TotD’s Tips For Surviving Thanksgiving

Just stay home What’s truly more depressing: Netflix and bong hits in your own, quiet, home; or realizing the extent of your genetic shittiness?

Take notes Seriously. Pretend you’re texting and just write down the primitive nonsense thrown about the table. It makes you an observer in your own life, and casts an acceptable pall on your surroundings by tricking you into thinking you’re some sort of anthropologist. Similarly, pretend you’re a talk show host when talking to someone you have nothing to talk to about. Don’t have a conversation with your weird cousin: interview him.

Do not fuck the turkey Now, Enthusiasts, you and I know that this would be awesome. Normal people will not understand, and neither will hungry people. Do not fuck the turkey once it’s on the table, do not fuck the turkey when it’s being seasoned before cooking, and–whatever you do–do not fuck the turkey while the turkey is still frozen. You will hurt your genitals.

Drugs help Xanax is what you want. Or doobies, although doobies are tougher to hide than xanax; they are stinky and englassinate your eyes. Should you microdose? That depends on whether you think microdosing is a thing or not. (People whose opinions I respect say it is; I’m skeptical.) Should you macrodose? Fuck, no. What about a mild opiate? Holy shit, yes. But–unless you are like me, and benzos have no effect until I’m comatose for 14 hours–xanax is your jam for this special Thursday.

Booze doesn’t Put the drink down. (Although I’ll be honest here, Enthusiasts, and tell you that I come from a non-drinking family: there was never any alcohol offered at any of our holidays, so I’m really not the person to be taking advice from on this one. My grandfather enjoyed his Jack Daniels, and several members of the family are drunks, but there was never so much as beer or wine at our gatherings.) The point is to get through the evening without the cops being called, and booze does not help with that pursuit. Alcohol is cop juice.

Don’t bring your snake Aunt Barbara does not want to meet Funky Winkersnake.

Conversation starters “WE’RE ALL GONNA FUCKING DIE!” is probably not what you want to go with. Best to avoid current events altogether. In fact, it seems like every topic these fraught days is a minefield. What to talk about? Easy. Write this down on your palm and try not to sweat: Make fun of NFL quarterbacks. There is nothing that brings Americans together like mocking Aaron Rodgers or Eli Manning. (Warning: making fun of Cam Newton or Colin Kaepernick may go to the very place you were trying so hard to avoid.)

Fuck cranberry sauce It looks menstrual. (Fuck the cranberry in toto, as a matter of fact. You’ve never eaten a cranberry, have you? Not the circularly-dimpled globule of sauce slid sexily from its can, or the juice that lies about curing UTI’s, but an actual cranberry. They don’t sell them in the produce section next to blueberries (the king of berries) and strawberries and blackberries. Know why? It’s because the cranberry is bitter, and totally unpalatable without vast addings of sugar.)

Be Canadian Canadians had their Thanksgiving weeks ago, and they recently elected a leader who is the exact opposite of the one America did. In every single way, the precise and diametric opposite. What is there to about Justin Trudeau to argue about? “I find him too handsome and reasonable.” Americans would kill for those kind of problems.