November 28, 2005

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 :-)

16 comments:

  1. So what is the set Thanksgiving menu?
    Ya know, I'm beginning to think you're a real life Sydney Bristow. It would explain a lot of things. Why you; live in washington, speak different languages, do a lot of travelling, and know the airport call signs in the US (the real reason). I bet that trip to Paris with Matthew was really for you to drop some information to that waiter in the restaurant, but I bet some other spies were watching you waiting for the drop, so you "accidentally" spilled your boyfriends wine glass while dropping the microfishe so the waiter could innocently sweep it up along with the broken glass. I just hope your spying for the US and not the French.

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  2. Wow. That does sound eerily familiar. What with the dancing and the warbling and the video taping of said dancing and warbling. And the lack of candied yams. The sweet potato casserole was way better than any old candied yams.

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  3. when I got your auto reply, I thought to myself, "uhhhh, I bet that wasn't on the plan..." hahahah..

    glad you survived thanksgiving!

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  4. It sounds like a fun-filled and eventful Thanksgiving at the Alice Family household. ;-) Cool pics, by the way. And the messages...very direct as they should be. hehe

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  5. Ok, so in Quebec/Canada we have all those messages on our cigarette packs too, except ours are accompanied by graphic pictures, like of blackened lungs and dead fetuses and decayed teeth. So all my French friends are grossed out by them. I mean, they're supposed to be grossed out, of course. That's the point. But do your cigarettes in the US really have nothing at all on them? I mean, no pictures, no warning whatsoever?

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  6. Ooh, I found a link to some of those pictures. It's actually on the Canadian Government's website. I like the one with the curved cigarette saying "Smoking causes impotence". Haha.

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  7. I would have been there, but the damn inconsiderate out of office reply didn't give your home address.

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  8. Sounds much better than being sick. Seriously. But I've said it before, had Lexie NOT been sick - we would've missed Miss Dog. And how sad would THAT have been??

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  9. If anything deserves to be hacked up, its the "little mermaid" stuff *L* our daughters drove us nuts playing it over and over and over...AAAARRRGGGHHHH

    All those nasty labels and Matt kept smoking? yeeooowww

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  10. Smoke gets in my eyes... I'm glad I quit smoking a long time ago! :)

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  11. Ahhh I like directness and honesty... they have the same notices on fags in England :) I don't know if people pay attention to them anymore but I know a few times while I was there and having one, I did think about what the label said.

    And I totally feel you on the family thing. Fortunately there is no boyfriend to torture and my brothers in law are used the the family by now. But I pity the next man I date when he has to deal with my family for the first time.

    Ouch lol

    -N

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  12. I loved the sperm one!!! That was funny!

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  13. And what is this Thansgiving menu that cannot be altered?

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