Today is the day to just make up a bunch of crap.

Zulkey.com will be taking tomrorow and Friday off to eat good food and then lament her 'food baby.'

Steve D. sent out the call, you answered:

Thanksgiving Sound-Off

From Will Layman:

I want to sound off just like Steve D.! Or is it the Steve D. Experience?! And why am I using all these exclamation points? Whew, that's better.

When it comes to Thanksgiving, these are the questions I'm asking:

(one) Why did God give me, a small American man of largely Italian descent, so many Irish relatives? The Italian in me dreams of turkey basted in olive oil and oregano, of mashed potatoes, sure, but rich with butter and encrusted with a later of lightly browned parmesan, of stuffing laced with fennel and red onion, of green beans blanched and then coated with sesame seeds. Mmmmm. And then my Irish relatives intrude on my fantasy but preparing a meal in which each element tasted exactly the same: like second grade white paste, lightly salted. Why, oh why was I attracted to marrying a woman with freckles?

(two) Where can I get me one o' them cornucopia things? You know, the straw basket that lays on its side and kind looks like the inner ear, all filled not with wax and horrible clusters of ear-hair but rather with tumbling mounds of fruit. Have you ever actually seen a cornucopia? Do they exist or are they, like, historical things like three-cornered hats that can now only be obtained in the gift shop at Mount Vernon. And if you can get a real one, can it be life-size and maybe filled with not fruit but, say, chocolate figurines in the shape of demi-clad hot-chick-puppets like from that TEAM AMERICA puppet movie? Am I getting off topic?

(three) Actually, I'm stuck on the cornucopia thing. Could I maybe caulk-in the life-size one and fill it with Diet Pepsi, and then maybe swim around in it, gulping all the while, getting more and more hopped up on the caffeine to the point where I would finally have the courage to emerge — glistening with carbonation, by the way — and tell my in-laws, "Hey! Your mashed potatoes, which are NOT creamy or parmesan-encrusted, are very VERY horrible!"?

(four) Must we watch football on Thanksgiving? For some complex football-history reason, they always show the same NFL teams on Thanksgiving Day and one of them is always the Detroit Lions. I cannot fathom this, and will only watch the game because John Madden sometimes does it and has a honkin' big turkey leg on The Tube that's all brown and succulent-looking, and I can dream of that turkey leg being on my table or, come to think of it, in my life-size cornucopia, all dripping with the olive oil and oregano. Drenched in the Diet Pepsi that is still bubbling in my brain . . . . Rubbing up against the chocolate demi-clad puppet figurines . . . .

From Ann Logue (who does exist):

Steve,

Good thing I have so many issues in life, or Claire couldn't have a blog.

Thanksgiving, senior year in high school, Youngstown, Ohio, 1982. After dinner, my mother turned to my sister and me and said, "Okay, girls, time to do the dishes." "What about John Edward?" I said, John Edward being a brother of capable dish-washing age and not a failed vice-presidential candidate. "Oh, the boys are watching the Browns game. I can't bother them," my mother replied.

Once I scooped my jaw off the floor and my sister stopped her rant against my mother's ridiculous sexism, we grabbed the car keys and went out to Teenie's Tavern, a bar on the South Side of Youngstown known for its outstanding pierogies and its liberal interpretation of the legal age for
alcohol consumption, at least way back then.

And let me tell you, there is nothing more pathetic than a bar that serves minors on Thanksgiving day. But at least I didn't have to do the dishes.

From Sarah Miller:

I have an observation for you: Thanksgiving is ca-razy!

From Katy Pieters:

Dude, what do you mean Thanksgiving? Honey, there are already Christmas decorations out and Christmas songs and Christmas commercials and red and green sweaters on little stuffed hedge-hogs made to look like granny and gramps jumping out at us from every store aisle. Thanksgiving is SO a few days from now. We should be talking about New
Years, or Valentine's Day. C'mon Zulk, get your head in the game. Thanksgiving...ha! It must be the tryptophan talking. Get some sleep and we'll talk more about this in the morning.

From Scott T.:

Hey there, Claire, it's me, Scott T., here to sound off in a Thanksgivingly way. You know what bugs me? Makes me want to sound off? Concerning Thanksgiving? Well, what bugs me concerning Thanksgiving and makes me want to sound off, are those people who shorten the names of holidays. You know, you hear these people at your place of business, saying things like, "Hey, what are you doing for Turkey Day?" or "Geez. I can't wait for T-Day." Thanksgiving becomes cheapened by these names, and others, like Thanksy or even Tom Turkey's Terrific Thursday (granted this one is any shorter than the original, but it still cheapens the experience). These awful, awful people, they ruin the whole spirit of everything, from these blessed days themselves, and the weeks and months leading up to these holidays, and even the food we so look forward to. So if you're one of those "T-Day" jokers, or a "X-Mas" idiot, a "Yom-Kip" dingbat, or even a "Jul-Four" freak, why don't you just do us all a favor and knock it off, okay? You're stinking everything up for the rest of us, you time-saving buffoons.

From Iva-Marie Palmer:

Basters. I used to love to baste. The act of basting. As in, taking the tube with the squishy, suction-producing bulb on top and lovingly sucking the juices from the turkey pan, only to dispense with said juices on top of the turkey. Like recycling, but hot and wet. As a child (one of which I still am in many ways but not in height and the year 2004 minus the year 1977, Year of My Birth), well, okay, a pre-teenager, I got to perform this task under the watchful gaze of a mother who assumed I should be watched because I might shoot the hot, steaming turkey juice into my delicate, still-maturing retina. ("After all, you were nine years old before you could ride a bicycle so we can't really trust your motor skills and coordination.") The pleasure's gone out of this act. Is it that our family's Tofurkey doesn't sizzlingly respond to the squirting goodness in the same way? Is it the fact that a baster reminds me of the lengths (and $1.99 kitchen supplies coupled with stolen, ummm, fluids) I might have to go to if I one day do want to have children? Or is it just that fact that I'm really sick of wearing an eyepatch ever since Thanksgiving '89?

Think you can sound off better than these people? You can still send it in, through end of the workday Wednesday.