Columbus Day is a stupid day holiday, even if i like the 'off' part...

[bridgit]

in particular

[buddhamama]

1. i agree

Columbus was an evil bastard whose greed induced barbarism wiped out an unknown number of indigenous peoples.

[bridgit]

2. that's what we were saying yesterday while driving around!!

he didn't find america it was already here, messed up a bunch of stuff stole gold, screwed with people why shoot...he's no prize; i'd rather celebrate David Hawking Big Time!!

[LynzM]

10. Agreed, buddhamama

They ought to rename it as Happy Greed-Rape-Murder-and-Pillage day.

[ThomCat]

34. I agree. People say that it's a day to celebrate Italian heritage.

Well, I'm Italian and I don't see anything particularly admirable in a holiday celebrating Columbus.

If people want an Italian heritage day then it should probably be named after an Italian Saint or something. But Columbus day should be tombstoned.

[YankeyMCC]

3. Agreed and

I was pleasantly surprise to find I wasn't dismissed as 'radical' or silly when I said this yesterday around cousins and aunts at a b-day party. They all seemed to get it. Even though this was in Kingston, MA - about 1 mile away from Plymouth rock, I thought perhaps the protests against Thanksgiving and the sometimes narrow conservative views some of them express would have keep them from seeing just how stupid "columbus day" is.

Just a reminder for me not to make assumptions about people.

[bridgit]

5. yep...

[ZombieNixon]

4. I don't even get the fucking day off...

[bridgit]

6. you're a 'student', you're not suposed to stop learning...

[ZombieNixon]

7. Yeah, yeah, whatever...

damn Catholic universities and their religion-only holidays.

[bridgit]

8. see i tol'jou...

[Oeditpus Rex]

9. One year we called it

Christopher Columbus Anal-Retentive Day, in celebration of Mer'kins' dogged refusal to let go of the myth that Columbus "discovered" Mer'ka.

I mean, shit — we found out 30 years ago that Columbus didn't discover anything. Why do we still have this holiday?

[bridgit]

11. too true, friend...

[johnnie]

12. No shit!

I think in retaliation we should all pack up and move back to where our ancestors came from! Of course if you are 100% Native American then you don't need to pack, but if you have even 5% other blood, then we should all go back to the homeland!

Who's with me?

[bridgit]

13. works for me, now i am to wander The Highlands in none but my tartan

[johnnie]

14. Well, according to family legend

My family namesakes were kicked out of Germany for being too "rowdy". They ended up in Transylvania as gypsies. I don't know if anyone over there will have me any longer.

[bridgit]

16. "kicked out of Germany for being too "rowdy""?!?

good grief y'all some scrappy s.o.b.'s ja? i'm actually scots/german, but i guess that's not hard to figure when you follow all the footsteps

[johnnie]

18. Well, this came from someone with the same last name

But not someone we know. He was a priest at my cousin's wedding, and he had the same last name derived from the same one we had originally. That was pretty wild considering it was a different state. My father told me about it and he said "You can't prove that from me, but my sons are a different story"..LOL

I guess this priest did some pretty intense investigating. They were "exported" from Germany hundreds of years ago. I do have my great-grandfather's work book from the Carpathian mountains to show the Transylvania connection.

[bridgit]

21. good one, johnnie, it's nice to have access to family papers...

nice to be able to know some of where we come from, yes

[ThomCat]

36. Nice change of subject.

[TheMightyFavog]

15. If we're going to celebrate the Europeans coming here

Let's get it right and Replace Columbus day with Lief Erikson Day, which happens to be today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson_Day

[bridgit]

17. agreed, now them were some tough hombres plenty...

[tigereye]

31. my son didn't want to accept that it wasn't Columbus

apparently some of the textbooks are still perpetuating that fiction. He's at the stage where mom has no idea what she is talking about - despite all my education.

[ThomCat]

37. That's a great idea!

If being the first European to come here is what we're supposedly celebrating then let's give Lief Erikson his due!

[KurtNYC]

19. How does one "discover" two continents that have 60 million

people on them?!

The italians have made many great contributions but this isn't one of them.

[bridgit]

20. pft, there it is...

[SteppingRazor]

22. WHA?! You're nuts!

As long as Miami has the Columbus Day Regatta -- which has essentially degenerated from a sailboat race to a Mardi Gras on the ocean -- Columbus Day has a good and noble purpose; tying boats together, getting blind drunk and pretending you're in some sort of post-apocalyptic Waterworld, in which mankind must survive entirely on booze.

[bridgit]

23. it's a damned good thing i don't need an excuse to get spit-faced...

drunk; or schooner, i'm an american

[northzax]

24. hey, it was great on the bus this morning

five people instead of the normal 50. you forget how many gubmint workers there are in this place.

[bridgit]

25. oh yeah, i like that part the best, we live downtown in archives plaza...

where a boat load of state workers are usually milling about, clogging up the cross-walks & taking up every single parking space down here now they're all gone = ahhhh & it's all about the peaceful, easy feeling and i'm thinking it should be like this everyday so yeah, i'm so down with THAT part

[Guava Jelly]

26. They should call it manifest destiny day or Genicide-mas

It's shameful what we did to the Native Americans
And to have a holiday for it is just a smack in the face.

[bridgit]

27. there'ya go, good one...

cept the part about abusing Native Americans

Kicking Bird ~

[RebelOne]

28. It's a stupid holiday as far as Native Americans

are concerned.

[bridgit]

29. that seems right to me too...

[skygazer]

30. Oh, hell! That's why the mail never arrived!

Which begs the question, why are postal workers so disgruntled? They get every holiday known to man off, several of the smaller post offices I've known were closed for and hour and a half at lunchtime and they're not even working late the Saturday before Christmas anymore (which I found out last year when I had some stuff to mail).

Hell, you want disgruntled, we grocery clerks have a lot more to bitch about.

[bridgit]

32. bhwaha, yes dear, and i do not now why; our new mail-man sits out...

back in his van in the alley i swear for like an hour eating one sammich with a great & studied delicacy before he trifles himself with bringing out mail the final 20ft at some 5:30 in the afternoon, so boy do i hear you

[skygazer]

33. Back in Vermont, it was worse

We had an absolute bitch of a rural route driver - she tore down our little dead end road way too fast (farm animals and kids all over the place) and she would NOT put a single piece of mail in your box if there was ANY snow, even a dusting, on the ground next to it.

She blew right past it one day when there was maybe an inch on the ground and I stepped out into the road and flagged her down, asking her (politely) why she hadn't dropped off the mail.

"You need to clear the snow by the box," she snapped, "I won't deliver if the box is blocked by snow."

I said, "Blocked? It's not blocked - there's an inch of snow on the ground - you can just drive over it." (she drove a 4 wheel drive Toyota pickup - NOBODY in their right mind shovels an inch of snow - you'd be shoveling 24-7 all winter)

"I'm not going to pack down your snow," she replied, "You need to pack your own snow down!" and off she went.

[bridgit]

35. oh lord, i'm sorry hon, but your story did remind me of the mail man...

in that Chevy Chase movie Funny Farm your real life carrier was indeed all about the

[skygazer]

38. Filmed in my home town

They killed all the trees on the common with fake snow.

[bridgit]

39. get OUT!!

so that sheriff dude drove his car into your lake...it's a small world i'm just say'n sorry bout your trees though that blows