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How do you cook a turkey? Every family swears by their own traditional method, whether that means deep-frying the bird in a metal bucket or slow-roasting it in an Italianate oven. And so, in the interests of filling up space in this magazine, we asked several classic characters from both fact and fable how they prepare their Thanksgiving Day meal.
Three Witches from Macbeth: We boil our turkey in hell-broth and baboon's blood in a cauldron for two hours on high, or until the wing of bat stuffing starts to ooze out of its head.
Dr Doolittle: The day before the feast I'll sidle up the bird in question and whisper in its ear, "You're going to die, bird, you're going to die." I'm not normally a mean person, but I've never got along with turkeys.
The Duke of Edinburgh: I really don't have the faintest idea. I have servants to do that sort of thing for me.
Dracula: usually I just rip the neck out with my fangs and devour the meat raw. Then I throw the carcass against the wall with insane rage when I realize that I've forgotten to add cranberry sauce yet again.
Last of the Mohicans: I don't celebrate Thanksgiving anymore because I think the holiday has kind of backfired on my people. But I do like the occasional glass of mulled cider from time to time.
Birdman of Alcatraz: I always volunteer to pluck because I'm saving feathers to make a pair of wings.
Robinson Crusoe: There aren't any turkeys on this island so I have to make do with a seagull or small albatross. Generally I just jam a stick up its ass and force Man Friday to hold it over the fire.
Sarah Palin: In Alaska we've always spent Thanksgiving together as a family and we always will except when we don't. I shoot the turkey myself with an old gatling gun I inherited from my great-grandmother, then I buy one from the store that we can actually eat .... (continued on page 576)
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Just in time for the Christmas shopping season I shall be publishing my new book, The A-Z of Water, my long-awaited follow-up to last week's Dirt: An Illustrated History.
This new encyclopedia includes everything you and your family ever wanted to know about water and more - mostly more - from bottled Evian to urine via stagnant canals and Tivoli fountains; from the Waters of Lethe to the River Styx via Kubla Khan's caves of ice and the blue stuff in your grandmother's toilet.
For example, the first entry in the A-Z is "Aaaaaaagh," an ancient Egyptian term employed by a Pharaoh or High Priestess who had just stepped in bath water that was far too hot, and, amazingly, the expression is still in common usage today, many of thousands of years later. That is the power of water, and it doesn't even have to be hydro-electric.
The meaning of "Aaaaaaagh" is just the first of many thousands of fun and informative water facts 'on tap' in this hugely entertaining book available for a special, secret discount price when you order today.
Simply leave a comment on this blog with your name, credit card details and billing address, and operators will immediately dispatch your copy of The A-Z of Water within the next three years. Just in time for the holidays at some point in the future someday.
What could be easier? Order now and receive a free copy of this blog suitable for framing. (No CODs, checks, IOUs or Government Bail-Outs. Not responsible for undelivered or unwritten goods oor the fact that you're obviously an idiot if you buy this sort of thing)
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A recent study by the respected Pecksniff Institute has revealed that over one-hundred percent of teenagers in the United States have never heard of Josiah Blimpberg. That the inventor of the Reverberating Gas Belch has fallen into obscurity is a sure sign that America's children are being transformed into an underclass of illiterate slum-dwellers content to waste their lives listening to "jazz" music and playing soccer in negro clothes. Nothing good can come of a society peopled by such Obamacized feral street urchins except many more sanctimonious articles similar to this written by me and published in this magazine and other right-thinking periodicals. After all, how is an overweight, closeted bigmouth like me supposed to support my wife's Lithium dependency if I cannot keep re-writing the same piece over and over again ad infinitum.
This is what Sarah Palin means when she talks about family values. It is what Ronald Reagan meant when he told me privately that he would return from the dead to lead his people against the forces of Marx and the heathenism. And yet, incredibly, the liberal elite in control of the New York Times still refuse to hire me to pen a daily editorial denouncing the New York Times for being an organ of the liberal elite. It is time that we stopped appeasing these unpatriotic appeasers who seek to appease us with their policy of appeasement and free Hugo Ahmajinedad temporary tattooes. In fact, I personally challenged Mahmoud Chavez and his international terrorist friends to a belching contest at the burger chain of his choice. So far the pinko coward has declined to face me. Is that because he is a salad-eating wimp like his idol Adolf Hitler or, more likely, because the President of Iranq has a personal vendetta against me and does not want me to earn the Medal of Honor for meat-eating services to my country? These are the kind of tough questions our present socialist government cannot - will not - answer.
It is true, I do not give a damn about the so-called environment. But unlike many of my colleagues in the conservative movement, I am very concerned about climate change. Indeed, quite often my daughter turns the heat on when it's still only just below freezing in the house. When will she learn that being locked in her bedroom and forced to read the complete works of Josiah Blimpberg by candlelight in sub-zero temperatures is the best preparation for life? I only wish that my own father had given me the same advantages instead of paying my way through prep school and college and pulling strings to get me this full-time job on the Weekly Low Standard
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I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er huge land-fills
And feeling ill I cried aloud
For my extra-strength antidepressant pills.
Need I go on? Of course, any cloud foolish enough to go wandering by itself today would get mugged by a gang of smog before too long, or might even stumble over a divot in the ozone layer and break its condensation. This is why most clouds stick together, hence the name "cumulus." Any unaccompanied cloud scudding across the sky is probably a problem cloud; a bum cloud that has taken too much vapor on board and should spend a little more time on the meteorologist's couch; the kind of dirty trickster cloud that might rain frogs on unsuspecting Forteans.
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Having spent the past four days in the rather stale city of St Louis, I can wholly empathize with Lewis and Clark's urgent need to get away from the area for a year or two. It has the aura of a one-horse town whose most imposing building is a glue factory. In fact, so empty, soulless, flat and square seemed St Louis that I constantly felt like the last little plastic figurine in an abandoned architects model of a generic metropolis. Also, having sampled several varieties of St Louis' meaty, vegetableless cuisine, it came as no surprise to me to learn that the heartburn relief tablet branded Tums was developed nearby.
My hotel room was pleasant enough, I must admit, but an otherwise excellent view of the Mississippi river from the window was unfortunately ruined by some ludicrous arch-shaped monument.
Supposedly this scrawny structure represents "The Gateway to the West," but it reminded me more of a Mouse-hole to Nowhere.
Another case of the St Louis blues, perhaps? Well, I for one would certainly agree to meet the Devil at any crossroads if he could give me a ride out of there.
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I have never been a consumer of newspapers; and I fail to understand why anyone else in their right mind would voluntarily read such confabulations of fatuous and poorly-written reportage either. Nevertheless, the possible terminal elimination of these broadsheets and tabloids from kerbside kiosks, convenience store-shelves, bus seats and the morning's doorstep in favor of more modern media does concern me. Not, I hasten to add, because I believe that such a loss would impact quality news gathering, the proliferation of wisdom, the process of democracy or anything like that. I am just worried that there will be nothing to cover the floor when I'm refinishing that table, washing the dog, or entering the house wearing muddy boots. And, more importantly, what about raw materials for my proposed life-size papier-mache sculpture of William Randolph Hearst Rebuking the Producers of Citizen Kane? No doubt I shall be forced to turn to the world of glossy magazines to protect my rugs and carpets, such as The Fortean Times, Minerva, and Soccer Italia, which are the only periodicals I bother to peruse these days.
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"Raindrops keep falling on my head." How surprisingly true those words really are, I reflected, standing groggily before the bathroom sink this morning, amazed by the perspicacity of lyricist B J Thomas, until I realized that there was actually a leak in the ceiling above me, from which rusty-colored water bubbles were dribbling forth like beads of sweat upon the brow of a cheapskate who suddenly and very grudgingly recognizes that he must call an expensive plumber.
Of course, I rationalized, I could always adapt this structural defect into one of those soothing, indoor Japanese waterfalls. After all, I've always wanted such a piece of aquatic art, and, who knows, perhaps the charges for the leak might even appear on my upstairs neighbor's utility bill, not mine. And to think that fashionable Manhattan designers earn top dollar for experiencing these kinds of interior decorating whims and fancies.
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