by Matty Boy Anderson 11.20.07

Traditionally, as you all know, most of us will come together with friends and family this Thursday, enjoy heaping piles of delicious comfort food, and give thanks for all the things we are most grateful for. While Thanksgiving is well-known enough to have Peanuts specials and handprint turkeys made about it, many are in the dark about another holiday, where we purge all the vile shit that people have foisted upon us like so much raw sewage in the past twelve months, things so fucking evil and inconsiderate, they can only be truly honored with the most sarcastic of thanks-but-really-fuck-you-and-die of comments.

I'm talking about Skanksgiving.

There are many things in life to give thanks for. For instance, not living in Brazil. That Arizona green tea in the big black cans. Gingerbread Pop-Tarts with frosting for filling. Pert young breasts. A new update on that blog you love so much. Stanley Turrentine's "Joyride". A Death Star that transforms into Darth Vader as a robot. The fall leaves outside my office windows. People who put aside their hesitation about pre-ordering the John's Arm DVD and do it, firm in the knowledge that not only have I been "ironing out kinks" every single day for the past 7+ months, but that they'll get a bunch of cool shit along with the movie since they demonstrated their unwavering faith in me and the Pod with their 20 bucks. People who get the fact that I'm a regular guy trying to make an animated feature by myself and it took like a fuckin' decade longer than I foolishly predicted. The list goes on and on. Unless you're impoverished or a total dick, I'm sure you can come up with tons of shit you're thankful for.

But then there's the things in life you aren't grateful for.

Like still getting harassed by phone even though you made a payment on something. Like the fucking bitch from hell in the grocery store who makes it a point to block every item possible on a busy day. Like the fact that all evidence points to the undeniable truth that most women simply CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE. Or how about the fact that white middle-class Christian men act like the most persecuted people on Earth, as if they understood persecution at all when they fucking piss and whine about "the war against Christmas". Also, a baby is soon to emerge from hideous Sea-Monkey Nicole Richie's shrivelled gash, reminding us that not only are there so-called human beings dumb enough to fuck that gruesome pig, but these humans will always breed the rest of us out in the end, and there will never be a big enough war to thin these fuckers' moron legions.

This is why we celebrate Skanksgiving.

Much as it is healthy to give thanks where they are deserved, it's just as healthy to bust clowns on their foul shit instead of bottling it up and letting them get away with it. Sure, let these bastards get away with murder while you explore the best medicines to bring your now-lethal blood pressure down. They're used to winning. Nobody is going to knock an arrogant bitch to the ground when she's making a big show of fucking things up for everyone else. Shit, try and empathize with them. "They don't realize how inconsiderate they are!" "They're just really busy- who knows what they might have on their minds!" Why not? I might have the fucking meaning of life and a cure for cancer on my mind as I cross the street; does the insane Type-A yuppie driving the SUV that almost ground me into the crosswalk give a shit? Yeah right. He wants fucking Starbucks. Or maybe she's hurrying to the airport, WITH A FUCKING CIRCUIT BOARD STUCK ON HER SWEATER AS A "FASHION STATEMENT".

These are the reasons we celebrate Skanksgiving.

Skanksgiving does not reside on a particular day, but instead it can be celebrated on any of the weekdays leading up to Thanksgiving. Observing it is simple: just compile the aspects of the past year that goddamn near made you want to shoot up a building, then thank the responsible parties (in person, if you can deal with such) in the most acid-seared sarcastic tone you can muster. If you come from Jersey originally (Birthplace of Sarcasm) like I do, what I'm talking about should not only be second nature to you, but you've probably talked a couple of people into killing themselves. Join me then, as I give Skanks to all those in my life that fucking deserve it like you wouldn't even goddamn believe. Please note that a few of these aren't from this year, but they were during the JA DVD production, and a lot of this still fucking smarts, even now.

• Thanks so much to the suitperson at the old Pod Studio building who took it upon themselves to call THREE FUCKING TOW TRUCKS to attempt to tow the cars of staff and voice actors, AT ONCE, before bothering to lay down any real ground rules about the parking situation (or inform us at all). That was a big help, especially when my friend's car got fucked up by the tow. You really made a hectic day of recording and directing voices so much easier by forcing all the actors to go home before we were even nearly finished, especially since we were having such an cushy time recording around super-loud birds and sudden rainshowers. Thanks to you, a few days of recording dragged literally into months. It's cool though, I only had to cut pages out of my script to accommodate your wonderful act of imaginary parking lot vigilance.
• Thanks again to our old Loft Company, for their oh-so-stringent method of deciding who would inhabit the loft next to our old studio. It was really exciting to jump through hoops to get our place, then watch helplessly as you screwed us, over and over, with the people you set up next to us. The four inches of hollow dry wall between us made working a joy, awash in the unavoidable sounds of bickering scenester cunts, barking shitbag dogs that nobody seemed to do anything about, and domestic abuse. I'm confident now that I can create art even in a Rio de Janiero prison, except I wouldn't have to pay over a thousand bucks a month! Score!
• Thanks so very much to the aforementioned scenester cunts, who moved in next door to the studio with their idiot white trash boyfriends, and proceeded to delight us with their constant new ways of fucking everything up. Speaking of fucking, if you weren't total unrepentant bitches from hell, I wouldn't laugh out loud at the fact that I only heard you fucking once in the entire 9000 years you lived there. Also: nice touch, what you wrote in the frost on my girlfriend's car, after we dared to ask you to turn your shitty music down at midnight on a weekday. I mean, to be fair, we couldn't make out ALL the lyrics to the horrible "rap-rock" you were blasting from our living room. Thanks also for that wonderful period after those douchebags ditched you, and you squatted in the place for nine months without power, causing your smoke detector to PEEP every thirty seconds. For nine months. Long enough for a fucking fetus to gestate, we listened to a loud high-pitched PEEP, EVERY THIRTY SECONDS, like a shoe squeaking loudly on a basketball court. Fun Activity: In the future, when you watch the JA movie, listen for all the fucking PEEPS I nearly killed myself trying to edit around! It's FUN! Almost as much fun as fantasizing about cutting these bitches' throats and crapping into the slit. Almost. FYI: They also absconded finally, leaving behind a broken-down car, and a fridge packed full of food. Remember what I said about the power being cut off for nine months?
• Thanks so very, very much to the couple who moved in next, with their wonderful two dogs. Let me tell you; you haven't lived until you've been separated from a bored, stupid dog (whose owners are having a great old dog-free time somewhere else) by less than half a foot of drywall. Really, it's our fault, for getting spoiled during the few scant months the loft next door went unoccupied. That's why we didn't sue when BARK BARK BARK your constantly BARK BARK BARK barking-in-threes BARK BARK BARK shitbag dog BARK BARK BARK decided to maul my girlfriend's arm BARK BARK BARK necessitating a trip to the BARK BARK BARK doctor that we had to BARK BARK BARK pay for. Why, she had some BARK BARK BARK nerve, standing on our porch like that BARK BARK BARK minding her own business, when your BARK BARK BARK dog that you can't BARK BARK BARK control for shit broke off its BARK BARK BARK leash and fucking BARK BARK BARK attacked her. But hey, now she has a scar BARK BARK BARK to remember the whole wonderful BARK BARK BARK incident by! Congratulations: most BARK BARK BARK people would have at least BARK BARK BARK apologized, but not you! Consider yourself BARK BARK BARK an inspiration to BARK BARK BARK assholes everywhere who shouldn't BARK BARK BARK have a dog in the BARK BARK BARK first place. Know what else we didn't BARK BARK BARK do besides rightfully suing you? Soak a fucking hot dog in BARK BARK BARK ANTI-FREEZE. Think on that when you're trying to understand why your latest next-door neighbor is stabbing you to death. BARK BARK BARK Thanks for making me want to slaughter every goddamn BARK BARK BARK dog owner in the fucking country.
• More thanks to the dog-loving couple next door, for the amazing episode of domestic violence we got to witness around 3 am (again, on a weeknight), after they came home from a wholesome night of pub-crawling. Between you and the scenester cunts, I was able to experience what life would be like were I paying exorbitant costs to live in an Alabama trailer park. PROTIP: When your boyfriend beats you up and smashes your cell phone against the wall, try not to relay the details too loudly to the cop. This means that when your neighbors are unable to slumber because of your bullshit, they won't be able to hear it all while they stand on their porch, and they might develop a shred of sympathy for you, since they don't know about your slutty contributions to the evening's festivities. And thanks especially to the boyfriend of the couple; without you, I wouldn't have developed the habit of carrying an aluminum bat while escorting my girlfriend to and from the parking lot. I was eager to show you the finish on it, and I would have done so on one of those many nights you slept on your porch, but obviously you got enough problems (also you had a Mac sticker on your car, and I don't fight with the mentally handicapped).
• Thanks OH SO VERY MUCH to our old Loft Company AGAIN, for that gracious 30 day period you gave us, out of the blue, to vacate the premises so you could do your important and crucial renovations, like fixing the roof that leaked on us every time it rained hard for the entire time we paid rent to live there. Or the leaking porch roof that turned my girl's gardens into mudpies. Or the lattice that surrounded the porch that had been warping since the Carter administration. (I was trying to mend it when Jenn got mauled by the neighbor's fucking idiot dog. Good thing I'm not litigious amirite?) We realized that nobody cared to fix these problems when we moved in, and we tolerated them. Obviously our tolerance was taken as contented acceptance, and we're glad we could continue to pay through the nose for rent while you waited to kick us to the curb before you fixed these glaring issues. Don't feel bad... it's not as though we were in Year Two of a five-year business plan, and having to uproot and move everything after we'd happily settled in caused us catastrophic grief and anguish that we'd never have time to stop and vent, even though every waking moment made us want to fucking scream and kill ourselves. You had a roof to fix or something, by gosh. Really, we had SOME BALLS to enjoy living there as much as we did. Hey, at least we hadn't been living there for almost a decade like some of our friends were before you kicked everybody out. Still, on the million-to-one chance that anyone responsible is reading this, be sure and thank your maintenance guy real soon (non-sarcastically). You know the guy I'm talking about. He was the only one who seemed to care about the fact that we were being torn out of our home with the least amount of warning required by law, and he's the sole reason I'm not suing your ass into oblivion at this very moment.
• I would be remiss if I did not thank the Loft Company YET AGAIN; nullifying our mailbox complex well before everyone moved out made it incredibly easy to get the check my dad sent to help us find a new place and keep me from blowing my fucking brains out. I really had a great time those two weeks wondering where the money might be, as I tried not to think about the fact that my body required food I could not afford in order to move everything I own in the world into a truck. Oh wait, that's not exactly true; I had to abandon the special soundproof room we built, and I had to sell my car since there was no way I could fix it at the time. Good thing I'm pretty much forced to swallow all the hurt, anger and emotion that resulted from this; all the better to spontaneously expunge it at an unknown point in the future!
• Thanks from the bottom of my heart to the petulant fops that reside beneath us in our new place, who manage to blare their fucking soprano opera or castrati or whatever the fucking fuck SO SHRIEKINGLY LOUD, that it can actually be heard THROUGH THE THREE FEET OF CONCRETE that separate our floors. I know everyone else in the unit is just tickled pink by the sound of tinny high-pitched keening vibrating the common stairwell almost every evening. Perhaps they can offer me some advice on what volume I can keep my TV at, so that it may possibly conceal this unavoidable fucking wail that can be heard even with every door and window in the house shut tight. I don't care if you're fighting, or fucking, or killing each other with rusty chainsaws. I didn't dislike opera before this, and now I've grown to completely hate it. Thanks. I would prefer the sound of a kitten's death rattle to the oppressive din these fuckers rattle the windows with (when they're not slamming doors to alert all the tenants in the building that THEY ARE HAVING A TIFF). Perhaps we've lucked into relatives of the good ol' scenester cunts; they also shared a penchant for slamming a door so hard you'd swear they were trying to fucking smash it into powder. Note to everyone else on Earth: if you live next door to me and insist on slamming your door because you're an ill-bred fucktard, I'm about to slam mine extra hard too. On your baby-making parts.
• Lastly (for now), I'd like to thank Russia, for choosing my forums to spam with the porn that comprises your major exports. As a nation, you must really beam with pride knowing that a forum on some guy's site is a boundless unintentional gallery for the spread and shaven vaginas of your glamorous underage stick-women. With every new gaping-pussy link I get to spend time deleting from my personal forums, my opinion of your neverending crop of squalling fuckholes grows ever brighter. Truly, Russia is a nation that understands the real definition of a "lady", for they seem to be overrun with gracious females of strong and virtuous character. The charm and beauty of a Catherine Zeta-Jones pales in comparison with one of Russia's multitude of cum-guzzling slits, as they parade their schoolboy-like bodies nude around motel rooms and filthy basements, pulling their "petite flowers" open like hatchet wounds with their stubby nail-bitten digits. My guess is, the Russians are so overpopulated with their own brand of undeniably hot women, that they become nonplussed towards their advances over time, and to achieve arousal, they must be shown the inner parts of the vagina that can only be seen when the woman is being turned inside out. Thus, 67-pound underage girls who treat their labia like a taffy pull are considered extremely desirable in Russia. Russia appreciates diversity in their women too, which is why if you look, you'll find pussy-spreading Russian women with tiny bodies, huge malformed breasts, and the face of a pit bull. Like that one girl who looks like Cameron Diaz with huge tits and Down's Syndrome. Oh wait- that one's actually from Poland. Poland can get fucked too. At least Americans give the slightest shit what other people think of their country. For some fucking reason.

I feel better now. Cleansed, even. There's more Skanks to be given, but I think I've given you a pretty good start. If you possess the ability to email me without being a moron in the process, feel free to tell me things you are Skankful for. I won't put them on the site, but I'll revel in the knowledge that some poor bastard actually read this entire update. For that, I Skank you. I Skank you very, very much.

-MBA