THANKSGIVING & TAKING - REDUX BLUES

POLITICAL ADVERSARIAL

EVEN MORE IMPORTANT NOTICE: NO INJUNS WOZ KILLED IN THE RECORDING OF THIS SKETCH. SOME DIED, BUT FRANK LEE, IT AIN'T OUR FAULT IF THEY CAN'T TAKE THEIR TOE JAM

BIRD: Thanksgiving? What's all that about, then?

BUFFALO: It’s something we do on the third Thursday of every November, a national holiday, like. We give thanks for everything that we have.

BIRD: For everything?

BUFFALO: Ja, Mein Hair, for all the good things that we took away from the Indians.

BIRD: You’re still pestering the Indians over there then?

BUFFALO: Well, not me personally, dude, seeing as how I’m one sixteenth Choctaw, and right proud of it, too.

BIRD: So, who’s doing all the pestering, then?

BUFFALO: The Pilgrims, dude. That bunch that sailed here from Plymouth, England, back in 1620 and landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts.

BIRD: Plymouth Rock? Good Lord, what are the chances of that?

BUFFALO: Aye, the Pilgrims immediately saw the divine hand of Providence in that, you betcha.

BIRD: So, were the Indians hostile, like?

BUFFALO: Nope, they greeted the Pilgrims with open arms and offered them food, then helped them get through the first winter, taught them the ways of the land and all that.

BIRD: Well, that was quite white of them. Did the Pilgrims reciprocate?

BUFFALO: Oh, hell, yes, Birdy. After their first harvest, the Pilgrims invited the Indians to come and share their feast of Thanksgiving, where they first served all the traditional foods that we still enjoy today. See, the Indians showed the Pilgrims how to hunt wild turkeys, where to find the cranberry bogs and the yams or sweet potatoes, they gave them seed corn to grow, and so on, and thus every year we feast on turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, corn, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, you name it.

BIRD: So do you still get together with the Indians to celebrate Thanksgiving?

BUFFALO: Blitzkrieg duet, dude. No way. It was just that one time, where they learned that Indians can’t handle their alcohol too well, so they got them all likkered up, boogered the lot of ‘em, robbed their graves, and kicked the poor bah-stoods all the way back to their wigwams. Now we just observe the anniversary of the first Thanksgiving in the breech, like. We put up pictures of the Pilgrims and the Indians breaking bread together, and in church the old revs talk it up big time, and then on the eventful day we pig out until all the men fall asleep and snore on the sofas watching the Detroit Lions getting their asses whipped on TV while the women clean up after everyone and do the dishes, and the kids run around screaming their bloody lungs out.

BIRD: Kind of like little Red Indians, then?

BUFFALO: You got it.

BIRD: A vestige of the past, what what, a bit of the old glory days. And what of the Indians. What happened to them?

BUFFALO: Well, the ones we didn’t exterminate right off, with shot and shell, or the clap, or smallpox, we kept pushing further West until they came to the Pacific Ocean, and then we herded the survivors into hot, dusty reservations in godforsaken hellholes like Utah and Nevada.

BIRD: True horrorshow. Not the children, too?

BUFFALO: Birdy, do you think we’re a bunch of barbarians over here? We send all their malnourished young to first class educational facilities, like the Custer Memorial Indian School and Cobalt Testing Range.

BIRD: Oh, lumme! Tell me it isn’t so.

BUFFALO: Well, as Teddy Roosevelt put it so succinctly, “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” But, they’ve found a way to even the score.

BIRD: How so?

BUFFALO: The Indians own half the casinos over here now. And with compulsive gambling on the rise, it’s just a matter of time until they own the whole shebang again and drive the White Man back into the sea from whence he came.

BIRD: Crikey. Will your Indian blood save you, you think?

BUFFALO: Not sure, but I’ve hedged my bets. I’m now a card-carrying member of the Choctaw Nation, but keep it under your hat, Birdy. There's talk about rounding up all the Indians and putting them in a central location. The scuttlebutt is that Indians have a high rate of Attention Deficient Disorder, caused by over-indulgence in Mad Dog 20/20.

BIRD: What in the name of Bog is that?

BUFFALO: A heavily fortified, sickingly sweet, Concord grape wine. Cheap as mule piss and thus very popular among Indians on welfare, which is most of them. Anyway, the gummint thinks that putting all the Indians together in one big camp might improve their concentration.

BIRD: Oh, I see... sort of a concentration camp, then?

BUFFALO: Catchy name, Birdo. You should enter it in the competition, like.

BIRD: Send me the application, Buff.

BUFFALO: Pronto, Tonto! “Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam…”

BIRD: “Where the deer and the antelope play..."

BUFFALO: “Where seldom is heard…”

BIRD: “A discouraging word…”

BUFFALO: “And the skies are not cloudy all day…”

BIRD: Happy Thanksgiving, Buff.

BUFFALO: Same to you, my avian chum, same to you. Oh, care to hear William S. Burroughs’ Thanksgiving prayer?

BIRD: Lay it on me, Buffo.

BUFFALO: Got it here somewhere… ah, yes, here it is, under my copy of “Mein Kampf”… grab a hanky, Birdy, this is a real tear-jerker.

"For John Dillinger
In hope he is still alive

Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts —

thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison —

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger —

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the carcass to rot —

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes —

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lies shine through —

thanks for the KKK, for nigger-killing lawmen feeling their notches, for decent church-going women with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces —

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" bumper stickers —

thanks for laboratory AIDS —

thanks for Prohibition and the War Against Drugs —

thanks for a country where nobody is allowed to mind his own business —

thanks for a nation of finks — yes,
thanks for all the memories... all right, let's see your arms... you always were a headache and you always were a bore —

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams."

BIRD: Amen, Buff!

BUFFALO: God Bless America! Arf, arf.