Seen on the internet.

Grabbed this morning from a major news website:



I just wanted you to know what's out there. I'm not saying be afraid, be very afraid. But... pay attention.

Recycling your turkey-frying oil in Madison, Wisconsin for the greater good of America and the world.

A City of Madison news release:

"We know that there are many people who have lots of oil left over after frying their Thanksgiving turkey," Madison recycling coordinator George Dreckmann said. "We are very excited to be able to offer them a chance to turn that old cooking oil into fuel for cars and trucks in our area."

Dreckmann — a euonym! The Oxford English Dictionary defines "dreck" — from Yiddish drek (German dreck) filth, dregs, dung — as "Rubbish, trash, worthless debris":

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. 491 Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck!
1947 Horizon Feb. 90 The anonymous countryside littered with heterogeneous dreck.
1965 E. Lacy Double Trouble v. 58 Drek your dolls are!.. I wouldn't stick my customers with such junk!...

Back to the press release:

"Every year thousands of gallons of old cooking oil is tossed in the landfill or flushed down the drain. Since we began our cooking oil program we have recovered over thousands [sic] of cooking oil" Dreckmann said. "Now we can recover this resource and use it to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and cut air pollution."

Cooking oil must be brought to the 1501 W. Badger Rd. or 4602 Sycamore Av....

So hundreds/thousands of citizens with their gallon jugs of used oil will get in their cars and drive to the oil collection site and then various unseen processes will be applied to convert that stuff into something useful. Is there a net benefit to the environment and to the American economy? I don't know, but think how wonderful it is that the nice people of Madison can feel good about themselves (after they went ahead and deep-fried the turkey instead of just roasting it).

Oh, Althouse, why are you so cynical?!  I'm sorry. Let me paint a different picture. The turkey-frying Madisonian hangs gallon jugs of used oil on his handlebars and bikes down South Park Street to Badger Road.

At the Feeling Swindled Café...

... I'm not feeling swindled. I'm feeling thankful. It's Thanksgiving!

***

"Café," here at the Althouse blog, signifies an open thread in the comments. Write about what you like. And if you enjoy hanging out here, you can let me know by using this Amazon link as you go about your Christmas shopping, your Thanksgiving shopping, your other holiday shopping, and your nonholiday shopping. Entering Amazon through that link — which is always at the top of the page under the blog's title at the words "Shop Amazon" — will send me a commission on whatever you buy there before you click away. I'm heading into a 9th year of solo blogging, 365 days a year, without even a single missed day, and the Amazon action really is encouraging. It's so not a swindle, since you only get things you want and you pay nothing extra for what I experience as a gesture of encouragement.

"The charter of the Plymouth Colony reflected the most up-to-date economic, philosophical and religious thinking of the early 17th century."

"Plato was in vogue then, and Plato believed in central planning by intellectuals in the context of communal property, centralized state education, state centralized cultural offerings and communal family structure."

ADDED: Sorry I had the wrong link before. It's corrected now, but let me keep the wrong link too, which went to a second article in Forbes "A Guide To Talking Politics At The Thanksgiving Table." Maybe you've already started talking about politics at the Thanksgiving table, and, if so, I hope you're doing it the right way... or close enough.

"Why should the President direct the people to do what, perhaps, they have no mind to do?"

"If a day of thanksgiving must take place... let it be done by the authority of the several States."

"He portrayed the Irish as drunken apes, and the image still remains today."

The New Jersey Ancient Order of Hibernians opposes inclusion of Thomas Nast — the great 19th century political cartoonist — in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Nast—whose drawings gave rise to Uncle Sam, Santa Claus and the elephant and donkey that symbolize the American political parties—was critical of the Irish as supporters of Tammany Hall. He pilloried the Vatican for trying to recruit children from public schools into parochial institutions....

Nast was an abolitionist who supported equal treatment for blacks and Asians. The anti-Irish tenure of his cartoons was a product of the times...

Here's Nast's "Uncle Same's Thanksgiving Dinner" in which Uncle Sam and Columbia serve murdered bird to a bunch of racial and ethnic stereotypes:



(Enlarge to see the outrageous details.)

Obama's religion-free Thanksgiving address.

"As Americans, each of us has our own list of things and people to be thankful for. But there are some blessings we all share....

But no matter how tough things are right now, we still give thanks for that most American of blessings, the chance to determine our own destiny. The problems we face didn’t develop overnight, and we won’t solve them overnight. But we will solve them. All it takes is for each of us to do our part. 

And God's help? I'm noticing the lack of religion in the address. The closest he gets is the use of the word "blessings."

With all the partisanship and gridlock here in Washington, it’s easy to wonder if such unity is really possible. But think about what’s happening at this very moment: Americans from all walks of life are coming together as one people, grateful for the blessings of family, community, and country.

If we keep that spirit alive, if we support each other, and look out for each other, and remember that we’re all in this together, then I know that we too will overcome the challenges of our time.

Again, an absence of God. We'll solve our problems by coming together as a community, not with the help of God, though you are free to conceptualize this coming together in religious terms. I'm not criticizing, just taking note.

Here's what Thomas Jefferson said about Thanksgiving:

I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises... Certainly no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general government.... But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting and prayer. That is, that I should indirectly assume to the United States an authority over religious exercises, which the Constitution has directly precluded them from... civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.

"Recently, I've been taking a series of executive actions that don't require congressional approval."

"Well, here's another one. We can't wait to pardon these turkeys."



(I love the complete lack of enthusiasm from the daughters, including declining to laugh at dad's jokes.)

“What is this mac-and-cheese? Is it a black thing?"

Pat Robertson, getting up to speed on Thanksgiving and macaroni and cheese.

I thought we'd finally hit the year when efforts to use "tryptophan" in Thanksgiving jokes had ended.

But hoary old NPR is still purveying them. Christmas is coming up, so I'm steeling myself for jokes about how no one actually likes fruitcake.

Food writers hate Thanksgiving because they have to write once again about basically the same meal.

Hey. I see what you did there. You had to write about Thanksgiving again, so you wrote about hating to have to write about Thanksgiving again. What will you do next year? Write about writing about having to write about Thanksgiving again? You're not going to be able to keep up that meta game.

"This is the time" — I hope you're thankful.

I hope you made it to your destination okay. Or, if you're staying home, that you're warm and cozy. Feel free to eat pie: Michelle Obama has given us a dispensation to eat pie.

I liked this shopping-for-Thanksgiving story Chip Ahoy told in the comments at last night's Lake Dusk Café:

The grocery was crowded tonight. Everybody is in high spirits and eager to engage. I encountered two guys picking out a GIGANTIC turkey that barely fit into their cart. The turkey was frozen solid. I remarked on its size and they were filled with glee and good cheer, pleased with their choice. I suggested they might consider an ostrich and they laughed like they just met a hilarious stranger. I did not have the heart to tell them there is no way that thing is going to thaw by tomorrow. No way. I can see it all now; they will cook it anyway. Guy are like that. The outside will be charred and the inside will still be ice. The sequence of events is set, there is no escaping the inevitability, their turkey will be a complete disaster. Years on they will recall tomorrow as a favorite Thanksgiving coming of age fiasco story.

Are you cooking anything? Or did you cook everything already? I'm told real feast-masters do the Thanksgiving cooking before Thanksgiving, and by that standard, I've never cooked a real Thanksgiving dinner. I'm thankful that I've made it nearly to the age of 60 without ever going on the guilt-trip that my Thanksgivings were not sufficiently Thanksgiving-y because I didn't start the preparations days in advance.

Well, maybe I once made a pie — maybe even 2 pies — on the Wednesday. Did I tell you it's officially okay in America today to eat pie? Our national mother has said we may.

Michelle Obama has granted permission for all of us to totally forget anything she says about eating 'cause it's Thanksgiving.  It's okay [today] to go ahead and have pie.  It was in her interview with Barbara Walters.  It's Thanksgiving, eat whatever you want.  But on Friday you gotta get back to what Michelle says you have to do. 

Oh, yeah, she said:

"Don't worry about how much you eat. Just enjoy it.... This is the time. Have pie."

This is the time. Our time to turn the page on the abstemious diets of the past. Our time to bring new energy and new appetite to the piled-high platters we face. Our time to offer a new direction for the food we love. The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. We face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of our own limitations. But we also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide pie for the sick and pie to the jobless; this was the moment when the tightening of the belts began to slow and our gluttony began to increase; this was the moment when we ended our self-denial and secured our yummies and restored our image as the chubbiest humans on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great dinner so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.  Thank you, God. And God bless the United States of America.

"It's kind of like a turkey version of 'Dancing With the Stars,' except the stakes for the contestants was much higher."

"Only one pair would survive and win the big prize: life."

Obama turkey pardoning joke with a hint of cultural relevancy and a possibly accidental implication of ill will toward Bristol Palin. Hey. Wait a minute. That reminds me...



Memories!

"When October came, I thought, gee, you know, what's going to happen at Thanksgiving?"

"So I just thought, well, there must be some other people that are in the same boat. Why should they have that rotten feeling? Why should they be stuck home alone?"

What do you do when you see Thanksgiving looming ahead and no one has included you in their plans?

We're giving thanks for everything.

And much love to all the Althouse blog readers, from Althouse + Meade.

A Thanksgiving reflection.

At the Count-Your-Blessings Restaurant...

... it's almost Thanksgiving.

Spatchcock.

Something to do to a turkey. Warning: There's a graphic picture at the link.

ADDED: Screw the turkey.

"Homemade desserts that don’t have a crust that needs to be fussed over but still hue to the flavors of Thanksgiving."

The flavors? What about the colors?

(NYT front page teaser.)

Do people become famous because their heads are large, or does celebrity actually cause the head to enlarge?

Over in last night's "American Idol" thread, Trooper York wrote:

The girl that sang "At Last" has an extremely big head. Which is very good since most popular actors have heads out of proportion to their bodies.

This reminds me of something that I read a while back in Tina Brown's excellent book "The Diana Chronicles":

What struck me at lunch was how much celebrity itself had transformed Diana's appearance. I have come to think that being looked at obsessively by people you don't know actually changes the way your face and body are assembled — not just in the obvious ways of enhanced fashion sense or tricks of charm and self-possession, but in the illusion of size. The heads of world-class celebrities literally seem to enlarge. Hillary Clinton's, for instance, has grown enormously since she was the mere wife of the governor of Arkansas. It nods when she talks to you like a balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The years of limelight so inflated the circumference of Jackie O's cranium, it seemed her real face must be concealed by an oversized Halloween mask. If you looked into her eyes, you could see her in there somewhere, screaming.