History teaches us that the first Thanksgiving was celebrated shortly after the first Pilgrims arrived in the first cruise ship. But nobody has ever written about the cruise itself, and this void in provable facts allows me to recapture the event.

The Pilgrims were a group of Englishmen who wanted to leave the country shortly after King Trump took over in 1620. They were led by Miles Standish, a noted travel agent, who chartered The Mayflower and sold tickets to all interested Pilgrims. The cruise took off as soon as it was full and everybody celebrated with streamers and confetti followed by the mandatory life boat drill.

Standish also served as the ship’s cruise director and told the folks about their destination. “Welcome to the Shoe Buckle Lounge everybody. I’m Miles, your cruise director, and we are headed to uncharted territory inhabited by savages. Also, the gift shop has Rolex watches at 20% off.”

The cruise was fine until they passed the 60 day mark. At this point the passengers started to get edgy. They had already played over 500 games of Bingo and the excitement was beginning to diminish. Plus, the midnight buffet was down to nothing but gruel.This is when Miles told them, “Hey folks, here’s some good news for you. America has duty free shopping and the Shore Excursion Office has some great tours available for you.”

After 90 days with no end in sight, Miles had some pissed off Pilgrims on his hands. They were irate because the seas were rough and the ship’s doctor was out of meclizine tablets. Everybody was sick, and there was Pilgrim barf everywhere. On top of that, the entertainment sucked, the bar ran out of scotch, and all the ping pong balls were missing.

Captain Standish told the angry mob that they would reach port in ten days and when they got ashore, they should check the list of lucky cabin numbers at Pocahontas Gift Boutique.

On December 26, 1620 the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. The Pilgrims got their luggage and disembarked. The Mayflower never crossed the Atlantic again but was fitted with a glass bottom and used exclusively for tours.

Miles Standish hooked up with Pocahontas and together they invented the Catskills.

(Excerpts taken from “Dale Irvin Rewrites History”, available in both book and audio book at DaleIrvin.com)

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Our recent presidential campaign was one of the nastiest things to come along since Honey Boo Boo. The winner of the election was Donald Trump which pleased half of the country and angered the other half. Had Hillary Clinton won, it would have angered half and pleased the other half. The country has not been this divided since the Civil War, or the battle between rice and Stove Top Stuffing.

I can just imagine what Thanksgiving dinner will be like across this great land. It is a time that is normally filled with relatives, liquor, and differing opinions, a recipe for disaster. But this year, those differences are ramped up to the max and I am foreseeing feuds established between families.

The Trump haters are currently protesting in several cities, mainly because they have nothing else to do. They live in their parents’ basements, are mostly unemployed, and do not understand it when things do not go their way. In a culture where everybody gets a medal it’s hard to describe the concept of winners and losers.

Hillary Clinton was very gracious in her concession speech and never mentioned how much it upset her and Bill. She had already purchased her inaugural pant suit, and Bill was looking forward to auditioning new interns. She also sent president-elect Trump a gift. It was a hand-basket with a card that read “Enjoy the trip.”

Donald Trump is our president-elect and we’ll just have to see how it goes. I know he has a lot to deal with right now, but if he is willing to listen, I have a few ideas for him.

Let’s start with The Wall. This is going to be a very expensive project costing an estimated $8.2 billion dollars. Trump says he’s going to make Mexico pay for the wall but Mexico continues to say, “No way, Jose.” So instead of building a wall Mr. Trump, please consider this.

The length of a wall along the entire U.S. – Mexico boarder is 3,201 miles. If two people hold hands and spread their arms to the side, “Red Rover style”, they cover a space of approximately six feet. If a hundred people stretched out, they would cover about 600 feet. Using math I learned in high school, back when they used to teach math, I figure it will take 880 people to span one mile, or 2.8 million people to hold hands along the entire border. This gives us 5.6 million eyes on the border at all times. Now, consider three shifts of 8 hours apiece, we would need 8.4 million people.

The current unemployment rate in the U.S. is 4.9%, which amounts to roughly 8.4 million people. This means we can give a job to everybody in this country who doesn’t have one. No wall needed and full employment in America. I tell you, it’s a win-win. Oh, and did I forget to mention that all of the people on border-watch would be provided with a free leftover “Make America Great Again” cap to wear on the job. Boom! Genius. I have many more ideas, so president-elect Trump, if you’d like to hear them, drop me a line.

Now it’s time to get back to the business of being America, so quit belly-aching, go back to work, and get on with you life.

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I am a big fan of Mark Twain. I love his books, his writings, and his timeless quotations,my favorite of which is; Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

Being such a fan, I recently found myself drawn to Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain spent his formative years. Twain grew up here under the alias of Samuel Clemens because he wanted to protect his identity. Imagine what it would have been like if everybody in town knew Mark Twain lived there. It would have been chaos.

I made the trip via motorcycle with my wife and another couple. We traveled through Illinois’ beautiful countryside consisting of mile after mile of corn fields that had turned brown.

Amongst the farms, we found a delightful stop for lunch. In the town of Banner, Illinois. We discovered The Goose Pit, and with a name like that how could the food be bad? Their specialty, as written prominently on their sign, was “home made tenderloins.” I wasn’t sure what this was but I had to have one.

Everybody else ordered boring hamburgers but I was getting a home made tenderloin, bound to be better than the processed variety made in a factory. When my plate arrived, I was a bit shocked. Sitting between the halves of a standard hamburger bun, was a tenderloin the size of a snare drum. This enormous disk of what I assumed to be pork, was pounded into submission and when it was big enough, it was dipped in batter and fried.

Now I have this crispy tenderloin the size of an elephant’s ear in a 4 inch hamburger bun and I didn’t know where to start. After cutting and trimming and stacking, I was able to eat my tenderloin and was not hungry for the rest of the trip.

Hannibal is the background for Twain’s renowned works, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. In fact, the characters of Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher were based on Twain’s real friends when he lived here. We went through Twain’s home, Becky’s house, and Huck’s hovel. Then we walked down the same street that Twain would have walked down when he shopped for souvenirs. My favorite was a hobby shop specializing in trains called The Train Store, and for the life of me I don’t know why they didn’t name it The Twain Store

The Mark Twain Brewing Company really has no claim to the author’s fame but offered some tasty brews which I consumed in Mark’s memory. Ironically I consumed so many that it affected my memory.

We ate at Mark Twain’s Restaurant, shopped at Mark Twain’s Store, and gassed up at Mark Twain’s Amoco station. Then it was back on the open road in search of the world’s biggest homemade tenderloin, or as Mark Twain said when referring to the tamarind, a fruit from Africa; Only strangers eat tamarinds–but they only eat them once.

Tamarind – tenderloin; tomato – tomahto.

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My latest problem is not new, nor is unique to me, but rather it is something that many of us have experienced at one time or another. This time, however, it was worse than usual.

Imagine you are lying in bed, late at night, when you are awakened from a sound sleep by the beep of a smoke alarm. It is not the constant beeping that alerts you to call the fire department, but rather the intermittent beep that alerts you to the fact that the battery in the smoke detector is low. It beeps about once every 40 seconds (I timed it) to let you know that you should change the battery. This is a good warning but not at four o’clock in the freaking morning!

If I have a smoke detector with a low battery, I will change that battery at a reasonable time, like noon, but I am not getting up in the middle of the night to look for batteries and a ladder. Unfortunately, the smoke detector does not care about my intentions and will continue to beep every 40 seconds until  its needs are met.

I tried to block out the beep with earplugs and pillows over my head but I couldn’t stop it. Eventually, at about 6AM, I got out of bed to find the beeping bastard. The problem is that I have five smoke detectors in my home and I don’t know which one has the low battery.

One by one, I dismantled each and every smoke detector. I removed the batteries and unplugged each one from the hard wire connection. I now had five impotent smoke detectors and figured I had solved the problem. I went back to bed and as soon as I laid down, BEEEEEP. WTF!

This problem was now above my expertise so I called the people who should know what to do, the fire department. I didn’t want to alarm them (pun intended) so I did not call 911 but the non-emergency number listed in the phone book. It being Saturday, I got voice mail. Next, I called the police non-emergency number and told them my problem. They said they’d send someone from the fire department. Minutes later a hook and ladder truck with flashing lights showed up in front of my house.

The firemen came in and examined everyone of my disabled smoke detectors, as baffled as I was. It wasn’t until one of the detectors beeped again, this time while the fireman was holding it. He said, “I think we found the problem.”

Apparently smoke alarms can live long after they have been taken off life support and he suggested that I throw the detector away, which I did, and it continued to beep in the garbage!

I now have all new smoke detectors in my house and only have to contend with nosy neighbors who come over and ask me why the fire truck was in front of my house. I simply explained to them, “Apparently when you are cooking meth, you have to watch it all the time.” Maybe next time they won’t be so nosy.

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At this writing, America is 50 days away from electing a new president, who will essentially become the boss of us. This is a frightening thought at this point in the game because we don’t want either of the leading candidates as our boss, and besides that, nobody is the boss of us except us! I could not agree more.

When I become president – #Dale4POTUS – I promise you that I will not become the boss of you. I don’t want to be your boss unless you are so hopeless that you cannot function without a boss. If this is the case, I will be your boss and hire you to pick up stuff across the country. We have trash, garbage and animal poop littering every street, sidewalk and park in America and if you want me to be your boss, you will pick it all up. It’s a win/win. We will be helping the underachievers, and have streets that gleam.

As for the rest of you, let me repeat that I will not be your boss, I will be your spokesperson. When I am president, I don’t plan on making many important decisions. Instead I will put it up for a vote from you. For instance, you would receive an e-ballot asking for your yes or no vote on subjects such as; Should we bomb North Korea? What do you think of Vladimir Putin? What if we replace Social Security with a lottery? The future of America will be in your hands.

One thing that I might do on my own is create a few new holidays. For instance, we don’t have a single holiday to celebrate in August. I think we should designate the second long weekend in August as the Dog Days. It would recognize the stifling dog days of August, but also honor man’s best friend. They’ll be big dog parades in every city with the clean-up provided by the underachievers mentioned above.

I will also initiate sponsorship naming rights for our current holidays. For a huge sum of money, you can re-name a holiday. We could have Wal-Mart’s Labor Day; Ace Hardware Flag Day; and Trumpsgiving. It would bring in enough money to pay off a large part of our debt so China doesn’t foreclose on us.

Finally, as your spokesperson, I promise to make my speeches more enjoyable. I will include jokes, wacky videos, and congressional gossip into my presentations. This will get a lot more people to watch my speeches and after a while I will slip in the bad news and they will never see it coming.

I think I have presented a strong case for your vote and I hope that you will write me in on November 8th. If you need a pencil, let me know.

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