ChuckDoherty.com

Once again, the facts have gone and pulled the rug out from under my most deeply held beliefs: it turns out that turkey doesn’t
make you sleepy after all. I had always believed that turkey contained significant amounts of tryptophan, and that this was what made people drowsy. Now I learn that the amount of the chemical in turkey is so low that it has negligible if any effect. It turns out that any post-dinner stupor that people feel is just the result of eating a big carb-laden meal, and usually tossing down a few drinks as well. If you were to swap any meat for the turkey or leave it out altogether the effect would be the same – there’s nothing especially soporific about turkey at all. What will be next?

Let us say, just for the sake of discussion, that you are hired for a high-profile job and then fail miserably at it. Imagine as well that your failures were of Titanic-navigating, Hindenburg-docking, Chernobyl-operating proportions, and that you performed your job so poorly that even congress demanded to know how any one person could screw it up that much. In fact, they even hauled you in for a good old-fashioned ass-reaming. Then imagine that you are not only forced to resign but are paraded in front of the nation as an example of the worst in incompetence.

What should you do at this point in your career? Well, you could admit that the job you were hired for, say, being in charge of emergency planning and response for a good sized world superpower, was not your forte and that you are probably better off doing something you are more familiar with. Perhaps you could? oh, I don’t know, go back to doing badly at running Arabian horse shows. Then again, you could do what former FEMA director Michael Brown just did and start a consulting firm to teach businesses how to avoid problems with emergency planning.

Yes, one of this country’s leading examples of political patronage and incompetence is now selling his skill set to businesses that are otherwise incapable of fucking-up at such a stupendous level. His target market: the same sort of companies that pay thousands to former Watergate conspirators (the ones who were too stupid to not get caught) for the privilege of hearing an inspirational speech about their time in prison, finding Jesus, or having been right all along (and they would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids!). My advise to Michael Brown; just take your severance pay and slink away to Malta, where you can – and should – live in a cave for the rest of your days.

It’s Thanksgiving once again, one Holiday that I can actually enjoy thanks to its secular roots and food-centric nature. I have a pot filled with potatoes ready to put on the boil, and that’s about the extent of my cooking plans this time around.

I just finished setting up a Frappr account for this site, which allows you to put your location on a map and to see where other site visitors are located. That way, both of the people who have visited this site in the past two years can know about each other.

By the way, did I call this yesterday or what?

One day to go before Thanksgiving. Ben is on his way here as I write this, and the plan is for us to have dinner with my sister and her family right down the road and to limit my food-preparation to one dish this time around. I am planning to make mashed red bliss potatoes, with enough cream and butter to stop your heart mid thump.

I was just on eBay to watch the final minutes of an auction for a new Xbox 360, which went on sale in stores on Tuesday for about $299. The final price for the one being auctioned: $1,151. In this case, someone stood in line at Target for a few hours, bought two of them, and sold them both for a handsome profit. This is not like jacking up the price of food or fuel during a hurricane; everyone who participates in the transaction is happy to do so and I say good on ?em. The XBox 360 is going to be this year’s Tickle-me Elmo, the one item that people will climb over each other and poke out eyes in line at WalMart to get, and they are willing to pay outlandish premiums on top of retail for it. A few months from now when all the hair pulling and trampling is over and done with, perhaps I’ll even consider getting one myself. But not before it is possible to walk into a store and purchase one in a normal way.

Speaking of must-have’s, I have noticed that there is no shortage around these parts of those hideous 6′-diamater inflatable Christmas sno-globes with Styrofoam snowflakes being blown about inside. Even the local Stop & Shop is selling these beauties. It’s just a matter of time before some hooligans start puncturing them with whatever it is that hooligans puncture things with these days (Pea-shooters? BB guns? Ice picks?), leaving their sad deflated hulks smothering both Frosty and baby Jesus.

One nice side-effect in returning from some time in Europe is that my internal clock is still shifted a bit toward their time. This means that I am awake and ready for the day much earlier than usual, and get much more done in the mornings. The downside is that my evening is cut a bit short, but having the extra time in the morning is very nice.