absolutangel64

On Thanksgiving, people often reflect on all the things they are thankful. That’s why it’s called “Thanksgiving”…you know, because you’re giving thanks. Ah, the creativity–it’s like I named it.

Hearing what you’re thankful for is great, but honestly, if you’ve asked one person to tell you what he’s thankful for, you’ve basically asked us all. Yes, yes, family, friends, health, blah, blah blah. What I’m more interested in is hearing about all the things that didn’t make your list. That’s where the real fun begins because everyone’s going to have a unique answer–except the swine flu people. They just respond with whatever illness has been featured most in news headlines. This year it’s swine flu; in 2003 they said SARS and bird flu; in 1995 they said mad cow disease…next year they’ll be saying snail flu or flu-flu-flu.

Anyway, here are a few things that didn’t make my list this year. I have more than 3, but it would take years for me to write about all of them.

        I. Nostril Pimples

I actually have one in my left nostril right now, and it’s turned my life into a living nightmare. Scratching, blowing, picking—the freedom to do whatever I pleased with my nose is gone, replaced by a new reality that even the slightest contact with my nostril will erupt in crippling levels of pain.

Why do those damn things hurt so much? The other members of the pimple family tree aren’t painful, but having a zit in your nostril is like a death sentence. That probably means it’s the “black sheep” of the family, right? The one no one wants to associate with because it gets drunk all the time and tells bad jokes.

        II. Plastic Surgery Face

There are a number of reasons why I will never have any plastic surgery done on my face: (1) I like the face my parents gave me, and (2) I don’t want to have Plastic Surgery Face.

My basic Paint skills aren’t enough to help me draw a version of Plastic Surgery Face, but it’s all in the person’s nose, lips, and skin. Look up Shauna Sands, Kris Jenner, Daisy from “Daisy of Love,” and all the “Real Housewives of Orange County.” They’ve all got Plastic Surgery Face: their noses are shaped like ski slopes that are abruptly cut off by an unnaturally sharp-looking point, and they have giant lips that look even more monstrous when they wear pale pink lipstick (which they all do for some reason). And their skin doesn’t even look like real skin. There is something off about it—like, it actually looks as if they had plastic melted on their faces or something.

I don’t know if they look like that because they requested it, or because that’s the extent of our technological advances in plastic surgery. But there is something very wrong about being able to tell you’ve had work done on your face without even seeing a picture of what you looked like before. That result just seems like the antithesis of plastic surgery’s purpose. It’s supposed to make you look better, but I don’t think “better” means looking like a half-assed mannequin.

        III. Seitan

I’ve only eaten seitan once, but that lone experience is enough for me to say this with the strongest of convictions: If there was any part of me that was open to becoming of a vegetarian, then consider that part dead. Very, very dead. I will never, ever give up eating meat. And you vegetable people can go ahead and criticize my love for dead animal flesh, but I would rather eat carcasses than ingest a bite—no, an atom—of that disgusting fake meat you call “seitan.”

Seitan is imitation meat made from wheat gluten. It’s used as a substitute for real meat, and is claimed to be “surprisingly similar to the look and texture of meat when cooked.” And that would be true if real meat looked like diarrhea, and had the texture of…of…hmm, how should I describe it? You know how a Chicken McNugget has a layer of spongy goo between the chicken and the fried skin? If you were to scrape off that layer and remove all the delicious Chicken McNuggety flavor out of it, you’d get the texture of seitan.

I think seitan should instead be called “Satan,” because eating it is like going to Hell. In fact, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere in “Dante’s Inferno” that one of the punishments was eating that sh*t for eternity.

And in case you didn’t know: there may not be an “i” in “team,” but there is an “eat” in “meat.”