Not that I expect many of you to come here on Thanksgiving day, but here you go, a comic.

Of course, for those of you who visit from outside the USA (Hi! Make yourself at home. Try the cranberry sauce! And the pumpkin pie!) you’re probably tired of Americans and their hoopla about a day mainly dedicated to two things: Enforced family gluttony, and the official start of Christmas shopping season. I hope that you don’t mind my bit of philosophical meandering in place of a maudlin litany of things that I’m specifically thankful for in my life. (That’s nobody’s business but mine, you know?)

Okay, fine: I’m thankful for YOU FOLKS. Yes, you. And you. Even you.

Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to do for a Yule theme this year… yes, I still haven’t figured that out. Time’s running out, too…

Today’s comic may or may not have been inspired by my recent reading of a highly-recommended late-1980s science fiction tome. Ahem.

Look: I understand the appeal both of creating and enjoying certain kinds of ambiguous non-endings in stories. I really do. They drive me absolutely batty, however. A fair-to-middling bit of storytelling redeems itself with a solid closing, and the best story crafting in the world amounts to diddly squat when the author leaves me actively regretting the loss of the previous few hours’ time spent with their characters. It’s that simple.

(This applies to filmed stories as well, of course.)