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Digital Slob Curt Brandao |
Usual laziness an
advantage at holiday festsThanksgiving Day, or what some chronically solitary Digital Slobs call Group Mastication Day, will soon be upon us.
Though requisite get-togethers usually make Slobs cringe, the fact is this holiday is good medicine. In the hustling, bustling Digital Age, we rarely take meals at tables without a broadband connection, and we so seldom chow down with the whole family that our designated Turkey Day matriarchs should probably pass out name tags with the dinner rolls.
So if the demands of a Slob lifestyle have left you too disoriented to recognize your own clan's annual Ego Demolition Derby and High-Carb Fall Fest when you see it, here's a few tell-tale hints: If more than half the people ogling food all around you have physical defects vaguely similar to yours, if you're sleeping six inches off the floor on an air mattress that puts your face well within licking range of a lovestruck dachshund, or if overcrowding has depleted household resources to the point where you must take cold showers and dry off with someone's sweatpants you pulled out of the dirty hamper, breathe easy -- you're home for the holidays.
From cat allergies to weapons-grade body odor to ethnically insensitive jokes lobbed across the Generation Gap like Molotov Cocktails, irritations can rule Thanksgiving with an iron fist. But this Thursday, don't try to get anyone to stop smoking, or get on the Atkins Diet, or pay back a loan, or join the Libertarian Party, or admit you were conceived out of wedlock.
Don't be a hero. On Turkey Day, the only thing deadlier than Aunt Sally's Watergate Salad is hubris.
But as your family's Respectable People will no doubt scream at you in heretofore unexplored octaves, letting stupid people advance their stupidity right under your nose can be a lot harder than it sounds, even for a short time. It's true that a policy of appeasement didn't work too well with the likes of Hitler during World War II, but Uncle Karl doesn't want to invade Poland -- he just wants to play "Pull My Finger" again.
Still, the cumulative stress from "When Pet Peeves Attack" dinner theater might tempt any Digital Slob to, uncharacteristically, join the fray. But in fact, Thanksgiving is the one day we Slobs can get snaps for just being ourselves, as after a while the group will confuse our everyday listlessness with taking the high road. Do this a few years in a row and you could attain the title, "Mother's Favorite."
But if biting your tongue for hours on end makes you forget the spirit of this holiday, here are three quick things to be thankful for that I think any Slob can cling to:
>> Microwaves: At first, everyone agreed letting your youngest nephew say grace was a cute idea, but once he starts thanking God for "Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine Free Coke, Vanilla Coke, Diet Coke with Lemon ..." you'll realize the only thing that can possibly revive your mashed potatoes is a good nuking.>> The Dallas Cowboys: Regardless of how you feel about the team, you have to be grateful this NFL franchise is willing to play an early Thursday game every year just to give you something to focus your eyes on other than your mother's sister, who married rich and has had more multimillion-dollar makeovers than the $20 bill.
>> High-speed Internet access: Without my cable modem, I'd still be deleting spam sent out during the Eisenhower administration.
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Curt Brandao is the Star-Bulletin's production editor. Reach him at: cbrandao@starbulletin.com
