For Thanksgiving this year, I went to a potluck buffet at TheDeathKnight’s killer house. He is one of those rare people with the decorator instinct and no need to conform to convention. The whole place is done is a sort of medievalist occult opium den sort of style.

2008 Thanksgiving factoid #1: Hunter Jackson, talented illustrator of GWAR arch-nemesis Techno Destructo fame, tells me that the Indians did not come up with scalping. Europeans actually developed the practice because they placed different sized bounties on the heads of members of different tribes. As different Indian tribes had distinct hairstyles (see Will Judy’s History of the Mohawk), the easiest way for bounty hunters to get paid accurately was for them to bring back scalps.

2008 Thanksgiving factoid #2: My mother tells me that a law passed last month named the holiday as Native American Heritage Day. Just for this year. Well, that will certainly make up for bringing all that scalping to the New World.