It’s been a little while. A week. I got over being sick, though I left work right after that. I realized it was more like 55 hours instead of 31. I was feverish so everything was in a bit of a fog. I’ve been busy as can be with Thanksgiving and work. I had a pretty good Thanksgiving Holiday, though I was feeling pressure from a crazy lady I live with to bend more to her schedule than to my own. I like to make time for family during Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday of the year. I have a lot to be thankful more, because I figure I have a lot more than I deserve. I like it better than Christmas, because I always end up feeling inadequate, because I didn’t get gifts for enough people, and I didn’t get good enough gifts for the ones I did. Besides, Christmas is an external holiday. It’s a holy day. Thanksgiving is much more humanistic and personal I guess, though I suppose it depends on to whom you are thankful. I find it very easy to be thankful to my family and my friends and to my good luck, without bringing God into Thanksgiving so much. My brother is very thankful to God for all he has. I know because I know him, and also because he told God so in no uncertain terms for about ten minutes just prior to eating on Thursday evening. I enjoy it when people pray. It’s not just that hearing someone else lead a prayer means that I have escaped again unscathed by the embarrassing request to lead a prayer, either. I like to hear how people identify God, and what kind of relationship they believe themselves to have with God. My brother definitely thinks of God as being a benevolent father, which is pretty much how I saw God when I was still a believer. Even when I gave up Christianity, it was a long time before I stopped praying. It seemed to be bad Karma not to repeat every night before sleeping, “Father, please forgive me for all my sins, please protect me from anything which could harm me in any way, protect my family from anything that could harm them in any way, protect our property from anything that could harm it. Help me to be the best person that I possibly can be, In Jesus’ name, Amen.” I don’t actually remember when I stopped praying this way. Actually the karmic comfort of it may have originally been part of what convinced me of the nature of religion in the first place. It was so mentally comforting, like pulling the blanket up over my head. I literally would lie awake some nights, not being able to sleep, and then think, ah, I haven’t prayed yet. As soon as I finished, I was out like a light. I’m sure I was still doing it when I went to college. I guess the belief in a benevolent father-god is not good for faith, though. You have to believe that God has a bit of mean streak in him to buy into Christianity whole-heartedly. How else do Christians explain hell? Maybe they get by it by thinking of people who deserve to go. Anyway, I digress. I ended up enjoying no fewer than four Thanksgiving dinners. The final one was Saturday night, at Cody’s. The official name for that particular feast was Young People’s Thanksgiving. It’s still called that even though a few of us have made it to the big 3-0, but we’re still young. It’s not for kids, however. After we show how thankful we are by bringing lots of good eats to share with friends, we all get drunk. The food lends an air of sophistication to whole thing. I shared a bottle with a friend, and though I am sure I drank more of it, I understand he had to be carried out sometime before I left. I wouldn’t know, I was stomping around the living room like Jesco White, singing along with Loretta Lynn. You just can’t give hillbillies brown liquor. Sunday night, I started getting sick yet again. I’m just not healthy this year. I’ve spent the last three days with a terrible cold working on a Pandemic Flu Presentation that I could have summed up with, “It ain’t comin’ now, but when it does, we’re all gonna die.” I managed to tell that story in 68 slides over an hour and a half this morning. I’m starting to feel a little more recovered now.

Incidentally, I just found out that Jesco fan mail may be sent to:
Jesco White
P.O. Box 57
Peytona, WV 25154

Jesco is not doing well these days. His brain is half-fried from huffing gas when he was younger, and he's stays on quite a bit of Zoloft. He's in a pretty deep depression too. I'll bet he feels like the fattest girl at the pig party, after glimpsing fame, and then realizing people love him only for his absurdity.