to be honest i’m finding it hard to concentrate this morning. unlike most days where the reasons are mysterious and possibly myriad today the reason is all too obvious. it’s the thousands of people surging past my living room window, no more than 20 feet from where i’m sitting. you see i live half a block from the thanksgiving day parade. this in effect makes my front “yard” a parade ground. complete with balloons, strains of marching band horn sections, endlessly circling news helicopters, traffic barricades, signs which read “please have bags ready for inspection,” screaming parents, and of course, the cause for screaming parents everywhere, screaming children.

i’m sure this will shock no one but i am not fond of parades. i do not despise them. they do not fill me with an all consuming dread. they do not make me break out in cold-sweat covered hives. i’m not a card carrying member of parade destroyers national or anything like that. i have just never understood the appeal. now before you explain parades are meant for the children and cite the big balloon animals as evidence let me underscore the “never” in that last sentence. even as a child the parades appeal escaped me.

on television parades are dull, like watching an impossibly flamboyant bank line shuffle past toward an unseen teller window. in person parades are dull but also cold, loud, crowded, and if there are elephants or horses involved possibly stinky as well. the only upside i can imagine is that in person you are spared the explicitly spelled out product endorsements and other inane commentary by those most disgust worthy creatures the t.v. talking heads (i am actually a member of talking-head destroyers national as it happens. i’ll stem the tide of horse shit exiting your mouth katie couric if the the last thing i do! just try and stop me lauer!). ‘course i don’t need to actually attend the parade to avoid the broadcast pap i can simply leave the television off.

now an admission- as with many instances of going against the crowded cultural grain there is an undercurrent of regret in all the humbug. human nature i’ll assume. you see all the people, the pomp, etc ,and though you find yourself uninterested, even in many cases repulsed, you wonder what it is you lack, what failing you have, what fundamental flaw you hold within your breast which prevents you from joining in, from being apart of the “fun,” from actually enjoying that which everyone else seem to revel in. ah well.

that being said allow me a moment to giggle publicly at a small blessing fate provided. directly outside my window, unbeknownst to me, operatives of parade destroyers (or perhaps a troop of humbug elves) installed a child trap. they must have. because in the past two hours no less than 7 screaming children have tripped and taken a spill in the same exact spot directly in front of me! a flaw in the sidewalk or a thanksgiving miracle? haha. now now, you head shakers out there, none of them were hurt! i’m not a monster. but to hear the sudden silence accompanied by that “rug pulled out from under me” face… why it’s priceless.

well it seems that the tail end of the parade has finally made it past my street. the crowds are now surging in the opposite direction. strangely what comes to mind instantly is the video for pink floyd’s another brick in the wall. i find myself imagining a meat grinder just over the horizon with all the scarved and bundled parade zombies singing “we don’t need no inflated garfields…”

i spy with my mind’s eye…(pause for a bit of photoshopery)

there you go. the parade lovers among you are of course welcome to state your case in comments.

anyhow… now that the parade has ended i can relax again, look for something relevant to post, and say- happy thanksgiving.