Epigraph: “I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” --Bilbo Baggins, part of his speech at his 111th birthday party
We went to our farmer friends' farm on Saturday and picked out the turkey that looked most as if it deserved to die -- a hen. We put her into a big funnel upside down, her head sticking out of the spout. As we held her feet, the farmer expertly slit her throat, and she quickly (within a minute) bled out, dying even more quickly than that as blood ceased to reach her tiny brain. Then we tied a rope around her feet and dunked her into a barrel of very hot water for 12.7 seconds. This soaked her feathers and made them easy to pluck. TCL (The Colonel’s Lady) and we plucked the feathers, and the farmer removed head, feet, and innards, presenting us with a gutless coward. TCL washed and bagged the resulting roaster and home we went. TCL has learned to cut up the turkey before cooking so that the bird cooks more quickly and evenly, so it’s uniformly juicy instead of partly juicy, partly dry.
The turkey kill was part of a farm turkey harvest social involving several families, their children, and pot luck. One little girl with long thick dark lustrous hair of the kind that makes you wonder how any energy was left to make the rest of her, said in a high, clear, authoritative voice, “It’s disgusting and sad,” but she was right there with the boys for the gory bits. A small boy (where do these precocious kids come from?) asked the farmer , “Are you emotionally exhausted?” The farmer, to our surprise, said, “Yes.” We asked the farmer if his emotional exhaustion was because he had known the turkeys individually from the time they were poults (poults is the name for turkey chicks, TCL has advised us). The farmer said no, that it’s just killing fourteen animals in a day.
“For once you must face the facts / Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.” --Bertolt Brecht, “What Keeps Mankind Alive?”
Speaking of facing facts, how about some Chuck Norris facts:
☺ Chuck Norris can’t get lost -- his direction is the right direction.
☺ Chuck Norris doesn’t need Twitter -- he’s already following you.
☺ Chuck Norris doesn’t call the wrong number -- you just answer the wrong phone. (Cf. Fred Allen: “If I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”)
☺ Chuck Norris knows what the Fox says.
☺ Chuck Norris is the life of parties he doesn’t attend.
☺ Chuck Norris has counted to infinity -- twice.
☺ Chuck Norris lives vicariously through himself.
☺ When Chuck Norris is in Rome, Romans do as he does.
☺ The most overworked staffers at The Eye are the poor toner-stained wretches whose only job is keeping Chuck Norris’s file obituary updated. (They feels it’s a fool’s errand -- when will their work ever be needed?)
In conclusion, best wishes for a happy Thanksgivukkah, and may you still be around (and hale and hearty) the next time that conjunction happens. Say hi to Chuck Norris for us.
Zen P.S.: “Though it has no thought of keeping watch, it’s not for naught that the scarecrow stands in the grain field.” --Dogen
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