“More,” the hat said. “I want to fire more of them.” His voice became strained and he coughed a few times, then spit a splintered turkey leg bone onto the floor.
“We’ve already fired a lot of them,” the hair told him. “Maybe let’s wait for the swearing in of Congress in January.”
“Kelly. I want Kelly gone. He refuses to recognize my authority,” the hat said. He inched his way onto a sweet potato and settled onto it like a mother hen tending her eggs.
“Kelly keeps everyone in line,” the hair protested.
“I don’t care. We’ll put Corey in charge. He knows now how to take care of whiners.”
The hair made a noncommittal grunt and typed on a laptop for a few seconds.
“Mueller!” Donald yelled from the bathroom.
“This sweet potato tastes funny,” the hat groused.
“Maybe it’s a yam,” the hair said distantly.
“It’s not a fucking yam. I know what a yam is. This is a sweet potato and it tastes funny.”
“Is it maybe because it’s raw?” the hair asked.
“Probably,” the hat said morosely. He crawled off the dissolving sweet potato and went back to the turkey carcass on the table.”There’s still plenty left if you want some.”
“You know I don’t eat meat,” the hair said. He typed furiously on the laptop for a second.
“What are you doing over there?” the hat whined.
“Early Christmas shopping,” the hair said. “There are some great pre-Black Friday deals.”
“‘Pre-Black Friday deals?” the hat said, spitting out a gnawed section of turkey spine.
“Yeah, there are all sorts of…” the hair began.
“Hold on, shut up, I just got an alert from Twitter,” the hat said.
“Rude.”
“Hey, I’ve had to keep Donald social media afloat all damn week. He refuses to get out of the tub!”
“I can hear you!” Donald said in a singsong voice.
“I don’t care,” the hat reply in the same singsong. The hat rattled off a string of characters on Donald’s phone.
“All those trips to the wildfires really wore him out,” the hair said.
“Fucking autocorrect,” the hat muttered. “How do you spell ‘smegma?’”
“COOL!” Donald yelled. “My phone floats! Did you guys know my phone floats?”
“It’s not a real phone,” the hat muttered.
“That’s great, Donald. So smart of you to get a phone that floats for the bathtub!’ the hair yelled.
“Smegma!” the hat said.
“How am I supposed to know how to spell it?” the hair asked.
“Look it up on the computer,” the hat said and sighed heavily.
“‘S-,” the hair said, “‘M-.’”
“Hurry up. I’ve got to get this tweet off.”
“Uh. Maybe you should come over here,” the hair said.
“What it is?”
“Just come over here.”
The hat crawled off a wad of dressing and made his way over to the hair.
“What?” he asked querulously.
“Looks at the autofill in the search line,” the hair said.
SMooth and painful bump near anus
“Uh…” the hat said.
“I mean this wasn’t you, right?” the hair asked.
“Of course not,” the hat said angrily. “My anus is 100% perfect. Solid gold. A+, number one, awesome. My anus could be the cover model for American Anus Monthly!”
“I just thought if Donald was having, you know, butt problems, I’d know about it,” the hair said.
“I mean, I guess,” the hat said. “But you are all the way up on the head. Maybe butt stuff just doesn’t make it up that far?”
“What if…” the hair began and trailed off.
“What if what?” the hair asked.
“I’m just going to go for it,” the hair said. His tendril typed rapidly on the laptop.
Hair club for men
Hair in the drain
Hair in my nose
Hair in butt infected
“OK,” the hair said, ‘That’s not so bad.”
“Try ‘my hair,’” the hat whispered.
My hair talks to me
My hair is my best friend
My hair ecards Valentine’s Day
“Well, I guess that’s not so bad,” the hair said.
“Do it,” the hat said. “Do it. I can’t not know now.” The hair typed once more.
My hat might be Hitler
“Hitler? HITLER? He thinks I might be Hitler?!?”
“Well…” the hair said.
“Well, what? What? Just spit it out.”
“Well, you don’t like Jews very much.”
“Well, I mean, yeah,” the hat said.”They are greedy and cheap and can’t be trusted and they killed Jesus. And then there’s…”
“Hey, look, more results,” the hair said.
My hat and hair are always fighting
My hat makes sex noises
My hat watches me take baths
The hat groaned and the hair shifted around uncomfortably.
“I only watch him in the bath in case he falls,” the hat said rapidly.
“I don’t care,” the hair said. “None of my business, bruh.”
“I’m getting all pruney!’ Donald called from the tub.
“Did you get the California stench off you yet?” the hat called.
“I’m working on it!’ the President of the United States yelled back.
The hat slouched away from the laptop and back to his meal. Bones began cracking.
“Are you done eating that pardoned turkey yet?” the hair asked.
The hat burped loudly.
Damn. That had a dark ending.
Happy Thanksgiving?
“But there is one thing that is missing: other turkeys. That’s because all the turkeys ever pardoned at the White House are dead, including the six already given a pass from the roasting pan by President Barack Obama in previous years.
“The bird is bred for the table, not for longevity,” said Dean Norton, the director at Mount Vernon in charge of livestock. “Some of [the pardoned turkeys] have been pretty short lived.”
Compared to domesticated animals, turkeys bred for consumption are usually plump and slaughtered after a period of months, and wouldn’t be expected to live much longer on their own. So, a pardon really can extend their lives a lot, relatively speaking.”
https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/27/politics/pardoned-turkeys/index.html
I call bull shit in so much of this article.
Wild turkeys cannot fly beautifully. They can manage to get up in a roost though.
They are serious differences other than diet between wild and domestic.
Domest turkeys can’t even reproduce naturally and have to be inseminated.
True fact: Turkeys are so dumb that they have been know to drown in a rain.
It’s CNN. Fake news.
I was just talking to someone about wild turkeys and how they are supposed to be so difficult to hunt. Hell, they walk right out beside the roads here and don’t seem a bit squeamish about it.
Wild Turkey isn’t hard to hunt. I just go to the store and there it is. I’m not much of a bourbon drinker though.
Bourbon makes me heave. I think it’s a psychological reaction to some bad experiences in younger days.
I can’t get enough of this though: https://www.domainedecanton.com/
The last time I went to look over a piece of land a bunch of wild turkeys came out of the bushes just as I was getting out of the jeep. I told the fellow with me to stand still and quiet, then I showed him a trick he had never seen before.
I sat indian style on the ground and began pecking at the gravel with one finger, alternating that with raking at leaves and gravel with my finger tips. You have to do that with a little enthusiasm, making sure to mimic both the sound and motion of a ground bird scratching around for food. It works for any ground bird.
The turkeys stopped retreating, watched me very closely from about 20 yards and and then one brave/hungry bird ran right up to me and leaned down to stare intently at what I was doing, inches from my fingers.
It blew the guy’s mind. “I hunt turkeys and they are pretty wiley. How the hell did you do that?”
I was laughing and said “You are a turkey hunter? I probably shouldn’t have showed you that.”
BTW, this works for squirrels and a few other critters also.
My grandfather on wild turkeys: “The longer you cook them, the tougher they get.”
I have never shot a turkey and cant think of a reason to do so.
Oh, the point of my story is that wild Turkeys aren’t exactly genius’s. There is a reason the expression ‘bird brain’ came about.
The blood of dinosaurs is all but spent.
But they were never the brightest bulbs either.
I can’t think of a reason to do this with any domesticated animal. Unless they are running into the oven it’s pretty difficult to hunt more economically than buy at a store and I can’t think of anything that’s better wild than farm raised meat except seafood.
This is true. I haven’t shot anything other than a hog in probably ten years. I dont have that much problem with a hog as they are not native and cause a lot of damage.
A year ago my brother and I were standing on the edge of his pond about to shoot our pistols. The water was down and there was a bare strip of dry ground all the way around the pond. Before we could draw our pistols I happen to notice a rather large wild canine, probably a red wolf, trotting down that strip of dried mud directly towards us. I whispered to my brother “Hey, check him out”.
It trotted past about ten feet in front of us. As it passed my brother drew his pistol.
Me – ” Nononononono dont shoot him!”
It passed, barely glancing at us and disappeared into the woods.
My brother was puzzled why I asked him not to shoot.
“He isnt hurting anything and he keeps the rabbits down. Besides, he would cry and scream just like a dog and you will end up having nightmares.” My brother is a big dog person.
Him – “Damned. You have lost your balls.”
Six months later my phone rings. It’s my brother.
First words I hear – “You asshole. You have infected me. I went out to shoot squirrels this morning and couldn’t do it. I cant even kill a damned squirrel!”
Most people don’t know how delicious rabbit is. I’m surprised it’s not in every meat case at the grocery store.
Rabbits are not hares. If you mean what I think then you mean hares. They are fantastic. Nothing beats a good pot of rabbit (hare) and dumplings. Wild Rabbit…the native NA lagomorphs are like eating shoes. Gamey shoes.
Now I want some rabbit dumplings.
Obligatory.
Turkeys are dumb but they are incredibly skittish and possess great eyesight. There is a saying (which I’ll probably butcher) that deer look at a forest and see hundreds of trees and turkeys look at a forest and see hundreds of hunters.
Once I learned how to properly cook a wild turkey I gave up on any store bird. The meat is tasty, but if you cook it as long as a commercial bird it will become dry as the Sonora.
Another tip. If you move in a casual manner but a bit slow, lots of wild animals will not instantly flee. Don’t look directly at them or make sudden moves. they read your body language also. If you want to see how that works the next time you are around nearly any wild animal that can see you go from a ‘hmmm hmm hmm I am just standing here not looking at you’ casual position to staring straight at them and hunching over a little like you are sneaking or about to pounce. They will instantly, frantically run away.
Most animals are curious, especially if they think food might be in the deal. Move casually, dont look directly at them and if you can, like raking the ground with your fingers, act like you might be eating something they like.
If you do that you will see a lot more wildlife.
When I was a poor college student scouring for jobs in the classified ad, I’d regularly see an ad for turkey milkers.
How desperate for money do you have to be to jerk off turkeys?
For me? Not that desperate.
At least you would have ‘spunky engineer’ in your resume.
The hair doesn’t eat meat? Why not?
You know who else was in charge and didn’t eat meat?
– My hat might be Hitler
Ok, now I’m dizzy.
Mary Moon?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TL5ofVC0EDQ
Me?
In charge? Paging SP
Cuz Donald doesn’t drink?
There are some great pre-Black Friday deals.
I know you specialize in horrors beyond what we’ve seen, but this strains credulity.
Does California smell worse than new Jersey??
It’s a rich melenge, from open air latrine to inseminated ficus fundament.
“Damn. That had a dark ending.”
Seriously, it’s like you don’t even “Hat & Hair”, brah.
I’ve trained myself to withstand the exotic and soul-crippling SF horror, so mini-horrors like eating the pardoned turkey sneak past the defenses.
Fair enough.
Leap, if you are still taking suggestions for reading:
Patrick F. McManus (anything, but They Shoot Canoes Don’t They is my favorite)
Peter Hathaway Capstick (anything, but Death in the Silent Places is my favorite)
Robert Ruark The Old Man and the Boy
What I do find interesting is Trump has gone from cutting open whores and fucking them in the spleen to a happy go lucky buffoon playing in the bathtub with a fake phone.
I think Sugar Free has developed a soft spot for The Donald.
Pie has been slipping happy pills in his Diet Coke.
Getting away from the toxic stew of Hit & Run comments has been like pulling an infected tooth; I’m just not as fueled by pain and misery as a used to be.
I’m sorry we failed you 🙁
No, this is far, far, far better. That place is the smell of burning rubber.
That’ll be $120.
““Kelly keeps everyone in line,” the hat protested.”
Should that be “hair”?
I do enjoy the Hat and Hair stories and I realize Sucralose man has a real job but it seems like too much good material is being wasted. We have a full-blown commie that is batshit nuts, another commie that married her own brother, Crazy Bernie, the horror that is Pelosi, Don Lemon,….the list is too long to fit on one page. I guess it is a fair counter point that all of those people parody themselves…
Oh, and Obama out there giving ‘You people suck’ speeches.
The source material has to be somewhat believable. 2018 jumped the shark.
A shark with a laser on its head, no less.
These days, the writers at The Onion just drink and stare at the walls.
OT – How long is reasonable for someone to learn a language with similar grammatical structure to their native tongue along with cognate terms? How long for one without? In both cases assume they have been dropped into an immersion situation where they can’t retreat into their native language for anything but conversations inside their residence.
You are asking the wrong people. I think our own Heroic Mulatto is perhaps the world’s leading expert on that subject.
I might re-ask in the PM Lynx, but I figured I’d see if anyone had any idea or experience.
Like, five minutes if The Thirteenth Warrior is something to go by.
I Listened!!!
Huh? What did you say? I wasn’t paying attention.
My father learned Dutch in about 6 months visiting relatives. Don’t know if it’s reasonable or not, but it’s the experience you describe.
I’m going to guess – native english speaker?
Yes
I can’t give you a number, but I would imagine not long. I am decent at Spanish, then I started to learn Portuguese and I found it very easy to learn. The “hard” concepts, like nouns having a gender and the tenses, were the same. There were pronunciation differences but I consider those details. I quit when I got bored with it though.
My wife(Russian) learned English chatting with me on IM. She had a pretty decent vocabulary after a year but her pronunciations can be hilarious.
By the phrasing I have to conclude that during that year she wasn’t immersed in the language – ie not living in a place where no one around her spoke russian.
No, sorry it didn’t address your original query. She was learning by reading and responding to text messages and was in Russia.
But it does provide another bounding box for reasonableness.
What do you mean “learn a language”? Being able to have a conversation with people on the street? Watch TV? Read a newspaper? Speaking without any accent whatsoever? The answers will be very different. They will also depend on how old the person is.
The character is an adult, and needs to be able to converse enough to advance the plot and get exposition from people directly. So ‘conversant’, his diction can be accented to hell and back for all it matters.
I’d estimate that the minimum would be at least a few months.
It took me about 6 months with Spanish and Portuguese to become good enough to become conversationally proficient.
Go ask someone looking for work at 7-11 if you want a real answer.
Maybe this will help: Language Difficulty Ranking.
So, 23-24 weeks for something similar.
88 weeks for something really different.
Why do they only have 25 hours per week?
As prep for an LDS mission to Guatemala, I underwent 2 months immersion training at the Mission Training Center. When that was over I could discuss church topics in Spanish (with frequent recourse to a dictionary), and find the restroom. After I’d been in Guatemala for 4 – 6 months I could hold a discussion in Spanish on just about anything I could discuss in English. By the end of my mission (24 months total) I was thinking mostly in Spanish.
At thirty months he joined a caravan north looking for better opportunities in the land called Estados Unidos. He no longer speaks a word of English.
Obama out there giving ‘You people suck’ speeches.
Meth lab of democracy.
Oh yeah, and her.
Kudos to whomever started the conversation on sous vide cooking recently. I’m using the method to cook our turkey this week after a few experiments. Everything I’ve tried(chicken, fish, steak, shrimp) has been delicious.
Don’t think I started it, but I’m certainly one of the cheerleaders. Glad you’re enjoying it!
I need to do some carrots next.
Similarly… I’ve had great success with the “reverse sear”. Perfect medium-rare every time.
BF did sous vide turkey the last couple of years and it’s been the only turkey I’d be enthusiastic about eating again. He’s back east this year so back to my family’s dry-ass turkeys…at least there’ll be a ham.
I’m doing mine sectioned and on the grill this year. It will not be dry.
Last years he broke it down, did it sous vide and finished it on the grill with wood smoke. His sister bitched about not having a whole turkey pulled out of the oven with little puffs on its feet by her dad while I shoved her out of the way to get seconds.
Your sister is wrong.
I’m not hosting, so mine is turkey 2. Last year I did one on the rotisserie and 1 (spatchcocked) on the weber. This year I’m using the weber and my neato Slow ‘n Sear. I like the idea of being able to pull sections as they are done.
Your sister is wrong.
No, no, no. HIS sister. He bought and prepared the turkey and she griped. It was not a great introduction. I still haven’t spatchcocked anything, but keep recommending it to people and they all come away really pleased with the results…I had an uncle try to explain how he’d used an exotic technique to prepare his turkey when I complimented it a few years ago. He started explaining it and I cut him off “Oh you, spatchcocked it? That’s great. I talked [a mutual acquaintance] into doing that this year to cut down on prep time.” He was crushed (which I’m fine with–he’s captain critical when I cook, but then actively seeks out my praise because he knows I know my shit).
Whoops. Reading comprehension fail!
I don’t like competitive cooks in my kitchen. I know I don’t know shit, but I love to learn.
If I don’t spin the bird (turkey or chicken), I almost always spatchcock it. Easy to prep and waaaaay faster to cook.
I don’t like competitive cooks in my kitchen. I know I don’t know shit, but I love to learn.
I–at least partly–blame the decline in people cooking/knowing how to cook, the increase in eating out, and the culture of Yelp. Everyone thinks their a NYT food critic now and the expectation is that when someone else prepares food we must show our own refinement by expounding on every last detail.
I’m much more a “cooking me dinner was a gift of time, energy and money. thank you for thinking me worthy of putting effort in” sort.
jesse and Playa have cost me a lot of money over the years.
You are warned.
jesse and Playa have cost me a lot of money over the years.
I hope it’s been well spent.
Absolutely. I love cooking.
And gin and tonics 😉
And gin and tonics
amen to that. I need to pick up some tonic water. I’ve got a few gins floating around needing attention.
What kind of machine did you get ? If you got a clip on, what kind of container do you use?
Thanks in advance
I told the fellow with me to stand still and quiet, then I showed him a trick he had never seen before.
I sat indian style on the ground and began pecking at the gravel with one finger, alternating that with raking at leaves and gravel with my finger tips. You have to do that with a little enthusiasm, making sure to mimic both the sound and motion of a ground bird scratching around for food. It works for any ground bird.
The turkeys stopped retreating, watched me very closely from about 20 yards and and then one brave/hungry bird ran right up to me and leaned down to stare intently at what I was doing, inches from my fingers.
I immediately thought of something like this.
I have done that before with turkeys and it has occurred to me that my being a smart-ass could get me spurred if the turkey were startled.
At home, fire is going, ribs are on the grill, Spawn 1 is en route.
This must be what they mean by Life is Good.
I have telecons until 11 pm tonight and one in the morning. 🙁
That sucks. Asian office?
You can do them at home, though, right?
*opens incognito window*
Yeah, it’s them damn Injuns takin’ our jobs!
So, would people still be interested in Hat and Hair merch if MAGA Prime is a knockoff?
I’m thinking maybe the issue I’ve run into is why the Glib store won’t click through to buy Hat and Hair merch there, so I could update the classic look ones there as well if people will still want them.
God yes!!!!!
Make American Geräte Again – kinda works