Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Well, by the time this is posted, Turkey Day will be considerably behind us. We're now well down that long, cold, snowy, God damn jolly road to Christmas. But do not let the belatedness of my holiday greetings diminish their sincerity. Their lateness is just an unfortunate byproduct of my incarceration. More specifically, my need to rely on snail mail and a blogger surrogate (thanks Dad).

So while countless families all across America sat down at their respective dinner tables to dine from their plates overflowing with turkey and pumpkin pie, I sat on a steel toilet eating knockoff Butterball out of a Styrofoam tray with Brad just a few feet away.

With the turkey we had the traditional stuffing and mashed potatoes along with the not-so-traditional canned broccoli and chocolate cake. Wasn't too bad, I guess. Especially considering the fact that this is prison and all.

Midway through the meal I hold my tray out to Brad and ask him if he wants my stuffing.

"What, you're not going to eat your stuffing?" he asks, shooting me a nothing short of bewildered look.

"I'm not going to eat that stuffing, no," I assure him.

The expression on his face after this declaration can only be described as a hybrid of shock and disgust with just a hint of soul-rending agony.

"That's just not American," I'm told. And this dude is dead serious. It's bad enough when a few years ago members of our society actually began calling french toast "freedom toast" in some sort of absurd spirit of patriotism. But since when did refusing to eat some stuffing that looks like it came out of a tube equate to suggesting that bin Laden probably isn't a bad guy once you get to know him? Does patriotism really have to be synonymous with simple-mindedness?

"Yeah, OK Karl Rove," I say, standing up. "Look, this crap isn't stuffing, it's Play-Doh. Since you apparently don't want it, I'll feed it to the warden." Feeding the warden is an expression used when flushing something down the toilet.

With a dramatic shaking of his head, Brad returns to his turkey thoroughly convinced he's just witnessed an act of treason. Strange fella.

All in all, not a completely horrible Thanksgiving. Mostly horrible, but not completely.

Of course next up is Christmas. Certainly no chimneys around that Santa can shinny his fat ass down to deliver all the wire cutters and presidential pardons everybody's been pining for. Fortunately the Federal Bureau of Prisons engages in the spirit of giving by handing out quarts of eggnog and boxes of Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve to all the bad little girls and bad little boys.

I'd say that the holidays in the Big House suck except they're not a lot different from any other time of year, just a whole lot colder and snowy-er. So prison pretty much sucks in general, and the holidays have no monopoly on misery. It's not exactly supposed to be summer camp here, I guess. Although I really don't see how a few tire swings and a swimming pool would hurt anything.