For all you faithless heathens out there, don’t forget that Halloween was just the evening before All Saints Day. Or so some Pope would like you to believe; it is widely agreed that the church chose the date to coincide with the Celtic festival of Samhain, so that they could point at all the celebrations going on and say “Look, they’re celebrating our holiday!“, or at least get all those rascally pagans back in a church ASAP. Like the rest of the year, a lot of November’s holidays are devoted to somebody killing somebody or at least trying to do so. On the 5th we have Guy Fawkes Night, which celebrates the guy that failed to kill the English aristocracy in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Yet another example of the little guy taking the fall for the intentions of the rich and powerful. Much like Veteran’s Day, which honors all the brave citizens who have done the dirty work when the politicians and generals decided it was time to start killing again. November’s also a big health awareness month. First of all, although the desire to make a joke that their seizures should be a dead giveaway is overwhelming, in the interest of taste I won’t go there. But November is also Epilepsy Awareness Month and the Epilepsy Foundation is running a slightly humorous campaign to do away with some common myths. The Alzheimer’s Foundation also has their rather ironically named Memory Walk campaign. Just make sure granny has her GPS unit if she joins you. Closer to my heart (and lungs) this year is the fact that it’s Lung Cancer Awareness Month, culminating in the Great American Smokeout a week before Thanksgiving. In spite of the fact that last year I was explaining Why Cigarettes Are Yummy, this year, I’m trying to quit. Later in the month, we of course have Thanksgiving, which between Native American slaughter, auto accidents, and gluttony (obesity is second only to smoking as a killer) has probably killed more people than cigarettes. So I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll quit smoking if you quit eating Bacon Turgooduccochiqua. If you happen to be a smoker who’s thinking about quitting, check out the Quit Smoking Counter, which tells me that if I had quit smoking at the beginning of 2009, I’d have $2016.00 more in my pocket, and six more weeks at the end of my life.

As with the smoking turkey pictured above, it’s hard to say what’s gonna get you first.

Have a nice Veteran’s Day all the same.

This is one of the badges from the Epilepsy Foundation’s mythbusters campaign: