Time again to say grace over the bird. Some possibilities to pick and choose from.

Thanks for drinking water that more and more often tastes like caught fish left in the livewell for about three days. In August.

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Thanks for those on whose last nerve I didn’t this year get. Or who had the forbearance not to tell me if I did.

Thanks for those who showed us it could be done, even if we’ve meantime lost the knowhow. And most of the want-to.

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Thanks for our U.S. exceptionalism, for our being better and more blessed in thy sight than nations and people elsewhere. We just get exceptionaler all the time.

Thanks for the impetus to so madly pursue whatever it is we are so madly pursuing.

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Thanks for it no longer being considered a vulgarity when you call it poop.

Thanks for the progress we’ve made in minding our own business. Especially in the area of family planning.

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Thanks for instant depreciation. Particularly the large kind that follows you off the car lot.

Thanks for the hectic pace where there used to be so much dawdling around.

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Thanks for the ever intensifying blowhardery keeping our attention on important matters rather than letting it drift to quieter considerations expressed (if at all) in the manner of old courtesies.

Thanks for purging our collective psyche of the foolish notion that for somebody somewhere some time or other enough might really be enough.

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Thanks for the ubiquity, the indefatigability, the infernal whateverness of the dog-peter gnat.

Thanks for Bryant overtaking Cabot in the race for dillweed capital.

Thanks for the polar hot tubs that global warming turned the erstwhile polar ice caps into.

Thanks for overly familiar telephone robots. (“Can I call you Bob? If so, press 1. If you would prefer ‘Mr. Lancaster,’ press 2. If you’d rather I go perform a contortionist self-violation of the type that Veep Cheney used to prescribe for his detractors, press 3.” …Alas, there’s no Press 3 option. Just wishful thinking on my part.)

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Thanks for the advent of political etch-a-sketchery.

Thanks for it having come down to the nonsensical vs. the idiotic. Maybe corked Larry v. bonked Shemp.

Thanks for letting our rep win approximately seven-tenths of one per cent of the time in the age-old battle of wits between the turkey hunter and his intended prey with a brain the size of a prune.

Thanks for all the blackbirds coming down one more winter to serve as symbols or reminders of whatever it is they’re supposed to symbolize for us or remind us of.

Thanks for the indignities that age visits on a body. The expected ones and those we never would’ve guessed. The frivolity, the capriciousness of them contraindicating a Master Plan.

Thanks for what the social media have done for literacy.

Thanks for the Carolina Graham crackers.

Thanks for the gerbilizing of America, steadfastly treadmilling off the stockpiled tallow for lack of being able to think of a more constructive or productive way of doing it, the gerbil still better at it in that he or she doesn’t need the headphone music to scatter the tedium — tedium, a certain dutiful uncomplaining blankness, being the gerbil’s preferred milieu, its what’s-happening and where-it’s-at, as it was for Old Man Rowdy at the RNC, enrapt in bemused conversation with the empty chair.

Thanks for Texas as a one-word encapsulation of, or shibboleth for, a whole range of insufferables.

Thanks for all of it having happened within a mere 6,000 years.

Thanks for pink slime and the pink slimification of the culture that it represents.

Thanks for the two gross of broken statues, the few thousand battered books, still mainly responsible for keeping the dark back.

Thanks for all the vital computations having been removed to an unspecific location on an imaginary cloud.

Thanks for a belief system of such frabjous construction that it can see a dire threat to its very existence in the far-off publication of a cartoon.

Thanks for the unopenable spill-guaranteeing little plastic bag inside the cereal box.

Thanks for all the new meds that are obliged in their advertising to list death as a possible incidental side-effect.

Thanks for one more cult thwarted.

Thanks for one more demonstration that while most of it can be bought and sold, not all of it can be. Not yet.

Thanks for a segment capable of hatching the notion of an Agenda 21 and of giving it immediate full credulity.

Thanks for the resiliency of torture, the resurgence of ebola, the dependable regularity of copperhead ebeneezering.

Thanks for all the expressions of shame and embarrassment from the bailed-out biggies for the catastrophe their splurge of greed brought on. Thanks also for their classy show of remorse in choosing to return, or refusing to accept in the first place, all the gigantic laughably-called performance bonuses that their scuzzbaggery earned them. …What? …Not a single one of them? …OK, never mind this one then.

Etc. etc. and amen dig in.

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