The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    we are stardust's picture

    Thanksgiving Day Gone Awry

    By we are stardust on Thu, 11/25/2010 - 9:21am |

                           

    Psychologists and storytellers know that the holidays can be a time of supreme tension for families.  Much of it stems from the idealized, Norman Rockwell visions of family perfection.  We have come to associate Thanksgiving with a time that families gather together, with children coming home to mom and dad, often with their own families to meld again into a tribal togetherness, gaining strength and love from the family unit.  The fiction holds that it’s all about love and support and sharing, perhaps sharing the stories that define the family in the best possible light.  Often the family narratives have survived generations, and become accepted, and almost always leave out the bummers and rivalries and er…issues that were inconvenient, so were left unexamined.

    In other words, the fictions that our culture loves to portray about ‘normal’ families are so idealized and unreal that the actual holiday bumps up against Norman Rockwell images in our hearts and psyches, and all hell can break loose.  Or later, once the dinner mess is cleaned up, we can feel depressed and dissatisfied.

    Now if your family is clear and honest and the members communicate well, solving problems along the way: this diary and the film clip isn’t for you.  I’m so happy for you! 

    But if you’re like most of us, or at least like most of the people I know, please allow the cast of Home for the Holidays show you an alternate version that one great and wonderful and quirky family experienced one Thanksgiving.  Lots of accidental comedy is here; lots of human frailty, broken dreams, barely suppressed rage…and lots of love and admiration.

    As you prepare your holiday meal, and people gather (or not) together to share a meal and give thanks (or not) for the blessings accorded you, please chuckle once in awhile, and know that even if your day turns a bit sour with unrealized expectations of family harmony and bliss: at least it’s not abnormal, and maybe just a tad healthier than this!

    Happy Thanksgiving, peeps.  And remember, if you fall asleep after dinner, it wasn’t really the L-tryptophan in the turkey that caused it: it’s avoidance and family aversion!  ;o)

    Stay safe, and make it the best day you can…    ;o)

    Comments

    Happy Thanksgiving, Stardust!

    I am fortunate. I have seven siblings, and we all remain as best friends to one another. We've never had any of the "falling outs" that seem so prevalent among other families.

    For this, I am immensely grateful.

    Happy Thanksgiving!


    by SleepinJeezus on Thu, 11/25/2010 - 9:36am

    Wanna talk about how it feels to be so 'abby-normal'?   Innocent

    Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.  And stay warm up there; it's one below down here in the Banana Belt.  Brrr-d-brrrrr...


    by we are stardust on Thu, 11/25/2010 - 9:44am

    Ah, take your family as you find it. ha

    Happy Thanksgiving


    by Richard Day on Thu, 11/25/2010 - 3:57pm

    Gobble, gobble, Dick!   ;o)


    by we are stardust on Thu, 11/25/2010 - 8:48pm

    Hmmmm, I thought it was the fifth of Jack Daniels, but then that's just the likker talking. Imagine what the turkey'd say - wild turkey to boot.


    by Desidericious (not verified) on Thu, 11/25/2010 - 4:42pm

    One of the online hints for mellowing the dinner scenes at Thanksgiving is 'watching the liquor intake'.  Trouble is, even the cook often thinks she needs a shot to withstand coming events. 

    Hafta say, we just had two friends for dinner, and it was so mellow i could even taste the food; maybe a first.  Happy Thanksgiving, Decidericious (not verified...might think about what that means, anyway!), to you and the girls.


    by we are stardust on Thu, 11/25/2010 - 8:52pm

    Glad to hear that you have had a mellow day and I trust you didn't have to resort to a plate of cold parsnips. I'm in North Tx. so was immersed in the "boys" game with the crowd here. They were all disappointed but actually it was a good game. We're all going out to the "country" for a couple of days. sleep in some cabins and watch the birds. Happy Thanksgiving--well, apres Thanksgiving.    


    by Oxy Mora on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 12:42am

    Uggh, my father always liked parsnips and insisted on cooking them in the grossest way imaginable - the house would stink for days.


    by Desidericious (not verified) on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 4:03am

    Dunno how your father cooked them, but IMO the grossest way is what my mother-in-law did with them: candy them, like yams!  Just thinking of it makes my entrails spasm.  "Stardust; could you please pass the candied horseradish?"  Arrrrggghhh!

    What did you pop do?  Fry them in mutton tallow?  In terms of smell, that'd be worse, I guess.  Happy Black Friday, Desider-oonie; American Shoppers have been getting trampled since 3 a.m.  We do that now instead of getting drafted; best idea to ever come out of Bernanke's office....     Cool


    by we are stardust on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 7:24am

    Never quite knew what, but yes, "mutton tallow" does sound right. Or wrong. or yes it can be easily done. Take those parsnips out in the sun, out on Highway 61.


    by Decadero (not verified) on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 4:25pm

    Yeah, but whaddya think of 'em NOW? Eh? Eh?


    by quinn esq on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 12:37pm

    My two dogs are sitting here looking at me, wondering why I am laughing so hard when there is no one else here.

    I can almost heat your mother yelling on T'Giving Day from her place at the table: "Quinn! Quit playing with your food!"

    This "comment" of yours offered as response to this thread is just about the funniest damned thing I've seen. You have a dangerous mind there, quinn, and I love it!


    by SleepinJeezus on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 12:49pm

    ROTFLMAO!!!!  "Quinn! Quit playing with your food!" is just about as good; now Quinn'll wish he's thunk of it first!  I sure do!

    (As to 'dangerous Q mind-ishness': what the hell else sort of photos does he keep in his files. and whip out when he needs 'em????)  Vegetable porn is one of the hardest to beat, I hear...


    by we are stardust on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 1:14pm

    I returned from a nature trip where I was forced out of a cabin into the back of my yes, large SUV, because of, well, is it my fault I have sleep apnea? Arriving home I see on Bloomberg the Dow Futures down a zillion points because of the bloody North Koreans. Oy, my portfolio. And now this!  Boy, I needed a good laugh. You Progressives! Once again you fell for a Frank Luntz plant. Don't you people know photoshop when you see it? It's the Rutabaga/Okra Institute, dummies! When the institute heard about the Parsnip recipe being devleoped by Michael Moore they panicked. Moore was about to shove parsnips down the throat of ordinary citizens with a reipe for a great gateau! , to wit, Parsnip and Chorizo Cake! A savory recipe of grated parsnips, little chunks of chorizo, chopped ginger, baked into a warm golden cake, in fact, a frittata-like golden brown cake. The grated parsnips would have molded themselves into the egg batter to produce a smooth, almost mousy, er, moussy texture. But no. Now, no Parsnip and Chorizo Cake! Luntz photoshopped a picture of a pooping parsnip and Progressives took it hook, line and sinker, doing Luntz's dirty parsnip work for him. The parsnip has been destroyed. No wonder you Progressives never get anywhere. Now it's Rutabaga's and Okra, day in, day out. I can only think of what might have been if Progressives hadn't been so gullible.


    by Oxy Mora on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 10:18pm

    Oh, you Texicans!  ;o)   (And I think you have your parsnip anatomy a little...er...backwards, Mr. Mora.  Look again.)


    by we are stardust on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 10:57pm

    Yes, I thought oxy's comments were a little bit circumscribed by his obviously faulty perspective.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 11:31pm

    Mebbe the damned photo is sorta like a Rorschach test.  Ya stare at it long enough it can look like a chubby woman givin' birth to an anteater or sumpin'. 


    by we are stardust on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 11:51pm

    Nah! I don't think you've gotta look at this very long at all to get a handle on it.

    It's a male. You can see that. It pretty much stands out at ya.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 11/28/2010 - 12:04am

    Yeah; hard to miss a salute like that, eh?  Oxymoron had me trippin'.  Semper Fi!


    by we are stardust on Sun, 11/28/2010 - 12:13am

    For a second there I thought someone snuck into my little apartment and photographed me after my third scotch. haha


    by Richard Day on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 1:17pm

    Personally I want that yam to walk through a TSA checkpoint.

    "Touch my junk, I'll go Thanksgiving on your ass".

    Checkpoint Charlie never understood "Get Stuffed" in quite that Biblical way.


    by Decadero (not verified) on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 4:28pm

    I hereby award you the Dayly Comment of the Day Award for this here Dagblog Site, given to all of you from all of me. hahahahahahahaha

    By the by, you can have the Award whether or not you are verified. hahaahahahah

     


    by Richard Day on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 4:47pm

    "As God as my witness, I'll never eat parsnips again!"  Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  That is one nasty vegetable.  As my daughter says so elegantly: "They taste like butt!!!  But thank you, Oxy; the meal was lovely and nothing tasted like butt, and turkeys only cost $6.99.  The guests left with enough to make turkey sandwiches: turkey, stuffing, cranberry.  Add some lettuce, dibble on some mayo, and it's turkey dinner redux.

    Sleeping with the birds:  I always knew you Texans were an odd lot.... Happy apres Thanksgiving to you, too.   ;oP


    by we are stardust on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 7:16am

    I never understood parsnips.

    We just never reached seemed to reach the sort of understanding you might expect would naturally arise between man and vegetable-for-the-moment-but-soon-to-be-reborn-like-a-phoenix-as-man.

    I mean, I'm inviting that parsnip not just into my house, or into my pot, BUT INTO MY BELLY, AND THENCE, TO ENTER INTO AND BECOME ONE WITH MY HEART... MY HANDS... MY NUTS... MY OTHER NUTS... AND MY GUTS. 

    • And yet, could that parsnip find the grace to even taste HALF-GOOD? It could not. 
    • To make itself even QUARTERWAYS TOLERABLE to the human palate? Nay.
    • Even to avoid being as FRACKING DISGUSTING AS DES' OLD SOCKS? It couldn't, and - I believe - WOULDN'T.

    I love root vegetables. Truly I do. Potatoes, and TURNIPS and beety things. 

    But parsnips? Now, when I find 'em in a field, I quietly beat them into silence with my shovel, refusing their false cries and damnable excuses.

    I then carry the remains over to stony ground, where I lay them to rest. For the crows, God willing.

    Though I doubt even He thinks much of their filthy, malodourous, and viciously-bowel-befouling ilk.

    Amen.


    by quinn esq on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 12:38pm

    See, there really isn't anything about parsnips to 'understand'.  And that Parsnip Dude in the photo really needs to shower more often, IMO.  No wonder they taste like ASS!

    Thank you for putting the asshat parsnip into its correctly ignominious place with other pests and plagues visited upon the unwary and innocent.  KILL ZEM ALL!!!  LEAVE NO PARZNIP TO SPEAK IN ITZ OWN DEFENSE!  THEY ARE ALL TERRORISTS: GET ZEM BEFORE ZEY GET YOU FIRST!

    Now, the truth is that Oxy was pimping me for whingeing about diamond sales and futures being bullish; it pissed me off that I was forced to not only eat free parnips AT ALL because they were free food in a very tight family budget  time, but I didn't like them when I made them, so had to eat USED PARSNIPS (I call it pre-compost) for lunch the next day, or go hungry...

    Someone at fdl posted that this Norman Rockwell was an homage to the Four Freedoms enunciated by FDR: Freedom from want.  I figure I, like all people, should be able to be free from the need to eat parsnips, especially while others are buying diamonds with my tax money!

    Oops; I'm whingeing again...

    But I cannot tell you how freaking funny the photo is, Q.  Happy Thankgiving (U.S. version).


    by we are stardust on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 1:05pm

    Well when you call a root a "vegetable" it's visions of delusion already for that tribal spud.

    No wonder they wandered out of the swamp into the kitchen - y'all didn't discourage 'em.

    A root is a root is a root. Boil 'em for tea or sumtin', but eat the boogers?


    by Decadero (not verified) on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 4:31pm

    Hah!  Now I know who the real culprit of the porn-root is: Charles Darwin.  Had he not named the creepy things, and slotted them into the wrong phylum, genus, species track, our forebears (nor fivebears) wouldn't have thought of them as even edible, much less as vegetables. 

    Thank you ever so much for your insights on the matter, Mr. Decayed doo-rah.


    by we are stardust on Fri, 11/26/2010 - 5:13pm

    "A root is a root is a root", and I yam wut I yam. Neurotic familial gatherings notwithstanding.


    by miguelitoh2o on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 1:36pm

    But don't ever forget:  You Can Toot a Root (and a yam, too):   (Be All That You Can Toot!)


    by we are stardust on Sat, 11/27/2010 - 1:45pm