I’M NOT SURE, U.S.A. – Waking up today, I had two thoughts: “Where am I?” and “Holy shit, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, isn’t it?”

It turns out the answers to those questions – “I have no idea” and “yes” – are related. Like millions of other Americans, and probably millions of non-Americans too, I have traveled for the Thanksgiving holiday. Unlike most of those people, I’m not sure where I’ve traveled to, unfortunately.

Thus far, I’ve been able to determine I’m most likely in a hotel. Either that, or reasonably clean and quite unsecure prison that offers its inmates clean towels, packaged soap and a copy of the Bible tucked into a bedside table.

This post isn’t about figuring out where I am, though. It’s about being thankful for the fact I’m here in the first place. And by “here” I don’t mean this hotel/prison, I mean alive, on planet Earth (presumably) and in the year… umm… actually, I’m not sure about that part, either. But you get my point: It’s good to be alive.

As I take stock of being thankful, it’s important to recall what I do for a living, which I’m really hoping is writing stuff like this and posting it on adult news sites like YNOT, or else I’m totally wasting my time at this here keyboard – and probably forgot to ask to have today off from my real job, to boot.

At any rate, if I can get semi-serious for a minute (and there’s no guarantee I can), here are several things for which I’m thankful as we plow, headlong, hungry and horny, into the Thanksgiving holiday this year:

• The Free Speech Coalition, the ACLU and other groups like them. Groups like FSC, ACLU and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), along with the people and organizations they represent. do an awful lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to protecting our free speech rights. Plus, FIRE made this public service announcement, which is right up there with selected works of The Onion and Monty Python as among the Greatest Things I’ve Ever Seen.
• My dog. Sure, he’s not always a “good boy,” but he sure scares the piss out of people who try to fuck with me, a crucial role shamefully abandoned many years ago by my far less faithful (not to mention far more expensive to feed) ex-wife.
• Math. In a world where everything seems up for debate and nobody can agree on what’s true, decent, right or legal, it’s just good to know math is out there, not giving a single, solitary, multipliable fuck about our stupid, annoyingly subjective opinions.
• Jane Wilde. I suspect I don’t need to explain this one, because holy fuck just look at her. (Better yet, watch a few of her scenes.)
• My mom. Uh… Sorry to list you after Jane Wilde, mom. Please be aware these thanks aren’t listed in order of priority or my degree of thankfulness. Also, if you ever did any scenes, I don’t want to see them or even know they exist.
• Coffee. Seriously, without that shit, I couldn’t face the day. Or the night. Or my neighbors, the cops, cashiers at the grocery store or any other sentient beings.
• My lawyer. This may come as a surprise to him, in part because I owe him a lot of money and long ago stopped returning his calls, emails, direct messages, registered letters and threats to take legal action against me, but I do appreciate him keeping me out of trouble, to the extent possible, over the years.

I could go on like this all day, except my laptop is rapidly running out of battery power and I seem to have left the power supply cord at home when I set out for wherever I am now, presumably a state in which some unfortunate relative of mine claims as his/her/their place of domicile.

Lest I forget, I’m thankful to you, my reader(s), assuming you exist and I’m not just in the middle of a particularly vivid hallucination (again).

Either way, Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Turkey photo by Kranthi Remala from Pexels