Monthly Archives: November 2012

Thanksgiving Day Facts

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I am constantly amazed by the ignorance and gullibility I see displayed by the general public. It dissapoints me to know that so many otherwise mediocre citizens of the world get most of their facts from Facebook and The Onion and never stop to critically examine them for truthiness. Therefore, as a public service, I offer to you these little known facts about the American institution of Thanksgiving Day.

The roots of Thanksgiving Day
The most common misconception about our day of thankiness is that it is based on the providence of Indians. Nothing could be further from the truth. Were this to be true then we most certainly would be sitting down to a meal of tandoori chicken, curried lentils, yogurt, and naan bread. It is a generally accepted fact that people from India did not come to America until long after the original settlers.

The origins of turkeys: Past and present
While the first turkeys *may* have been provided to settlers by Native Americans, the turkeys that we eat in modern times are products of Santa’s rage. So great is his boundless fury and his monomaniacal campaign to rule the holiday season that it whips the old man into a killing frenzy each fall. Early in September, typically in a drunken stupor, though there are rumors that the Jolly One now has an addiction to bath salts (google it), Santa mounts his sleigh of doom and zips around our great nation mercilessly slaying the fat and dumb flightless birds that have come to symbolize our day of greatfulishiness.

Spam
Let me be perfectly clear about this: Turkey Spam is an abomination. As much as I love Spam (see my post, I Am Spam) I will not suffer Turkey Spam. It should be illegal.

The glaring absence of Thanksgiving Day in foreign countries
The reason is simple: Foreigners are unamerican. A thankless and ungrateful lot they are which is astonishing in light of their gorging themselves on our foreign aid dollars and really neato weapons. As further proof of their lack of patriotism I submit the fact that they do not participate in our Fourth of July (otherwise known as Independence Day) festivities. This shortcoming is made all the more baffling by their dependence upon government subsidized pensions and overabundance of paid holidays.

Why Native Americans do not celebrate Thanksgiving Day
Would you be thankful for government cheese, lard, and flour? I didn’t think so.

The turkey and touching of ones junk
Turkey contains large amounts of the organic tranquilizer tryptophan which is largely responsible for post-dinner stupor and slumber. Nowadays most turkeys are fed hormones. These hormones are fed to them in order to promote not growth but randiness. These hormones, once eaten by human males, combined with copious amounts of likker are likely the reason that men’s hands often wander south of the belt line while sleeping off dinner. As yet this is only a causal connection. I have submitted several grant proposals to our nation’s scientific institutes to fund applied research in this area.

The eating of the mascot
Thanksgiving is the only holiday in which the eating of the mascot is practiced. Do we eat black cats for Halloween? Do we eat rabbits for Easter? Do we eat parents on Mothers / Fathers Day? No. No we do not. Although a roast leg of Santa would more than likely be a delicious, albeit high fat, treat, we do not eat grumpy old men for Christmas.

Eating of our national symbol?
The turkey, as proposed by Benjamin Franklin, was almost selected as the representative symbol of our great nation. Can you imagine Santa trying to slay bald eagles to grace our tables with? With their amazing powers of flight, not to mention possession of stabby little claws and sharp beaks, Santa would be torn to pieces trying to wrangle them.
Besides, a typical bald eagle doesn’t feed many. 25 pound eagles would present quite a threat to civil aviation were our skies to be filled with them.

Please consider printing this post as a factsheet to share with family, friends, and neighbors.

I wish you and yours the happiest of Thanksgivings and look forward to providing you with the truth about Christmas in the coming weeks.

You’re welcome,
Foxfur

Exterminator? I’ve got a rifle and a chainsaw…

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A friend posted a picture on my Facebook the that brought back a great memory. It was a photo of a handgun pointed at a spider on the wall with the caption:
“I tried a shoe first but when the spider threw my shoe back at me this was my only option.”

When I was a young bachelor I lived in a one room cabin in the middle of nowhere in a town named Timber (pop. 63). My teensy abode was one of four cabins on a piece of property that used to be a church camp. The Nehalem river formed one mile of our northern border, the county road was half that for our southern frontier, west was ‘town’ and east was wilderness. Secluded is an understatement.
I enjoyed near impenetrable privacy with a measure of peace and quiet that bordered on the absurd. Until one night…
An army buddy came by one afternoon. We started out shooting the shit then started shooting at shit and, of course, ended up drinking all sorts of shit. He brought up his motorized log splitter for me to use in laying up my winter fuel stock. While we were sitting there contemplating work I said, “Hey! I’ll bet I can split that log with a 12 gauge slug!” He agreed that probably I was correct but we should do some empirical research just to be sure. I broke out the old Winchester and a box of Remington 1 ounce slugs. After 5 rounds we confirmed our suspicions and concluded that the scientific method was our friend. As scientists typically do, we headed off to the general store for some Boone’s Farm and Mad Dog. We came back to the cabin, had a few drinks, grilled up some elk steaks, had another drink, had a smoke, had some more drinks, and ended up putting nearly anything you can imagine into that hydraulic log splitter. You wouldn’t believe what amazing machines they are…
After a few more drinks he had to go home. I tottered up the steps, went inside, and flopped down on the bed where I immediately fell asleep. For about 5 minutes.
I woke up to a scratching sound. It sounded like it was in my brain. While possible it didn’t seem probable so I opened my eyes and looked at the wall to my right. There, 8 inches from the tip of my snout, was where the scratching was coming from. It seemed that a mouse or other member of the family rodentiae had found his furry little way into my wall in what he must have figured to be a perfect rent-free arrangement. I banged on the wall with my balled fist telling him I was in no mood for his crap and that I needed some sleep. It worked. My little plague carrying tenant got the message, tucked his nose in his groin and went to sleep. For about 5 minutes. I repeated my cease and desist ministrations three or four times in the next half hour but he just couldn’t knock it off…
It seemed to me that it might be a good idea to take up my .22 rifle and install a new hole in the wall with it. So I closed one eye, walked (I use that term loosely) across the room, and got my rifle. I put a few pills in it, brought it to bear on my barricaded nemesis, and let fly. Whaddya know? It worked! Satisfied with my handiwork I once again laid down and ended up sleeping through the night. A week passes.
There’s a bit of a stink coming from the holes. Duct tape! Worked like a charm. Another week passes.
I figured I’d best do it right this time. I took up some tools and jumped in. I tore off the shingles, which served as siding, from a 4 square foot area of the wall. I had a circular saw but only one blade and I didn’t want to wreck it. I thought of borrowing a saw from a neighbor but didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing with it… Then I realized I had a saw with plenty of spare blades: My chainsaw!
I fired her up and with just a deft cuts I had that wall open right quick. I fully expected to find a well perforated bucktoothed wall dweller in there. What I found instead was a fully intact mouse whose only problem was that he seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. As close as I could tell, I scared him to death.
After a little caveman carpentry I had the wall back together good enough so the landlord wouldn’t be able to figure out what kind of shenanigans has transpired without a briar pipe and a magnifying glass. Plain white Colgate toothpaste makes a fine and dandy field expedient wallboard patching compound. Write that down, it might help you out sometime.
I set up a tripod and filmed the entire extraction process with my old VHS-C video camera. I’ll poke around in the next month and see if I can’t find it and pull some screen caps…