thanksgiving chez Alice

ah, thanksgiving. that time of year when Families come together, and sometimes significant others too, and then perhaps the poor unsuspecting significant other is exposed to a higher concentration of Family then perhaps anyone who isn't Family should ever be forced to see.

high doses of concentrated Alice Family* are particularly alarming. for example, we don't just have a thanksgiving turkey in the Alice Household. we have a thanksgiving Heritage Turkey. see, back in the day, turkeys weren't 70% breast and all white meat, oh no, they actually resembled.. well, wild turkeys, i guess. so some folks have back-bred the common turkey to actually look (and taste) like what the original turkeys looked like, back in the pilgrim days or something. not really positive on all this. all i know is that my mom made a heritage turkey, which was darn tasty, and this results in a lot of weird looks from other people.

*we'll be calling it the "alice family" for two reasons. 1) the world revolves around me, remember? and 2) there might actually be one or two of you who didn't get the automated out-of-office reply back when you commented on my blog while i was in paris, thereby outing my full name and place of employment to the perhaps 5 people who didn't know it already. uh.. oops.

we also spend the entire thanksgiving meal retelling all our favorite Alice Family jokes and stories, and laughing hysterically at ourselves, despite these being the same Alice Family stories we tell every year, while non-family members probably sit around stabbing themselves in the eye wishing they could find some stupid white meat on these freakish heritage turkeys, and isn't thanksgiving supposed to have candied yams? NOT IN THE ALICE FAMILY, SORRY! we have a set thanksgiving menu that we do not allow my mother to alter by even one ingredient (well, aside from the "turkey" ingredient, which we allowed her to switch to a heritage turkey. mmm. heritage turkeys. know what's really ironic? this whole heritage turkey movement is to "save" heritage turkeys, and we proudly do our part by EATING ONE).

but what may have TRULY been a shining example of why non-Alice-Family-members should never be allowed into the house when all four of us are home together was what transpired saturday night, my and my sister's final night home. after heritage turkey leftovers, we somehow ended up at the piano, where the Disney's A Little Mermaid song book was pulled out, and i accompanied the dramatic warblings of my dear sister while she sang / mimed / danced / acted some of the better selections from the movie for the enjoyment of my father and any neighbors who might have been too close to our house, while my mother tried in vain to ignore us by going to bed. poor matt was there, and actually tried to capture some of this for posterity on his camera's video feature, but you really can't make anything out. which is a shame, because my sister's professional ballet background was thrown completely out the window, and she instead was channeling some sort of charlie chaplin / celine dion love child while trying to read the lyrics over my shoulder and over-emote simultaneously. i'm telling you, you haven't heard the little mermaid until you've heard "kiss de girl" in a fake operatic soprano with exaggerated arm movements. it was beautiful. i wish you were all there.

in the meantime, i still haven't done anything worthwhile with my paris photos, so here is a short series i have titled "truth in advertising," or "apparently all french smokers have a death wish, holy cripes." these are all pictures of actual packs of cigarettes that matt bought, along with my rough translations:


"quitting smoking reduces the risk of deadly cardiac and lung diseases."


"smoking causes aging of the skin."


"smoking creates a strong addiction, don't start." i find the simplicity of this command charming


"smoking can kill your spermies and reduce fertility." right on the box! it says sperm! heehee!!


"SMOKING KILLS." by far the best. so direct, so concise. fabulous :-)