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The Daily Dose/November 30, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
   
Notes from around the Human Experience...Joanna Gleason is your Column Four Foto, as The Women of Hello Larry Week begins!
CAPSULE THANKSGIVING REVIEW: Ours was probably a lot like yours, family and friends gathered around the house, lots of food, some football, and a family-type activity. Gathered were The Woman, her son and daughter, their father, their boyfriend and girlfriend and my friend Keith.
Brass Tacks: I gotta be honest, the only part of the Thanksgiving meal that really interests me is stuffing. Sure, turkey has its place, and I enjoy the other parts of the meal, too, except maybe mashed potatoes, which I officially like but never get too worked up about.
Anyway, around summer I start keeping an eye out for a new type of stuffing to try and all week I was whining about my hopes that there would be a sufficient amount of stuffing.
The Medal Stand: Though stuffing is my fave part of the Thanksgiving meal, pound-for-pound the tastiest parts were The Woman's broccoli/cheese casserole and her greens, and her son's girlfriend's gingerbread dessert.
The Tradition Continues: Like last year we tried an experimental stuffing. Regular readers of this crap will recall we tried White Castle stuffing last year, with mixed results. It was all right, certainly not as good as White Castles on their own, but hardly Stuffing of the Year.
This year we tried a chorizo stuffing recipe that I scammed off of someone. This was pretty good, though it should be noted that if you could mix chorizo with gunpowder and we'd give it pretty good reviews. In the upset of the year I personally thought it could have used more chorizo - a Mexican sausage you really don't want to know the ingredients to that are customarily scrambled with eggs - but it was considerably better than 2007's White Castle stuffing.
Fly In The Ointment: There were a couple of downsides: one, both football games were about as exciting as an NBA game. I know the Detroit Lions have been playing on Thanksgiving since time immemorial, but do they have to be televised? Good gravy, they are bad. And the Cowboys thriller against the lousy Seahawks bored everyone to tears, too.
Two, weather prevented the usual Holiday Athletic Event. Recall last Christmas we went and - like your family probably did - threw the discus around. This year a basketball game was scheduled - boys vs. the girls - but it washed out. I was willing to play because the only concession I make to the rain is, for safety's sake, I dunk with two hands instead of one, but the girls whined their way out of it.
Mid-Course Correction: So instead of basketball, we played UNO Flash, a twist on the pretty fun card game. UNO Flash comes with an electronic deal that has six buttons that flash and make assorted noises and also has a place for discarded and in-play cards
You have either four or six seconds - your choice - to take your turn. If you don't, the machine freezes (and humiliates you by incessantly flashing your light) and you are obliged to draw two extra cards.
Instead of rotating from player to player, the machines decides whose turn it is by flashing that player's button and hold on to your hats because it is not completely unheard of for the machine to - hilariously, if you ask us - to make the same player go three straight times.
We Interrupt This Column For A Word From The Ratings Department: Following is the Official Writer's Shack rating scale:
EX - Excellent; as good as the medium can produce in every respect.
VG - Very Good. Well worth your time.
GD - Good. Worth your time.
AR - All Right. Not completely without merit.
SP - Nothing of substance; a steaming pile, utterly without merit.
Final Ranking: VG. This holiday will never achieve an EX rating until I find a stuffing that will cause me to achieve and maintain a state of arousal, and the weather didn't cooperate, but other than that it was nice: family, friends, good food and an opportunity to give thanks for whatever you want to be thankful for. We hope you enjoyed yours as much.
WE THE PEOPLE: On this date, in 1782, representatives of the US and Great Britain sign peace articles that will eventually turn into the Treaty of Paris, signed the following year. The Treaty of Paris officially ended the American Revolution, though hostilities had actually ended in 1781.
Can't We At Least Get A Beheading In? On this date, in 1803, the Louisiana Territory is transferred from Spain to France. Three weeks later, France would transfer it to the United States.
Turnover on turning territories on foreign lands over to another country usually isn't this quick, even if you've paid for expedited processing, but circumstances, as they often do, provided inertia. France had lost the Louisiana Territory west of the Mississippi River following their defeat in the French and Indian War in 1763, but got it back after Napoleon negotiated its return in an 1800 treaty with the Spanish. However, the two countries never got around to officially transferring ownership until this date in 1803 and the United States had purchased Louisiana in the spring of 1803, forcing France to get busy.
Trying The Judge: The country's only impeachment trial of a Supreme Court justice begins on this date in 1804, with the Senate trying Samuel Chase. The House had proffered eight articles of impeachment, most accusing Chase of letting political preferences affect his performance as a jurist. Chase would be acquitted on all articles the following March, establishing a precedent of not trying federal judges based on their performance on the bench, and all subsequent judicial impeachments have been for criminal acts.
I Guess Dinner Will Be Late: On this date, in 1954, mankind's only recorded instance of an extraterrestrial object hitting a human being takes place when a grapefruit-sized fragment of a meteorite falls through the roof off a house in Oak Grove Alabama, which is about 50 miles southeast of Birmingham. The rock bounced of a radio console before hitting 31-year-old Ann Hodges, who had been napping on a couch. Hodges was bruised, but otherwise unhurt.
2008, A Space Odyssey: For those of you interested in getting some perspective on the human experience in a world where people eager to get into Wal-Mart trample an employee to death so they can purchase a tee vee, nature is currently putting the finishing touches on a lunar/planetary display that will climax Monday night with the Moon, Venus and Jupiter in close proximity in the southwestern sky, just after sunset. It will last for about three hours, as the spot on Earth where you happen to be viewing it continues its journey into night.
The Catbird's Seat: If you were looking down at the solar system from the Supreme Being Sky Box, oriented so the Earth is what we would consider due north of the Sun, you would see Venus off to the right, almost due east, with Jupiter farther down, at about 5 o'clock. Or, to make it more confusing, if you were to draw a line between Earth and Venus, Jupiter would be off to left a little. Or maybe the right. Various solar system simulators had differing opinions.
I Knew It! Ed McMahon Shot Kennedy! Various and assorted wing nuts and whack jobs might also notice that Earth, the Sun, Mercury and Mars are more or less in line as are, from left to right, Saturn, the Sun, Venus and Uranus. Draw your own conclusions.
Thought For The Day: Bernard was drawing with charcoal on a piece of driftwood when his mother returned home…He was busy at nothing, his energy humming, ready for a focus. - Michael Dorris. Working Men
Today's Trivia Question:How many states, or parts of states, emerged from the Louisiana Purchase? - Answer next time!
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