VGRC

It's Thanksgiving again, which for those of you who celebrate this holiday will be spending it days off from work, scarfing down food and supposedly "giving thanks."

I have a question for the people who legitimately celebrate this holiday: What is the point of it? Is it to "give thanks?" Why just one day of the year? Do you really give thanks? Who do you give thanks to? Or is this all a bunch of bullshit?

I asked those questions to a lady last year while waiting in line at the grocery store, and she shot back at me "Well, Thanksgiving is really just a day for being together with your family and relaxing." OK, even if that is the case, why do you need a special day for it? If that is something that is important to you, shouldn't you be striving to do that every day out of the year, instead of just one? Seriously, what a bunch of shit.

That out of the way, it's "Thanksgiving Tradition" around these parts to recite "A Thanksgiving Prayer" by William S. Burroughs, a poem taken from his book Tornado Alley and adapted into spoken word on his album Dead City Radio:

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shat out through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK. For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind his own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories -- all right let's see your arms!

You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

Hit the jump for the music video, adapted from his Dead City Radio performance.