Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Normally, on Thursdays, you'd show up here, prepared to be disgusted by some story involving inappropriate-for-polite company emissions of bodily fluids and/or eructations. However, since most of you won't be around today, I'm skipping the TMI Thursday thing. Besides, TMI Thursday was yesterday. On a Wednesday. What has this crazy world come to? TMI Thursdays on a Wednesday? Me willingly going to spend time with my in-laws? How long before the Whore of Babylon is sipping blood from a goblet perched atop a nine-headed dragon? Lilo, I'm looking at you.

Also, since it's a holiday, you'd come around this place expecting some sort of story about the first Thanksgiving, or a tale of the historic aspects of Thanksgiving and harvest feasts in western culture. Yeah, fuck that, it seems too much like work.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about Tuesday night.

Let me just say...if you want to kill your appetite for two days prior to Thanksgiving, you should clean out your refrigerator. Honest. Shall I tell you what I found in the refrigerator? Sure. Why not?

Did you know that chicken breast can go so far beyond rotten that it actually turns green? True story. Apparently tupperware isn't the magical storage box that we all assumed. I found a jar of pickles that had no pickles. Just brine. I found a tipped over jar of Maraschino cherries, all the juice dribbled out. It pooled in the back of the fridge. Preserved in the middle of the Maraschino juice tar pit was a bag of lettuce. Well, it once used to be lettuce. It was now a greenish-brown pulpy liquid trapped in plastic, sealed within a La Brea-esque cocoon of red goo. I also found a pack of carrots that were withered on one end, liquid on the other. Perhaps the crown jewel was a potato I had peeled for a stew, stuck in a ziploc bag, and set in the fridge for some other use. Did you know that a peeled potato will turn so brown that it appears to have regrown its skin? Oh, yeah, and it gets really fucking soft, too.

Now, if you'll pardon me, I have to go vomit.

Oh, much better. Reliving that was actually worse than when I stuck my hand in the back of the fridge, feeling around for anything that might be old or out of place or trapped in Maraschino tar pits.

Anyway, I'm hoping that you're having--or had--one hellaciously kickass Thanksgiving. Maybe you're reading this in the midst of a tryptophan-inspired torpor. Perhaps you're escaping in-laws (hi!). Perhaps you're not American at all and you have all of your wits about you and are here for entertainment purposes. If that's the case, I'm sorry to have ruined your afternoon.

My main hope is that your day is better than my Thanksgiving in 1989. I remember it because I was in the eighth grade. We had Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's house (Napoleon's mom and dad). You know that moment that everyone waits for on Thanksgiving day? When you've sat down, murmured some words of benediction to some distant deity, and the turkey is about to be sliced into? Well, when the tip of the knife entered that delicious brown breast, the skin crackled deliciously and then a gout of blood spurt into the air, the turkey gobbled, got up, and ran out the front door. That is to say, the turkey was a touch underdone.

I know this because the turkey on my plate was pink. And not the good kind of pink that you get when you smoke a turkey. This was more like raw poultry pink. Mmmmm...tasty!

I took one bite and the meat was cool and rubbery. The only time this is acceptable is when you're making out with your inflatable girlfriend. Suffice it to say, my appetite disappeared like I had just walked in on my mom blowing Hitler. Instantly, the gears in my mind started grinding, and--despite the fact that the Simpsons weren't really a thing yet--I wondered What Would Homer Simpson Do?

Easy: feed that shit to the dog.

Problem, though, is that even the dog doesn't like raw turkey.

Time to hide that shit in a napkin, excuse myself, and go to the bathroom. Oh hell. This isn't flushing down the toilet. Flush again. Maybe one more time. Wow, that water's getting high. Oh hell! Oho, this is what I get for likening my disgust to my mother performing oral pleasures on Hitler. Very sly, God. You really can see into the future. What to do now? Grab the plunger!!!

Ten minutes later, I return to the table and fill myself up on sides. Mmmm...green bean casserole, I love thee! Pile on some more dressing. Turkey? No thanks. These yams are too fucking delicious!

A few hours later, and my family and I were gathering our stuff up and getting ready to go. My grandfather lived next door to my aunt and uncle, and he came over to bid us adieu. He thumped his chest, and my mom said, "You know what's wrong, right?"

"Turkey," he belched.

Two months later, my grandfather died sitting in his recliner at home. We can't really prove it, but we do kid about how the uncooked turkey killed him. Nothing like a little raw, dark humor. Get it? Raw?

Anyway. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. Be sure to cook the turkey until that little timer thing pops up. You never know when you might inadvertently have your toilet clogged by an unwitting fool take down a beloved patriarch.