friday five, turkey edition
November 28, 2003
Marvin this week:
This is Thanksgiving week in the US of A, the holiday on which immigrant Americans celebrate the poor foresight of the Native Americans who kept their Puritan forebears from starving to death. Which normally means that I could cop out and ask a question like, "Name five things you're thankful for." However, several people on this list are within driving distance of my home and are rumored to have poor impulse control, not to mention the alleged secret stockpiles of explosives and furry porn, so I'll go for something a little different: five separate questions, loosely related (just how loosely depends on how much scotch I manage to drink before I finish thinking them up).
Aside: It occurs to me that these questions betray a definite Anglo-Saxon Christmas-season bias. Please feel free to recast the questions to suit your own holiday traditions.
1. You've just sat down for you favorite holiday meal and you hear a knock on the door. It's Freddie Mercury in a tight white T-shirt and a gold lame halo—he offers to sing for his supper. What song(s) do you request and why? (Not necessarily Queen songs—since Freddie joined the heavenly choir he's been expanding his repertoire.)
Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant." I mean...I mean...we'll all sing in four-part harmony and it'll be a movement.
2. A certain relative or in-law so-and-so—the black sheep of the family, the one who drinks all the beer but never bothers to pay for any—shows up later in the evening. You know the one (assuming it isn't you, of course). What is his (or her, let's be fair) special talent that you secretly envy?
Depends on the side of the family we're talking about. On one, the sheep would be me. On the other, hrm, we don't really have one. I got nothin'.
3. You've been feeding the family dog beneath the table. Fido's digestive tract isn't what it used to be. Which tasty morsel was it that stank up the joint?
Cranberry sauce. It's always the cranberry sauce.
4. Between dinner and desert one needs a pause for digestion and reflection. In what special aid to this process do you like to indulge? Madeira, port, ye olde Sheep Dip, Longbottom Leaf, or something else?
Irish coffee. With a big splash of whiskey and a big blob of whipped cream. Mmmmm.
5. It's time for dessert. You've pudding and hard sauce but no brandy to set the former on fire. But there must be fire. You search the house for a substitute: what will you find and use?
Given how much of a freak Mooch has been this week, I'm using him. All of that blubber should burn real nice.*
*Disclaimer: I would never actually set the cat on fire. But I have pondered it a time or two. And if you knew the Moocher, you would, too. Big old inbred freak he is.
Other friday fivers on the left list...