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An Ode To Columbus Day

from songs we made by Sage and Jared's Happy Gland Band

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Columbus wasn’t just a brave and smart navigator, he was also a raping, murdering, genocide-committing piece of shit who deserves a Happy Gland Band song to be written about him. With much vulgarity.

I quoted from Inga Muscio’s “Autobiography of A Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society,” liberally in writing the lyrics for this song.

The video for this song lives here:
sageharrington.com/happy-gland-band-ode-columbus-day/

We all know the story
We know what we’ve been told
Columbus, he was brave and smart and worth his weight in gold
But here is something I didn’t know
I wasn’t taught back in the day
It was quite a revelation to learn
To hear somebody say

Columbus was an asshole
A wholesale piece of shit*
This holiday’s a total sham
Let’s do away with it
Imagine your nine year old daughter
Sold as a sex slave**
What a fine thing to celebrate
This Columbus Day

S—Hey Jared—you know what I feel like doing this October 13?
J—What’s that, Sage?
S—Oh, you know, just getting in on a little US-Government-sanctioned celebration of someone who raped, murdered, and started a pattern of genocide of indigenous people that we’ve kept up over the past five hundred years.
J—You don’t mean Columbus, do you?!? I thought everyone loved Columbus!
S—Well, in 2011, Venezuelans tore down a huge statue of him and renamed Columbus Day, “The Day of Indigenous Resistance.”*
J—But that’s in Venezuela!
S—Actually, the Seattle school board just voted to rename Columbus Day “Indigenous Peoples Day.”***

Columbus was an asshole
A wholesale piece of shit*
This holiday’s a total sham
Let’s do away with it
Imagine you tried to escape him
And were fed to a dog the next day**
What a fine thing to celebrate
This Columbus Day

J—But Sage, Columbus Day has been a treasured family tradition for hundreds of years!
S—Actually, the Knights of Columbus, an all-male Catholic organization, convinced FDR to make it a national holiday back in the 1930s.**
J—But Sage, Columbus opened the door to a whole new world!
S—Yeah, for the Europeans who were interested in totally dominating the people who had lived here for 14,000 years.**
J—So Columbus Day is really just a bunch of white supremacist bullshit!
S—Now you’ve got it!

Columbus’s filthy white supremacist boots*
Never touched dirt we now call American*
So can somebody tell me why we here in the USA
Are honoring his memory today?

Columbus was an asshole
A wholesale piece of shit*
This holiday’s a total sham
Let’s do away with it
Imagine an entire nation
Worked, diseased to death*
In the words of Inga Muscio:
Fuck Columbus Day*

*quoted or paraphrased from the first chapter of Inga Musico’s really excellent book which you should totally read now, Blue-Eyed Devil: My Life and Times in a Racist, Imperialist Society www.ingalagringa.com/books-writing/autobiography-of-a-blue-eyed-devil/
**paraphrased/sourced from The Oatmeal’s Christopher Columbus was awful (but this other guy was not) theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day
***source: The Colbert Report on Columbus Day: thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/0gscic/columbus-day-under-attack

For your interest:
earlyamericanists.com/2013/10/23/whattheoatmealmissed/

credits

from songs we made, track released October 13, 2014
Written by Sage Harrington (ASCAP) and Jared Putnam (BMI).

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Sage and Jared's Happy Gland Band Albuquerque, New Mexico

Sage and Jared’s Happy Gland Band is a band of whimsy and unbridled glandulosity. It’s a band that will make you reconsider how grossed out you are about the endocrine system. Sage plays ukulele. Jared plays upright bass. Their glistening songs of mundanity, desecration, celebration, and perspiration appear on their CD, Flooded Away. ... more

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