing terms like
"non-value-added" into the language of Shakespeare.
Finally, to all those academic purveyors of political
correctness, relentlessly rhetorical special-interest groups,
man-eating feminists, bellowing televangelists, stony-eyed
metalheads, rap artists, con artists, immoralists, cockroaches,
spammers, muggers, tailgaters, gatekeepers, shysters, hucksters,
online pornographers, politicians, paparazzi, daytime talk-show
hosts and other assailants of our collective psyches, let me confess
that I'd be a pretty poor cynic if you didn't shine your evil little
lights upon our world. Well done, all of you. Please accept my
gratitude for fostering a cultural climate that transforms the best
of us into 24-carat cynics. Praise the lord, and amen.
Well, my friends, I've said my thanks — and I hope you'll say
yours. Like the embattled Pilgrims in their alien land, we've
survived against the odds. Our plates are ready. The turkey is
roasted and sliced and steaming upon the table. Now let's pass it
around and hope we don't catch salmonella.
Here's the complete archive of Rick Bayan's immortal tirades for your reading pleasure:
December 2002 — Hello, I Must Be Going
November 2002 — A Raving Moderate
August 2002 — Is Western Civilization Worth Saving?
July 2002 — To Scam or Be Scammed
June 2002 — I Read the News Today, Oh Boy
May 2002 — Speechophobia
April 2002 — Fanatics on Parade
March 2002 — The Prestige Gap: A Lament
February 2002 — On Becoming a Dullard
January 2002 — Art for Slackers
December 2001 — An Unsolicited Christmas Card
November 2001 — A Tale of Two Tribes
October 2001 — On the Fallen Towers
August 2001 — Why Do We Bother?
June 2001 — Notes from a Doomed Planet
May 2001 — The Museum of Discarded Names
April 2001 — Indecision
March 2001 — A Slight Case of Insanity
February 2001 — Letter to a Conscientious Critic
January 2001 — The Cynic's Inaugural Address
December 2000 — The 50th Tirade
November 2000 — Travel Advisory
October 2000 — Beyond Work
September 2000 — More Work
August 2000 — Work
July 2000 — The Doves' Nest
June 2000 — Great Affectations
May 2000 — Tale of a Virtual Village
April 2000 — The World Is My Obstacle Course
March 2000 — A Living Heck
February 2000 — On the Treachery
of Time
January 2000 — A Letter to the
Future
December 99 — Rare Bird
November 99 — Not Just Another
Obscure Ethnic Group
October 99 — Extinction Reconsidered
September 99 — Good Life, Bad
Life, Better Life
August 99 — Household Relics:
An Elegy
July 99 — A Meditation on Profanity
June 99 — In Praise of Sloth
May 99 — A Bug's Death
April 99 — Obligations!
March 99 — The Courage to Be Ordinary
February 99 — A Grave Story
January 99 — What's Left for
Men?
December 98 — On the Uses of
Friends
November 98 — A Cynic's Thanksgiving
October 98 — Grand Illusions
September 98 — Filth
August 98 — Will the Real God
Please Stand Up?
July 98 — Adventures in Downsizing
June 98 — Lady Longevity
May 98 — Uniquely Human, Uniquely
Clueless
April 98 — The Mathematics of Excess
March 98 — Humbuggery
February 98 — Love and the Single
Cynic
January 98 — By the Sweat of
Your Brow
December 97 — Is Suffering Unfashionable?
November 97 — The Tao of Housekeeping
October 97 — The Sensory Deprivation
Blues
September 97 — Down with Natural
Selection!
August 97 — Noise
July 97 — On Eating Our Fellow Creatures
June 97 — Trouble in Book-Land
May 97 — Interview with an Unemployable
Man
April 97 — The Cynic's Dream
March 97 — Inequalities
February 97 — Flesh and Mortality
January 97 — How to Be a Success
December 96 — Why I Can't Hate
Christmas
November 96 — How I Became a Cynic
