Thanksgiving has many meanings to people. To some, it is a day to gorge on turkey and watch football, while others reflect on the atrocities committed by the European settlers against the Indians who had so graciously helped them.

Whatever your personal feelings of the day may be, it should be used as an opportunity to engage in the holiday’s name: to give thanks and remember what we have. With that in mind, I offer a list of things to be thankful for.

We will neglect the most obvious and obligatory things to be thankful for: family, friends, food, shelter and health, and will focus more on specific objects of gratitude.

I am thankful for teachers who accept late assignments, bosses who don’t care if you drink on the job and people who post personal attacks online about my columns.

I want to express gratitude to whatever group posted signs on the Hornet newsstands about my journalistic ineptitude and ignorance several weeks ago for all the free publicity. The most humorous part about those signs is that they were most likely mass-produced at a Kinko’s by a group that detests capitalism.

As a Hornet I am grateful that Shauvon Torres stopped humiliating Sacramento State and went back to sleeping with just one guy.

Indeed, there has been a lot to be grateful for this year.

But mostly, I am most grateful this country has no bigger problems than steroids in baseball and determining if Barry Bonds lied under oath. We must be thankful for our superior public education, our impeccably maintained roads and bridges and the fact that we have solved our foreign trade deficit with China.

If the dollar was as strong as Bonds’ forearms, the federal government could maybe get involved.

A sincere thank you goes out to our palm-greasing soulless wonders on Capitol Hill for solving all of those problems so that the pressing issues of our society, a guy hitting a ball with a stick for entertainment purposes, can be examined more closely with millions of taxpayer dollars. The government always spends our money like a lonely, balding man at a topless bar.

While we are at it, let’s bow our collective heads and give alms for popular culture and all the positive images of American life if bears in its overflowing cornucopia of human waste.

With shows about spoiled children’s birthday parties, cheating housewives and an infinite supply of “talent” competitions, can anyone really wonder why the world hates us?

While there still are precious few things to be grateful for, it seems like my list gets shorter every year.

Jordan Guinn can be reached at [email protected]