Dyspeptic Thanksgiving
Everyone has much to be grateful for, but do they have to tell us in excruciating detail every year? How about being grateful that the market has finally slowed, that we have such wonderful free entertainment coming to us from Florida, or that Thanksgiving football is the watering hole around which unsuspecting potential dishwashers gather after a big meal.
By Ann Coleman (TMF AnnC)
November 20, 2000
Wanna know what I will be thankful for on Thursday? I'll be thankful that I won't have to read any more sappy stories about how grateful everyone is for their health, and for their family and/or friends, and that they live in a free country. The first few thousand times it was OK, but sheesh! Enough already. We haven't even gotten to the holiday yet. Here's my bad-mood, had-it-up-to-here-with-sentimentality list of what I'm thankful for this year:
I'm thankful that the dot-com stocks are finally coming down to earth. I was getting annoyed reading about how inevitable a crash was, how ridiculous the tech valuations were, how insanely overvalued the Internet was. Of course it was inevitable, now can we get back to business? What are these companies worth, anyway? Anyone got any idea? Anyone care to suggest that those companies which never had any reasonable basis for valuation probably shouldn't have been taken public to start with? Or purchased by the public just because the letters IPO appeared next to the company's name?
I'm thankful for biotechnology. It puts the protesters in the interesting position of protesting against something that actually has the potential to cure world hunger and, to whatever extent hunger and poverty contribute to wars, promote world peace.
Speaking of putting people in interesting positions, I'm thankful for the entertainment value of what's going on in Florida, where the Republicans are fighting against local control of elections and the Democrats are fighting for it. (Future debates about local control of education should be interesting.) A pox on both their houses. Apparently the prevailing legal standard for the party lawyers in Florida is that the "right thing" is what works best for my side.
I'm thankful that my cats have decided to speak to me again. Now that it's cold, they find the warm spot where I was sitting (and am coming back to) more attractive than hanging out along the chipmunk trails. The chipmunks are grateful that they've gone back inside, too.
I'm thankful for Thanksgiving Day football. It makes it so much easier to find the dishwashers when the meal is over if they are all clustered in one convenient spot.
I'm grateful that we are having a rotten year in the markets. We all needed reminding that markets are not like savings accounts but with higher rates of return. Now maybe, for a while anyway, people will take us seriously when we say you shouldn't be investing money that you will need in the next three to five years.
I'm grateful for you, the readers of this column. Without you I might have to actually work for a living. Y'all have a terrific Thanksgiving holiday, filled with family and friends and too much food. And when your Uncle Tony starts getting on your nerves with his politics, and Aunt Marge starts to talk about her shih tzu's special diet, and your significant other makes a spot decision to become a vegetarian the moment your mom passes the turkey, remember this column and don't take anything anyone says too seriously.
Fool on and prosper!
