Pedantry

The supermarket was filled to the rafters today, likely on account of Thanksgiving. Get your turkeys! Get 'em cheap. Take an extra one just in case! Put it in the freezer, madame.

I'm repeatedly asked whether I'm going home for Thanksgiving. Where? To Britain where we don't know nor care what Thanksgiving is? From what we can see, as Thom so eloquently put it to me earlier, the United States give thanks to the Native Americans "for relinquishing their land". Indeed.

Here, on my blog, I noted two years ago that my Thanksgiving lunch, traditionally taken at my coaches house, was not tainted by any religious overtones. No 'grace' was said, etc.. I wonder if this is unusual, or whether Thanksgiving is a purposefully non-religious holiday, on account of its origins. An interesting question to which I'll seek an answer tomorrow.

While I'm here; I saw the cover of National Enquirer magazine this week held the headline, "Michael Murdered - New Proof", beside a picture of a gaunt Michael Jackson. For those of us unacquainted with with National Enquirer, that pinnacle of subversive contemporary journalism, it's the one you find next to the check-out, propped up against packets of chewing gum. Not to be confused with it's sister publication, Globe, which deals mainly with the ongoing death of Patrick Swayze. Returning to my point, "New Proof" struck me as rather odd; surely, once proof has been attained, any new evidence could not be considered "new proof", just new evidence. I expected better of the Enquirer, or maybe I'm being pedantic.