Chattanooga Pulse

Unsurprisingly to most, I have a vast contempt for the Thanksgiving holiday.

It’s often only an excuse for a meal, an excuse for a noncommittal time of saying “Thank You” for all the things you don’t appreciate without the inconvenience of having to mean it, of having to espouse the virtues of gratitude when in fact you’re only appearing before your family for the sake of your own conscience, and as if to underscore this, for the sake of your own need for a free meal that you’d otherwise have to pay for yourself.  I allow a pause here for those of you reading this who might not know who you are…and I pause for those who are not, but feed those very people regardless.

That aside, I’m an upbeat person who enjoys the holiday as much as anyone else.  I tend to also think of it as a time of gratitude in remembrance of settlers who were screwed two ways to Sunday until they met locals who got them through an otherwise terminal time in their lives, which inevitably led to the current Modern Age. I sometimes wonder if the natives who helped them had any idea their actions would one day lead to the establishment of  “reality television” shows.  Had they been aware of this, would they be thankful?  Or would they immediately slit their own throats and avoid a whole slew of embarrassment?  Until we master sling-shotting around the sun and going back in time we’ll never know, but I am still thankful for some things, no matter what you may think.

First and foremost, I am grateful that Ally McBeal is off the air.  Five long years of teaching young women that it’s OK to “spontaneously dance your troubles away” like complete twits in unisex bathrooms.   Five long years of trying to make lesbian piano music mainstream.  Five long years of living in terror of Calista Flockhart and Peter MacNicol getting liquored up one night after filming and producing the most annoying baby since Congressman Barney Frank.

I am grateful for “chaos theory” mathematics.  Not so much for the study of complex dynamical systems that explain, among other things, why long-term weather prediction and self-regulating political term limits are impossible, but because it gave us “trippy fractal images” in the late ’80s and ’90s to enjoy, and it inspired kids to think when they learned about it from watching Jurassic Park, of all things.  (The original, not the compromised second and third installments.)

I am grateful for the late Carlos “White Feather” Hathcock and the calming influence he had on my formative years.

I am grateful for Jeff Bridges.  The same man who played “Tron” played “Jeffrey Lebowski”; he is like a Geeky Jesus.

I am grateful for “light” beers because I’m an American not pretending to have cultured Northern European tastes for warm light-crude motor oil, and I do not wish to weigh in excess of 350 pounds.  I am also grateful for the advent of tiny dorm fridges these beers live in so that they can both exist in their natural American state (freakin’ ice-cold), and also be in many rooms at the same time.

I’m thankful horse-crap like “LEED Certification” is a freakin’ fad.

I am grateful that Phil Harris from Deadliest Catch finally realized it was more than a damn cracked rib and caught his blood clots in time and took his doctor’s advice, even though it meant sitting out his first Opilio season ever.  (Dammit, I know it was difficult, but Josh and Jake need you, bro.  Hell’s bells, after a scare like that I’m not afraid to say it:  I need you, too, Captain Phil.  There it is.  Let’s see what happens.)

I’m running out of space, but do you see?  Sure, I have opinions and beliefs occasionally branded as being a tad coarse or at least “less than mainstream”…but I’m not so emotionally distant as to be completely cut off from humanity.  In fact, I think at times I’m freakin’ sensitive as hell.  The thing about that guy from that place I had to electrocute was just business.  That stuff about Jared from Subway…well, OK, that was just kind of shitty, and come to think of it I’m pretty sure I even started this article by saying I have contempt for Thanksgiving…but all in all I am pretty thankful for more than Kevlar and my family (“Oh, Momma!”).

I’m thankful for those that walk The Line and stand a post, willing to give it all.  And I am thankful for you, Dear Reader, even though you fear those on the line willing to give it all.

(Jared from Subway is still one Whopper away from hell, though.  On that I stand firm.  Happy Thanksgiving.)

When officer Alexander D. Teach is not patrolling our fair city on the heels of the criminal element, he is an occasional student at UTC, an up and coming carpenter, auto mechanic, prominent boating enthusiast, and spends his spare time volunteering for the Boehm Birth Defects Center.