gobble gobble November 22, 2006 9:56 AM   Subscribe

What gives with all these turkey-related posts? Reminds me of elephant day...
posted by Mister_A to MetaFilter-Related at 9:56 AM (48 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

American Thanksgiving.
posted by tkolar at 10:02 AM on November 22, 2006


The Americans are having some kind of shopping holiday.
posted by Mitheral at 10:02 AM on November 22, 2006 [3 favorites]


Somebody do a trail of tears/American Indian genocide post please. Or at least a post on Puritan religious thought, spiders in a flame, the Halfway Covenant, Calvinism, Predestination & Weber on the Protestant work ethic. Or The Puritan Way of Deatha short but excellent book. Or the roots of Abolitionism in Puritan perfectionism, and Stanley Elkins. But no more fucking Turkeys, please.
posted by orthogonality at 10:04 AM on November 22, 2006


*waves protest sign* TURKEY HATER!!!!
posted by wheelieman at 10:06 AM on November 22, 2006


It helps if you think of turkey as a code word for penis.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 10:07 AM on November 22, 2006


This is the time of year when American's get together to discuss pilgrims and manifest destiny and comparitive religion, against a backdrop of (American) football and short-term retail discounts.
posted by cortex at 10:10 AM on November 22, 2006


and misapply apostrophes
posted by cortex at 10:11 AM on November 22, 2006 [1 favorite]


AND ANYWAY, LIKE, WHO CARES
posted by cortex at 10:11 AM on November 22, 2006


Fuck you and your apostrophe's!
posted by eyeballkid at 10:22 AM on November 22, 2006


Sorry. I meant "you're," obviously.
posted by eyeballkid at 10:22 AM on November 22, 2006


A 3 year old recently taught me this:

With a ....
Gobble, gobble, gobble,
And a....
Wobble, wobble, wobble,
The turkey spreads his feathers on thanksgiving day.

When he....
Hears the farmer comin'
The turkey, he goes runnin'
He says you will not catch me on thanksgiving day.


(Additional verses and hand motions sold seperately)
posted by R. Mutt at 10:32 AM on November 22, 2006


I loved elephant day.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:35 AM on November 22, 2006


R Mutt: I always like this one (sung to the tune of The Muffin Man)

Gobble gobble gobble, fat turkeys are we.
Gobble gobble gobble, fat turkeys are we.
We're not here for living,
We're herre for Thanksgiving.
Gobble gobble gobble, fat turkeys are we.


Now imagine a room full of kindergardeners singing that happilly and the parents standing around in semi shock.
posted by aspo at 10:38 AM on November 22, 2006 [1 favorite]


Happy Turkey Day! Youtube link

I was actually looking for the clip of Tuesday Addams' Thanksgiving Day Massacre speech, but came up with nothing...
posted by Chrischris at 10:40 AM on November 22, 2006


Wednesday Addams, not Tuesday (D'oh!)
posted by Chrischris at 10:43 AM on November 22, 2006


From Wikipedia:
Asexual reproduction
Turkeys are notable for their ability, rare amongst higher species, to reproduce asexually. In the absence of a male, female Turkeys are known to produce fertile eggs. The individual produced is often sickly, and nearly always male. This behaviour can interfere with the incubation of eggs in Turkey farming[1].
posted by boo_radley at 10:43 AM on November 22, 2006


Chrischris, perhaps you'll have better luck searching for Wednesday Adams.
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:45 AM on November 22, 2006


(Oops)
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:45 AM on November 22, 2006


Yay! It's almost vacation time! Yaaaay!!
posted by thirteenkiller at 10:50 AM on November 22, 2006


Actually, you're both wrong. Thanksgiving falls on a Thursday this year.
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 10:50 AM on November 22, 2006


MetaFilter: often sickly, and nearly always male.
posted by languagehat at 10:51 AM on November 22, 2006 [11 favorites]


Turkeys are notable for their ability, rare amongst higher species, to reproduce asexually. In the absence of a male, female Turkeys are known to produce fertile eggs. The individual produced is often sickly, and nearly always male.

Jesus wept.
posted by felix betachat at 10:52 AM on November 22, 2006 [1 favorite]


Too close to the bone languagehat.
posted by R. Mutt at 10:53 AM on November 22, 2006


You know what I love about languagehat? Everything.
posted by shmegegge at 11:00 AM on November 22, 2006


Won't someone think of the goslings?

They're called poults. Unless we've changed the subject to geese.
posted by ottereroticist at 11:23 AM on November 22, 2006


MetaFilter: often sickly, and nearly always male.

That is teh besto !
posted by Mister_A at 11:44 AM on November 22, 2006


Fuck you and the poults you rode in on. If calling them "luxury turkettes" was good enough for Our Lord, it's good enough for me.

"Poults" is some sort of Godless metric name, isn't it, Frenchie?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:09 PM on November 22, 2006 [2 favorites]


This post is too US-centric.
posted by greycap at 12:37 PM on November 22, 2006


Turkey's can reproduce asexually, can they? That wikipedia link is wrong, right? I'm not that big of a sucker.
posted by arcticwoman at 12:50 PM on November 22, 2006


arcticwoman: there's a big honking cite at the bottom for an OSU article about "avian parthenogenesis".
Thank you, Shriekback, for ensuring I'd always be able to spell "parthenogenesis" without thinking about it.
posted by boo_radley at 1:00 PM on November 22, 2006


Not only turkeys, humans too. I know a married guy who swears he hasn't touched his wife in MONTHS, and she is pregnant!
posted by R. Mutt at 1:03 PM on November 22, 2006


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posted by Rhomboid at 1:04 PM on November 22, 2006


Wow, way to blow my mind dudes.

"Turkeys can't..." by the way. I'm not a total moron, evidence to the contrary.
posted by arcticwoman at 1:08 PM on November 22, 2006


I thought parthenogentic offspring were female (twin of the mother)?

Where does the boy-chromosome come from?
posted by ottereroticist at 2:05 PM on November 22, 2006


This post is too US-centric.

The Turks might disagree.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:35 PM on November 22, 2006


I loved elephant day.

Me too, but it's impossible to fit all the leftovers in the fridge and you can only eat so many elephant sandwiches.

MetaFilter: often sickly, and nearly always male.

Bwahahaha
posted by EndsOfInvention at 2:40 PM on November 22, 2006


And elephants don't go well with cranberries.
posted by wendell at 3:42 PM on November 22, 2006


"Poults" is some sort of Godless metric name, isn't it, Frenchie?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:09 PM PST on November 22


This will have me laughing helplessly every time I think of it for the rest of the day.
posted by diddlegnome at 3:51 PM on November 22, 2006


The individual produced is often sickly

As God is my witness, I thought turkeys were spry.
posted by eriko at 5:28 PM on November 22, 2006




run, turkey, run!

(damn, i miss the img tag)
posted by pyramid termite at 6:06 PM on November 22, 2006


I thought parthenogentic offspring were female (twin of the mother)?

Where does the boy-chromosome come from?
posted by ottereroticist


Honeybee drones are born from unfertilized eggs and are all male. I don't get all the logistics but they only have half the original number of chromosomes. Meiosis and all that.

I've founded a new holiday celebrated by the eating of often sickly, and nearly always male MetaFlesh. Happy Snarksgiving!
posted by bobobox at 6:55 PM on November 22, 2006


I celebrate by giving yuppies pox infested scented candles in gentrified downtown.
posted by evil holiday magic at 8:42 PM on November 22, 2006


Snarksgiving seconded!! Henceforth indeed on 3rd Hump Day of November!!!

Let us now hunt this year's nobly-feathered snarkey, for next Snarksgiving we shall have one pre-fattened! Indeed!
posted by and hosted from Uranus at 8:46 PM on November 22, 2006


You may scoff at Wikipedia, but Cecil says it's true, too.

Also, this (some sort of Ohio State/4-H thing...I guess they know from farming) explains the males only thing:
[S]ome 8% of the embryos (200) hatched in the final year of selection, all were males. [...] In birds females are the heterogametic sex (ZW) and males are the homogametic sex (ZZ), this is the opposite of mammals. WW parthenotes would not develop as this condition is not viable.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:22 PM on November 22, 2006


What shall be our cranberry sauce while dining on the gloriously plumed pre-fattened snarkey? Canned gelatinous hubris? With strawman stuffing? Oh, please! I love to gobble the gobble gobble google.
posted by bobobox at 11:14 PM on November 22, 2006


boo_radley writes "Turkeys are notable for their ability, rare amongst higher species, to reproduce asexually."

I wonder how hard it was for the author of that section to keep it from being deleted. It just sounds so much like something from Look Around You.
posted by concrete at 1:05 AM on November 23, 2006


American Thanksgiving is a two-day secular festival when people in business locations outside of the US are thankful for all the canceled teleconferences with Americans they would otherwise have been scheduled to endure that Thursday and Friday. The images of grotesquely overstuffed flightless birds with the dangling neck skin and gaudy plumage are just... reminders.

Mmm. This crankberry sauce is snarkalicious.
posted by pracowity at 1:35 AM on November 23, 2006


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