Hey it's only a few more blessed days till Thanksgiving - what're you planning to be thankful for this year?

Scientists and clergy duke it out daily over abortion, stem cell research, the birds and the bees and evolution, yet all agree: the essential ingredient of true happiness is gratitude. Certainly you will never know lasting, thoroughly satisfying happiness without being thankful, and you'll probably never feel thankful if you don't settle on something to feel that way about soon, before the last minute holiday crunch.

Come on! You act like you've never done this before. How about rain, or air? It doesn't even have to be a thing, per se; ideally it's whatever you arrogantly take for granted - vision (see our story, and think about making a purchase on the link there), a dream, your sexual magnetism - yet couldn't stand to live without if it were taken from you. How about...the mindboinking opportunity, at any moment, to care about others besides yourself?

If you're an average American, you probably don't know true hunger, and hopefully will never have to. But chances are you do have a decent vocabulary, Internet access, and a warm heart eager to reach out and help the needy, preferably without having to stand up too long.

The shortest cut to Thank City is by tapping your capacity to give more than you receive, Holmes! What if somehow you could galvanize your gifts, skill set, and benign inertia into sheer finger power, and with click after click from your computer's mighty mouse, take a bite out of world hunger?

Thankfully, capitalists have now created the website http://www.freerice.com/ (sister site http://www.poverty.com/) which donates - via sponsors who pay to have links there - ten grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program, everytime you choose the correct definition for a word. The queue adjusts to your personal word aptitude, so before you know it, you're getting smarter and happier, without having to spend anything more than time online.

(Those with further vestiges of conscience may then face a dilemma over whether it'd be cool to cheat by using a dictionary, so you can take more pride in feeding more starving kids. But look, don't sweat it. Eatin' ain't cheatin'! And if it makes everybody happy, just keep it on the downlow. We can only hope the sponsors don't start taking BACK grains of rice for every incorrect answer.)

Much giving depends on good vision, yet the price of eyeglasses nowadays is outrageous. This is because there are so many middlemen along the way, markup can reach 1000% over the original cost of production. Has God or secular humanism provided any way for the armchair philanthropist to see well, without having to apply for UN rice shipments in order to afford good glasses?

Yes. http://www.glassyeyes.blogspot.com offers a consumer-friendly guide for buying superior vision products online, direct from the ophthalmic labs that manufacture them. Using your eyedoctor's prescription, you can often buy online at less than half the price of those one-hour chopshop chains, and with more reliable quality. Might take a day or two longer, but the savings and satisfaction will make you grateful you waited.

So, you get on and go defining and defining, till it seems you've sent enough grains to put most of the Third World to bed for a few nights to come, drowsy from all-you-can-eat rice buffets and cookouts. You kick back in your bucket seat, pull off your excellent specs, and chew on a temple tip. Where to go with this bountiful, drugless joy?

How about Nevada - the state! VIVA LAS VEGAS!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdUbcOFET58 There can hardly be a more buoyant celebration of the good life - symbolized by Las Vegas - than Elvis Presley's ode to it.

(Unless you'd rather get raunchy with the ZZ Top version... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLUl8xkKSTk)

Spend a moment with each of a thousand devil-may-care babes, dazzling them with your four eyes and huge vocabulary, and let them know how good it really feels to donate.

By this time, after steaks and martinis and a few jackpots on the Strip, we hope you're still grateful we showed you the EZ path to Thanksgiving, and ultimately happiness. We believe the world needs more like you, and will need more to come, if only to eat all the dang rice.

And wherever you may see to surf, wherever you may give and gamble, for sure don't forget the words of the recyclable poet Bob Dylan, who sang "Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand, and rivers that ran through ev'ry day. I must have been mad, I never knew what I had, until I threw it all away." (http://youtube.com/watch?v=P1xGTanXvfs)

Happy 'giving!

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