Turkey Day 2009
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On this official start of our annual year-end festival of overindulgence, the WORD offers perspectives on turkeys. As anyone in business, academe or who reads Dilbert knows, that’s an impossibly wide opening. Which I (uncharacteristically) decline to open very wide.Here in northern Utah, gangs of wild turkeys pillage the neighborhood and tag our yards with, er, “turkey tags.” Turkeys are, apparently, just as dumb as the apocryphal story of turkeys drowning by looking up, open-beaked, at passing thunderstorms would indicate.
Yesterday, Sadie (the ADD brown Lab) sped off after a gang of turkeys, who ran like 3-foot velociraptors, all in single-file. The poor guys at the end of the pecking order wouldn’t pull out to pass even when Sadie caught up to them. Hello!? You’re birds! Eventually they remembered that and flew into trees, but several forgot to hold on and fell off their limbs.
Our neighbor up the hill, Allyson, complained the other day about the turkeys cleaning out her bird feeders. I suggested the time-honored turkey repellent: A few cans of cranberry sauce (whole berry works better than the jelly).Turkey on, all!
Ted Turkey
A Few WORDs on Turkeys
• “I hate turkeys. If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There's turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Some one needs to tell the turkey, ‘Man, just be yourself.’”—Mitch Hedberg
• “The best way to thaw a frozen turkey? Blow in its ear.”—Johnny Carson • “No more turkey, but I’d like another helping of that bread he ate.’—Anonymous
• “Don’t assume you’re always going to be understood. I wrote in a column that one should put a cup of liquid in the cavity of a turkey when roasting it. Someone wrote me that ‘the turkey tasted great, but the plastic cup melted.’”—Hints from Heloise
• “Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother’s tasted better the day before.”—Rita Rudner
• “A two-pound turkey and a fifty-pound cranberry—that’s Thanksgiving dinner at Three Mile Island.”—Johnny Carson
• “I love Thanksgiving turkey... It’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.”—Arnold Schwarzenegger
• “Dear Lord, I’ve been asked, nay commanded, to thank Thee for the Christmas turkey before us... a turkey which was no doubt a lively, intelligent bird... a social being... capable of actual affection... nuzzling its young with almost human-like compassion. Anyway, it’s dead and we’re gonna eat it.”—Berke Breathed, Bloom County
Editor’s Note: You want a stomach pump with that?
CALLING ALL UTAH STATE U. JCOM ALUMS: Happy Thanksgiving! Where are you? We're updating our alumni list. Please send your current position, title, contact info (including email), graduation year and any news to ted.pease@usu.edu. And check the Hard News Cafe for USU and Cache Valley news.
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And to think, over here in God’s country, guys actually craft (laboriously, no doubt) “turkey calls” and hone their technique for making sounds with them that will lure wild turkeys...so they can shoot same, of course. Plus, our wild turkeys don’t look a thing like those birds on your snow-covered deck. They’re just as dumb, though.
ReplyDeleteGreat story you told! Happy Thanksgiving!
Jim (in Tennessee)
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteMore on TurkeyDay, from Thankful WORDster Mark Larson:
ReplyDeleteJumbo Joke: Humor the Way You Like It
Thanksgiving Thoughts
"Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence."
--Erma Bombeck
"I have strong doubts that the first Thanksgiving even remotely resembled the 'history' I was told in second grade. But considering that (when it comes to holidays) mainstream America's traditions tend to be over-eating, shopping, or getting drunk, I suppose it's a miracle that the concept of giving thanks even surfaces at all."
--Ellen Orleans
"Turkey: A large bird whose flesh, when eaten on certain religious anniversaries has the peculiar property of attesting piety and gratitude."
--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"It must be an odd feeling to be thankful to nobody in particular. Christians in public institutions often see this odd thing happening on Thanksgiving Day. Everyone in the institution seems to be thankful 'in general.' It's very strange. It's a little like being married in general."
--Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"I love Thanksgiving turkey. It's the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts."
--Arnold Schwarzenegger
"Thanksgiving is so called because we are all so thankful that it only comes once a year."
--PJ O'Rourke
"What we're really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?"
--Erma Bombeck, No One Diets on Thanksgiving
"It was dramatic to watch my grandmother decapitate a turkey with an ax the day before Thanksgiving. Nowadays the expense of hiring grandmothers for the ax work would probably qualify all turkeys so honored with 'gourmet' status."
--Russell Baker
"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land."
--Jon Stewart
"Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often."
--Johnny Carson
and...
"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you', that would suffice."
--Meister Eckhart