ThanksGIVING?

I don't know why but I get the most philosophical when I am working out. *Flexes calf muscles. Maybe my gym should market themselves that way - 'Think while you Stink' and have that muscled ancestor of John Abraham - The Great Thinker be the brand ambassador (the thinking got lost genetically somewhere I guess). Let me stop before I continue any longer on these tangential roads. The reason may have something to do with the fact that the mind is not really used when you are running for your life as if some product of a canine breeding experiment gone sour, is after you.

The television was playing the local news showing people who had nothing better to do on Thanksgiving randomly giving out food to homeless people. Let me stray a bit here and stress how much cooler homeless people in San Francisco are, compared to the rest of the country. I have met men (ever wonder why most homeless people are male? I bet it has something to do with patriarchal society. OK feminists, don't kill me; I love you all) who held up signs so proudly that they could have read 'World's Greatest Dad' or 'Arnie for President' (the Cali Guv, not me), but then this is not a post about paternal love, or politics (don't ask me what this is about - I wont be able to answer). The signs said 'Why lie? I need the money for beer'. I guess they were all hippies during all the Summers of Love.

So anyway, this led to severe introspection. What was I doing for others this Thanksgiving? Well, I could say I was working for my boss, but then my boss isn't homeless, and I was really doing it so that she didn't have to interview new candidates soon for my job. What else? Let's see. I was working out, but that too wasn't to render the stock of my gym bullish. Was I really better than those scores of people who cheat sleep every Thanksgiving to buy themselves expensive little electronic sidekicks that tell them when their coffee is getting cold or find them adult entertainment stores? Maybe I am getting soft with age and maybe one day my heart will become cookie dough like that generous old pink wrinkly woman's heart who left all her money to her dog, well, comparatively speaking at least, but when I saw those hot, kind otherwise homemaking women (this should sway the feminists) hugging those poor homeless souls and lighting up their faces along with their joints, something stirred inside me, or maybe it was just the heart working out on the cardio machines.

Granted they don't have Thanksgiving in India, but what did Satyajit Ray ever do for the homeless of India? Maybe he did a lot financially, and the fact that most of you, and I don't know about it just glorifies anonymous charity. Or maybe his Pather Panchali which ran for 34 weeks in The Big Apple (according to his Speaking of Films {Bishoy Chalachitra}, which I am reading at the moment) did generate enough sympathy in the Rich White Man (aastey leddiss {ack. JAP}, and Woman), henceforth known as RWM/W for the rest of the post, to generate a lot of charity for our nation, which of course pisses the f!@# out of a few overtly nationalist friends of mine. They feel that Ray's only contribution to the world has been to tear apart the shawl covering the nudity of India's poverty. Of course, they haven't watched his Calcutta trilogy - Jana Aranya, Pratidwandi, Seemabadha (my favorite of all his films that I have seen, in that order) or the children's double delight - GGBB and Hirok Rajar Deshe. Or maybe it is the RWM/W that chooses to glorify exclusively these poverty showcasing works of the greatest artisan ever born.

PS: If you have managed to labor through to the end of this post, you will realize that there are too many things going on in parallel in my (not so humble, by this admission at least) mind. I only have the manufacturers to blame for this, for not manufacturing any siblings. PJ alert! Maybe I will perform a Norton/Thevenin analysis to simplify things. If you got that, please go shoot yourself (which should really be very simple if you live in this country with its awesome gun control laws). Thank you.