I've just learnt that today, Nov 11th, has other, non-depressing/military propaganda related significance attached to it. Here in Canada, it's Remembrance Day, which is in honour of all Canada's fallen soldiers (eh) and the official end to the Great War. (Time-Travel Warning: The Great War may not be so great. Pack a gas mask.) To celebrate, we wear red poppy pins we've bought by donating money to some faceless charity. In theory, the money should go to veterans, but I bet it goes to someone's drug addiction. Everyone has to observe a minute of silence at 11:00. In schools, they're forced into assembly's featuring throw together plays about dead people. At memorial sites, they lay wreaths and fire of 21 Gun Salutes, just to scare the ghosts of the fallen soldiers into thinking they've been shot again and drive them back to hell (I'm guessing). There's parades, bagpipes, etc. Virtually everyone has a grandpa, great-grandpa, or a great-uncle (Warning: great-uncles may not be so great) who fought in such-and-such a war. The withered old Vets (Warning: Vets are not veterinarians, they'll kill yo cat) all expect their congratulatory hand-jobs for not dying and burning someone's village to the ground and talk endlessly (when coherent) about how bad they all had it (while ignoring, of course, the fact that the people in the countries they were helping to liberate had it about six million times {Get it? Six million? Wink!} worse than never-been-invaded Canada, who was sitting pretty). While everything about the day is focused on history, reality seems to dwindle away little-by-little as the wars fought get pushed farther and farther in the past.
All in all, the day's designed to make you feel proud and yet deeply depressed at the same time, two emotions that don't go well together. It's like scoring the winning basket while your opponent pulls down your shorts and everyone laughs at your tiny penis.
It's honestly better off avoided, except if you have to work, or go to school that day, or step outside, you can't You have to dip your head and be silent for one whole minute, just like Germans had to Heil Hitler as he drove by. Refusal to do so will result in a situation much like the one Kramer faced when he refused to wear the ribbon (Seinfeld reference!).
In Japan, however, they all eat Pocky. Yes, Japan, where their war dead had an atomic bomb dropped on them, they eat delicious chocolate-dipped pretzels snacks from Heaven. Why? Because it's, "11/11." You can spell that with five Pocky sticks lined side-by-side. That makes about as much sense as anything I've ever heard in my life. So why can't I eat pretzel sticks too, huh? Why do I have to look at a bunch of old and dying bastards as they're wheeled out for their one day a year.
When I'm an old man, all these Vets will be dead, and all we'll have left in our parades are the horribly mutated soldiers who fought on the front lines of Cthulhu Uprising of 2021, and they'll be marching into a giant sacrificial fire because they lost, and Cthulhu demands sacrifice. All hail Cthulhu!
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