​Thanksgiving Day is almost upon us and hosts everywhere are panicked more than ever. What was once a warm family gathering of gratitude is looking much more like Festivus, including the Airing of Grievances. Mom wants nothing more than a traditional celebration of family, but those relatives will be coming and you know how they are about you-know-what.
 
Keeping the peace has never been easy, of course. Cousins Eunice and Essie still aren’t speaking after that dust-up over Granny’s pearls in 2003, Uncle Rahm is still mad about the, um, carving accident from 2012, and who can forget the night that Aunt Agnes insisted that internet dress was gold and white and Cousin Sophie threw the gravy boat at her?
 
Ah, family. We’d mention here that blood is thicker than water, but why remind people of those stains in the couch from last year?
 
Have no fear, though, for the team at Dad Writes has the solution for holiday strains. No, we’re not suggesting that you cancel dinner; merely that you adopt a few defensive tactics to keep things friendly, sorta.
 
If you’re hosting this year, a few time-saving tips can smooth out the bumps and ensure that a good time is had by all. Specifically…

1. Be very selective in food choices, because everyone is triggered by something. This is a good year to ditch the turkey, yams, carrots and absolutely anything from California. The safest bet this year is potatoes and bacon. For dessert, a Sara Lee pound cake, which nobody doesn't like. 
2. Expand on the time-honored tradition of a kids’ table by giving each of your guests a table of their own. Yes, this might require bringing those old TV dinner tables down from the attic or buying a couple of new sets ($10 apiece online) but that’s a small price to pay to avoid new bloodstains on the couch.
3. Invest in one of those signal jammers to keep your guests from checking their texts and news feeds during dinner. The last thing you need is for Aunt Shirley to sigh and announce, “Gawd, could this get any worse?” Because, as soon as she asks, it will.
4. Don’t ask questions. Yes, a good host is usually encouraged to get the conversation started, but that’s the last thing you want on Thanksgiving. Don’t ask your relatives what’s new, how they are doing, or what they are watching/reading/streaming. Don’t even ask if they liked the potatoes and bacon. Why take the risk?
5. Jump on the grenade. When the conversation heads into dangerous territory, which is pretty much guaranteed, be ready to say, “Oh, that reminds me, I need to show you something.” Then grab the relevant person by the arm, lead him/her/they/it into a nearby closet, and give them one of those injections that works so quickly in spy movies. Hopefully, you will have enough closets for the entire evening. And enough syringes.

 
Of course, guests must also take some responsibility for a great holiday. If you’re going to be a guest at Thanksgiving dinner, you’ll play an important role in helping the host keep things merry and bright. Absolutely...

1. Whether your diet is Keto, Atkins, Mediterranean, Meatatarian, Vegan or Klingon, make life easy for your host by bringing your own dinner. No need to cook it in advance; just grab some space in the kitchen and make the magic happen.
2. Let everyone know you’re feeling comfortable among family by unbuckling your belt and unbuttoning your waistband as soon as you take off your coat. Everyone will feel much more at ease after they see how relaxed you can be.
3. Help your hosts keep the peace by assembling a list of all the topics that are prohibited and make sure the rest of the guests are aware of the rules. Every ten minutes, remind them, “We are absolutely not going to talk about _______, ______ or _______.” By mentioning the topics specifically, you will ensure that nobody makes a mistake.
4. Know your limits, and exceed them. If you get boisterous after two drinks, weepy after three, and then pass out after four, do not pass Go on your way to your fourth drink. Don’t worry about missing the festivities. Your cousins will show you the video tomorrow. And the next day. And again. And again.
5. While all the adults in the room are working tirelessly to avoid eye contact, make sure the children are engaged in the holiday celebration. Bring all the "toy mazagines" from the Sunday paper and ask the tots to show their parents which toys they want most. Better yet, bring a pet and announce that it will go home with the kid who belches loudest at dinner. We recommend a puppy. Or a puff adder.

 
See how simple it is? If we all follow these rules on Thursday, every household in America is guaranteed to have the thankiest Thanksgiving ever. And that goes double for whichever kid ends up taking home the puppy…or the snake.  
 
Can you imagine how terrible it would be if you didn’t know how to keep the peace on Thanksgiving? Don’t miss out on our upcoming guides to hosting, guesting, meeting, greeting, and holding eternal grudges…by simply clicking here to subscribe to Dad Writes. We’ll be glad you did.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Jill and I are fortunate to have a great view of the Chicago River from our apartment, and the river is much busier than I would have assumed before we moved downtown. From March through November, this aromatic body of water is filled with kayakers, gravel barges, motorboats, party boats, tour boats and an occasional police patrol.
 
Some days, especially around this time of year, the temperature will hang in the 40s and the rain will come down in sheets, but the tour boats maintain their schedules. Even in the worst conditions, the boats will have a handful of people on board, braving the gale on the top deck. Last Tuesday, as the temperature hovered in the teens, we watched a boat pass by with about a dozen passengers on board. 
 
At first, I wondered why these tourists—I assume they are tourists—are out in such bad weather to see our city from the river.  Then, I realized, they were on the boat this day because this was the only day they had available.

Most likely, these battered souls are in town for a short while, have an interest in architecture, and decide it's worth a bit of discomfort to survey our legacy. Yes, it might be raining or freezing, and yes, it might be (more than) slightly miserable, but our sodden friends can’t return tomorrow or the day after. This is the day they have and they are going to make the best of it.

You gotta respect that. This is the day they have and they are going to make the best of it.  Of course, this day is every day and it’s every day for all of us, not just for tourists on the Chicago River. We get the same 24 hours as Howard Schultz and Pope Francis, the same window as the guy who cleans the bathrooms at the airport and the prisoner on death row.
 
This is one of those lessons in life that’s so obvious, so consistent, that it’s easily forgotten. Sometimes we need a reminder, such as a tour boat with five passengers in truly miserable weather. Whenever one of those vessels comes into view, it energizes me to make more of my own experiences, to enjoy the gift of this day and avoid regrets tomorrow.
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Because, when it comes to the next 24 hours, we’re all in the same boat.
 
Roughly 168 hours from now, we’ll be posting another story of life and the lessons it brings. Do you really want to risk missing that message because you aren’t a subscriber? Of course not. Just click here to sign up for our weekly posts and you’ll be enjoying life even more than you ever thought possible.
 
 

 


 
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It’s the most wonderful time of the year, when wide-eyed schoolchildren and their parents alike look forward to the celebration that unites the entire globe. Yes, I’m talking about the annual unveiling of the Word of the Year.
 
Actually, it’s WORDS of the Year, because several lexicographers compete to see who can be the most supercilious, pompous, ostentatious, pretentious, pedantic, and condescending in their selections.
 
Alas, the annual WOTY awards haven’t been the same since Stephen Colbert lobbied successfully for truthiness roughly 15 years ago. More recently, the selections have been uninspired, bland, insipid, boring, dull, unimaginative, unoriginal, featureless and other adjectives that I absolutely didn’t steal from MSWord’s thesaurus.
 
Last year, the Oxford English Dictionary picked toxic for their WOTY, while Merriam Webster came up with Justice, dictionary.com chose misinformation, and Cambridge Dictionary settled on nomophobia. No, I had no idea what nomophobia means, either, but it’s clearly such an important word that it might soon obtain 500,000 hits on Google.
 
You can understand how the judges came up with such uninspired choices when you consider some of the runners-up from 2018, including: big dick energy, cakeism, excelsior, feckless, lodestar, maverick, no-platforming, pansexual, pissant, and techlash. Seriously, I think some of these people need to get out more, which might mean that some of them should get out ever.
 
When I read the disappointing announcements last year, I thought, “Anybody could do better than this. The dumbest, most illiterate idiot in the world could do better than this.” And when it comes to dumb, illiterate idiots, nobody is more qualified than yours truly.
 
With all the confidence that comes from not having a clue, the wordalicious team at Dad Writes has been taking note all year, searching boldly and meticulously for the combination of letters that is truly deserving of the WOTY honors. And, we are proud to announce, we truly have all the best words for 2019.
 
At first, we looked at the most commonly used words, as if this thing was a popularity contest. First, we considered, “both sides,” which is the political equivalent of “whatever.”  Then we took a look at “both sides’s” fellow traveler, “whatabout,” which is shorthand for “My side sucks, but you suck worse.”
 
Ultimately, we disqualified both options because, frankly, we don’t want to encourage anyone to use them. Ever.
 
Next, we turned to the words that don’t mean what users seem to think they mean. These included literally, diverse, fulsome and grandiose. The challenge here, unfortunately, is that people would still be using the words incorrectly, but they’d be much prouder about doing it.
 
Then we looked at words that people use to seem more cultured and discerning. We considered and rejected curated, artisanal, plethora and paradigm. Really, who wants to encourage the preening pomposity of artisans who curate a plethora of paradigms?
 
And finally, after countless late-night conference calls and tear-filled macroaggressions, the diverse cohort at Dad Writes has chosen, selected, opted for and designated as our 2019 WOTY: SURREAL.
 
Surreal is the perfect word for our Zeitgeist, combining the best of incorrect usage with the worst in triteness and pomposity. Nobody is having a real experience anymore; all of life is simply surreal. Yesterday’s salad? Today's shoes? Riding the elevator with that weird guy from the 12th floor? It was all incredibly surreal. Surreally!!
 
Surreal is a word so overused that it might as well be an epidemic that’s about to kill us all. By this time next year, we predict that Americans will be exhorting each other to keep it surreal, get surreal, and invest in surreal estate. Online, the technorati will drop IRL and use ISL exclusively, and real will disappear like prithee, gadzooks and whippersnapper.
 
And when it happens, we’ll all remember that we knew it was coming, that we were warned about this transformation, thanks to the WOTY wordsmiths at Dad Writes. It will all be so, so, surreal.
 
Be sure to share your own WOTY choices in the comments section, and take a second or two to join our exclusive subscriber list by simply clicking here.
 
 
 

I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I told my trainer I had left some French fries on my plate four days in a row. Then he acted shocked and incredulous and amazed and otherwise uncalm as he demanded to know how often I ate French fries at all.           

“Well, they come with the sandwich, so pretty much every day,” I answered, with the sudden realization that I was expected to feel guilty about this.          

“Don’t you ever have a salad?” he asked in that tone you hear when a question is really an accusation.

And, no, I almost never do, for many good reasons.          

First, I am an environmentalist (when it’s convenient or supports one of my rants) and the lettuce that goes into a salad is the most environmentally damaging food in the universe. On the scale of nutrition per dollar, lettuce is right behind a pizza delivery box.

Second, lettuce grows in fields, where animals frolic and poop and, need I mention, screw. Heads of lettuce are convenient support for randy rabbits who, as you know, enjoy coitus like rabbits, and you should be warned that the curved indentations in your arugula did not occur naturally. It is only safe to eat French fries because potatoes sport thick skins and have the decency to grow underground, where the fauna can’t reach them.

It’s not just lettuce that is suspect. Pretty much everything that grows just above the surface is plagued with animal excretions, along with skins so thin that anything can penetrate them. Compare that to your average steer, which has skin as tough as leather. And do you know why it’s as tough as leather? Exactly.

If we’re going to be honest about it, there is absolutely nothing good to be said for vegetables. Basically, they are a combination of indigestible fiber, water, and a handful of vitamins I can swallow in a pill before I finish my first cup of coffee. It’s trendy to say you like vegetables, but nobody really does. Brussels sprouts only became popular after chefs decided to cook them with bacon and blue cheese. Add enough bacon and blue cheese and they’d enjoy haggis, too. 

Even the word vegetable is suspect, as it should be. If I was hit by the proverbial bus and, instead of dying, I was in a coma and unresponsive, would anyone say I was in a meatatative state? No, they would not. They would say I was in a vegetative state, which is one of the worst states to be in outside of Alabama.

While we’re on the subject of vocabulary, vegetables are often called “greens.” Do you know what else is green? Mold. Coincidence? I think not.

Another word to consider is “fertilizer,” which is a euphemism for manure. When animals are busy growing their fabulous meats, manure is a waste product that gets discarded. Sometimes, though, that manure gets sold, and do you know who buys it? Yep, vegetable farmers buy manure that they slather all over—and into—their crops before selling it to the rest of us. So-called “organic” farmers are the worst offenders, bragging about the “natural fertilizer” they use to poison us all.

With meat, the USDA has rules to keep the poop out. With vegetables, as they say, it’s a feature, not a glitch.

Finally, if you are what you eat and I am made of meat, it is almost a requirement that I should only eat meat.  And some fat, so as not to upset the delicate balance within my bio-domain.
 
Man doesn’t live by meat alone, though, so it is acceptable to balance my diet with French fries, ideally cooked in animal fat. Bread is okay, but only the minimal amount required to transfer the meat from the plate. Ditto for pizza, which is nature’s delivery system for pepperoni.

Someday, the entire world will recognize the wisdom of my dietary insights and I will be lauded as a visionary.

In the meantime, are you going to finish those fries?
 
You remember when mom said you had to eat your vegetables? Don’t you feel betrayed now? We’re very sorry about that, but we’d like to make it up to you by offering a free subscription to this priceless blog. Just click right here and get ready for us to burst even more of your bubbles every week.