Happy Thanksgiving [A List I’m Not Thankful For]

“Happy Thanksgiving!” – Every American next week

Yeah, yeah. We get it. The Americans are having their week-long, “oh, Happy Thanksgiving muah muah”  celebration next week, highlighted by a climatic collection of the world’s biggest assholes lining up for $3 toasters Friday morning.

Thanks for this.

Thanks for that.

All my programs will be off the air for a week and the entire universe collectively stops.

So, why don’t I play my part as “the angriest Canadian you’ll ever know”, tell everyone to take their “Happy Thanksgiving” and shove it,  while giving you my list of shit I’m not thankful for.

1. GROUP TEXTING

Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of group texting.

Ammon, Moreno, and I used to use this feature constantly to set BingeCast plans, exchange ideas, and shit-talk one another all day long. Then Moreno got a new phone and completely fucked my life up. Ever since he made this switch from Apple to Android I haven’t been able to send or receive a group text from anybody.

The best part?

He can do it just fine. No problems there.

I, however, send out a group message and it arrives on their phones as a solitary text to each of them thus making their responses individual. I’ve done everything to try and fix this – successfully removed myself form iMessage when I got my new phone, installed new messaging apps, removed and re-added their numbers, restarted, slammed my fist as hard as possible into the face of my phone, searched the Google machine for answers, changed settings, swore a whole bunch, and cried.

Nothing has worked.

We’re forced to use Facebook messenger whenever we need to have a team meeting and getting to that is about as smooth as shaving with a fork.

If you have any answers to this please let me know below because sooner or later somebody is going to get murdered.

2. STEPHEN KING’S REVIVAL

Stephen King has provided me with some of the greatest reads of my lifetime.

His more recent work has kept me entertained at a pretty high level. The last three books I’ve read of his (Joyland, Doctor Sleep, and Mr. Mercedes) have all been quick and satisfying.

So why in the holy hell does Revival suck so much babadiiiiick? I, like Ammon (the biggest King fife I know), thought there was pretty much nothing he could publish that I wouldn’t read and find some sort of enjoyment out of.

Revival is ridiculously boring. It’s the world’s dullest memoir with a climax that promises to be big and lasts about half a page and insists that you contemplate why the fuck you just spent as many hours as you did to get there.

I get that he deserves the right to do whatever the fuck he wants at this point in his career but at least put a warning sticker on the cover – “Attention: This is Stephen King not giving a fuck about what you expect from him.”

Read our book review of Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep!

3. MAKING CHRISTMAS LISTS

My parents divorced when I was really young so I know how awesome it is to get double the Christmas gifts when you’re a kid. By default my kids have three sets of grandparents and make out even better than I did when I was their age. They love opening up the entire Toys R Us catalog over a two day span come the holidays. I love it too because my wife and I barely have to buy them shit.

What sucks is the making of the lists for every single person buying those gifts.

• Grandparents #1 want a list in early November, when I’m still trying to eat all their Halloween candy.
• Grandparents #2 want a list at the end of November, when I’m still trying to make sure GP #1 has all the right shit.
• Grandparents #3 stroll in sometime in December and are all “Do you have a list for the kids?” and I’m all “What the fuck? Go to the dollar store and get off my ass!”

And that’s the thing, the kids don’t even ask for this much stuff. I’ll have them start a list in August and by the time I hand it over there’s something like 12 toys total on it. My mom wants to buy them twenty things each. There was a toy drive at work last week and I decided to go into the storage and see what I could scrounge up for the little unfortunate bastards. I came out with one of those giant gift bags, jam-packed with well over $300 worth of toys my kids never even got around to opening. I felt like fucking Ghandi when I dropped that bitch off that night. Below is an actual picture of everything my kids got two years ago. My basement is a joke.

Listen to the BingeCast Movie Homework for Trading Places!

 4. SNOW

There are three things I truly hate in this world.

1. Doing laundry.
2. Mowing the lawn.
3. Shoveling the motherfucking driveway.

So, I tell my wife at least once a year (she’ll say it’s much more than that) when I die, it will be from either cutting the grass or clearing that obnoxious white shit off our parking spots. My back is borderline paralyzed on any normal day throughout the year. After shoveling for an hour I feel like somebody lit me up me with a shotgun full of killer wasps.

It ruins me.

Ruins my sleep.

Also my work.

Sitting. Yes, it ruins my sitting.

And any smidgen of Christmas spirit I might have left by the end of the year.

You might say “Why don’t you just move then?” to which I am obligated to answer with “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

Because I’m not going to change my entire life and my family’s because I’m the grumpiest dick on the block.

Snow will not beat me.

All I’m saying is that it might (will) kill me one day.

Happy Thanksgiving…but no thanks!

---

Ed Note: Originally published November 21, 2014

---

Support Binge Media!

Leave a voicemail for The BingeCast at 708-406-9546

Subscribe to The Full Binge on Patreon

Follow Binge Media on Facebook

Join the Binge Media Facebook Group

Follow Binge Media on Instagram

Go to ParkScents.com and use the discount code BINGE20 at checkout for 20% off your entire order