- Ah, thanks for giving! That should be the cry of the
wild human today,
for the millions of turkeys who have gobbled their last gobble. And if
you think turkeys don't know they are being dispatched to heaven/hell/reincarnation/The
Void, you've never been to a turkey farm.
-
- These allegedly empty-headed avians---slave cousins of
the wiley, crafty, noble wild turkey (originally proposed by Ben Franklin
as our national bird)---are smart enough to smell blood. Or their turkey
DNA is. They know something is coming, and it ain't more antibiotic-loaded
GMO corn. They know it is not freedom, either---which in their cases amounted
to a life of funnel-feeding and standing in crowds so thick you can't move
- topped off by being stuffed in cages and carted off to a hang-from-your-feet
conveyor belt for murder.
-
- Turkey Treblinka.
-
- But hey, taste buds! Chow down! You're eating animals
that were slaughtered with broken wings and legs, bloody open wounds, tumors
and all kinds of festering, untreated injuries. Mm-mm! You're eating birds
that have been punched and kicked, just for fun, in the good ol' slaughterhouse,
whose sex organs have sometimes been plumbed just for a laugh by um, playful
employees. You're eating birds that in some cases had their heads physically
ripped off, just out of esprit d'core, and, well...
-
- Turkey
Abu Ghraib.
-
- Thanks for giving, turkeys!
-
- Right. You don't want to hear another animal rights anarchist
Anti-christ fascist pig commie America-hating bastard ingrate ranting.
Turkeys taste good! They are an American tradition even older than Madonna
and Larry King. I like 'em, too, especially when someone puts a carcass over their head
in a movie, or when the Three
Stooges cook onethat suddenly flies off the table and around the room.
But I don't like the fact that 250 million---250 million---of them are
grown for American gullets, and honestly, I don't think many other people
really do, either.
-
- Then there are the nine billion chickens...
-
- John Lennon wrote what I think was a well-intentioned
but embarrassing would-be feminist anthem years ago called "Woman
is the Nigger of the World." Uh-uh. Animals are the nigger of the
world. Just look at China, where the cuisine is Anything That Moves, and
The Rarer It Is, The Better it Tastes. I'll have my rare civet cat medium-rare,
please. Oh, and waiter, more tiger-dick
stew! I need harder erections to feel more manly so I can have male
child! Uh! Uh! Hsieh-hsieh! The human race has risen on the backs of animals
(almost literally), and the human stomach on their flesh. China in the
lead!
-
- Thanks for giving, animals!
-
- My brother, Jeff, has often observed that the humanity
will never succeed until it evolves to the point where animals are treated
with kindness, and I think he's right. How ironic that all those pictures of heaven that
little kids grow up seeing in Sunday School books show people and beasts
coexisting beatifically. Say grace, children. "Thank you, father,
for this burned dead cow and and baked pig butt and roasty birdy we are
about to masticate, dump into a burbling bag of sulphuric acid, and eventually
excrete...Amen."
-
- But we are omnivores. Kirstie
Alley alone proves this point. If it's meaty, it's a treat-y! The thing
is, you can get all the nutrients you need---quite deliciously---from things
that do not think. Probably including Paris Hilton, who I hear tastes like
chicken. And what's more, you'll feel better and look better. Ask longtime
confirmed vegan Ringo Starr, who despite a near-fatal stomach problem as
a child and a few debauched decades, is in terrific
shape at 67. The point here is not that the Joseph Stalinizing of the
Turkey Race is absolute madness, cruelty, waste---which it is---but that
it is just plain unnecessary. The Pilgrims and the Wapanoag certainly never
envisioned 250 million hot turkey dinners when they sat
down at Plymouth. Of course, the Wapanoag and other native peoples
didn't envision going the way of turkeys, but that's another story to not
think about at Thanksgiving.
-
- Thanks for giving, indigenous peoples!
-
- 250 million turkey dinners. Let's see. . .So that should
produce maybe five billion pounds of turkey-flavored human excrement. (Thanks
for giving!) And they say Americans
aren't creative! At least, I suppose, a few copraphiliacs get a little
diversion out of the deal.
-
- Look, do you really want to eat a turkey? Okay, then
raise one, free-range, call it Marty or Jocko, and if your heart and conscience
allow, kill it quickly and gnaw on its limbs and breast and, Gawd hep us,
fatty ass. The problem, butterball, is that it's too easy to go out and
buy a frozen Butterball. Your food is as easily obtained as an iPod, and
often tastes even better. This means you, yes, you, 20-year-old pinhead
on the cell phone, chewing gum insouciantly, driving the Escalade that
Daddy bought you for college, buying $150 in goodies from Whole Foods,
get out my way asshole I was here first. Have you ever grown and picked
your own vegetables and cooked them? What? Vegetables just grow, like,
right out of the ground? Cool! No, me neither. The Green
Giant brought me all my corn and peas as a kid, just like he promised
on the TV screen, but it's all gotta stop soon.
-
- Humans have turned the horn o' plenty into the horn o'
freeze-dried, preservative-doused gluttony. The horn o' capitalist corporatocracy
crapola. Eeek, says the eco-system. Help, cry the beasts. The Beast himself
could not have dreamed up a more insidious, efficient, gimmegimme method
of destroying Paradise.
-
- Thanks for giving, Earth!
-
- Well, this is just another Thanksgiving Day shoot-the-mouth-off
that will have no impact on anything, except to perhaps annoy a few fast-food-fat-encased
readers as they sit down to fill their guts with guilt-free permission.
That's the deal, see. On Thanksgiving, you have permission to shovel just
as much yumminess into your tumminess as you can, you dumminess. Why, it's
practically unpatriotic if you don't. Soon it will be reported that Homeland
Security and the FBI keep track of just who does not buy a hen or a tom.
(That's not far-fetched. The FBI
keeps tabs on. . .vegans.)
-
- But then, of course, gee, everything is sooooo stressful
nowadays, what with the idiot terrorists turning murder into religion,
and the idiot Bush administration turning murder into business, and the
idiot media turning murder into entertainment. Man, it's just murder on
the psyche. What's wrong with loosing your salivary enzymes on a couple
of pounds of murdered animal and pumpkin pie? Uurrrp. Fart. Diabetes. It
makes ya feel good, and you deserve a break today, and not at McDonald's
for a change. Plink a few quarters into the smelly, grit-encrusted hand
of a dying bum, if that makes you feel better. It's not your fault he's
dying. Loosen your belt and contemplate your massive hairy navel. You could
land the goddamn Space Shuttle in it.
-
- I have hope, though. Really. There is exciting
news in the air. In San Antonio and surroundings, people are all a-twit
over a rash of "giant
bird" sightings. Either giant-birds, or giant man-birds, it's
hard to say. Something with wings "blacker than black," as one
witness said, and an elongated human-like face, is roosting on garages,
and swooping around mini-malls and ten-gallon hats. Nobody knows what they
are, why they are here, or if they are just looking for directions back
to the Pleistocene. It's got me wondering if there has been a mutation
in the turkey populace, you know, something caused by the hormones and
antibiotics and ionophores
in the feed, or maybe gobbling a little too close to a nuke plant. That's
it. Maybe the turkeys have mutated into giant intelligent turkey monsters
with big brains, and they have decided to invade and attack the heart of
all guiltless American consumption---Texas.
-
- The birds! The birds!
-
- So, there's a little something for your turkey coma dreams.
-
- Thanks for giving,
-
- Rip
-
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