Thanksgiving morning, at least in the US. So what does one do? Watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade - but it's become less of a parade, and more of group of snipetts of Broadway shows (currently Sting is singing and dancing with the cast of his new musical - it actually is pretty good). I guess the early stages of the parade are more "show" type acts, with the traditional giant ballons and marching bands and Santa Claus float bringing up the rear (one thing I'm not sure of is if the Broadway casts are walking all the way from Central Park, or if they just hang out down by Macy's and come on when it's their time in front of the camera).
The parade starts at 77th Street and 8th Avenue on the Upper West Side, and they march down to 59th Street, cross the bottom of Central Park, and then down 5th Avenue to 34th street, and back to Macy's at 7th Avenue & 34th Street (just past Broadway). They say it's 3 miles, and that seems about right. A massive celebration of...what? I'm not quite sure. I'm pretty sure that it started as a way to show off Macy's and sell stuff, and maybe that's what this parade and day are all about - stuff. Buying stuff (i.e., Dark Thursday and Black Friday), buying food, consuming food, consuming media (like this parade and all the football going on later).
Thanksgiving seems to have taken the media focus off Fuergeson, perhaps that is part of the point of our consumer focused society, to take everyone's mind off of social inequity by getting all of us (especially the more oppressed, who have more trouble keeping up with the Jones due to their reduced earning capabilities) to desire and buy as much as possible. Consumerism as subtle racism. An interesting concept - but probably not particularly useful.
It is time to start ripping up carpet and readying the subfloor to accept the new hardwood - all the crap from my room is spread throughout the house, and I need to get going in order to put everying back into my room by the end of the weekend - sometimes I'm not sure why I decide to do stuff (like buy a thousand piece shed that needs "some assembly" in order for my Mom to have somewhere to put outdoor storable objects - gosh that was a lot of trouble to assemble). Of course the floor is more "stuff", as is the shed, and the fact that we can move stuff into the shed means we could acquire yet more stuff for the freed up space (I'm kind of hoping that we are not going to do that). I have to go back to Philadelphia in a few weeks in a heroic attempt to get rid of stuff, and (if possible) move to a smaller storeroom. Then, next October, I want to take a nice long trip and close out that storeroom - which means getting rid of everything that I can bare to, and driving whatever remains back here. I don't mind having stuff back east, but if I'm not living there, it seems kind of pointless. Also, I would need to get a trailer hitch for the Subaru (which I actually would really like) and rent a Uhaul to get all those boxes back. It's a nice dream, although perhaps a pod-fire will eliminate all need to "get stuff" - ah, wishful thinking...