Quit yer bitchin and pass the mashed potatoes.

Oh, the Memorial Day sadness. Each year it's the same here in the Northeast. Sour puss's moping around the rented beach house or camp ground, pissed off that they have more use for their Blockbuster card instead of their 40 Block sunscreen. The schleppers of soggy bags of unigniteable briquets. Expanded foam coolers laying to waste. The pouts. The long faces. The goose flesh.

What's crazy is historically in this part of the country it has been either in the upper fifties and overcast, or in the upper fifties, windy, and raining on pretty much each Memorial Day for the past ten years. Yet we persist. We cling to the dream.

This morning while trying to goad my dog outside in the driving rain to relieve herself, something occurred to me. Why don't we just scrap the whole summertime-barbecue-slip-n-slide-beer-drinking-jarts-playing nonsense and simply readjust our MemDay attitude. We'd be better off to view the holiday as the springtime sister to Thanksgiving, like Thanksgiving II, or Maysgiving. Trade in the badminton racket for a baster. It's essentially the same weather in May as it is in November anyway. The same grey windy rainy stuff that just screams indoors, oven-roasted, pop-n-fresh fun. Either way your full, drunk, and napping by three in the afternoon, so who cares what's on the menu? As a matter of fact...I think I'm going to head up to C-Town right now and see if they have any turkeys, and one of those Mrs. Smith's pumpkin pies. My mom isn't around but I can call her for the obligatory drunken argument later.