From the desk of Daniel P. Finney, hot seat editor, 24th Street bureau, Des Moines, Iowa.
ITEM FIRST: Today is Thanksgiving, which is the American festival of its two most sacred traditions: gluttony and football.
ITEM TWO: Friday is Black Friday, which is the celebrates Americas’ other sacred tradition: spending money we don’t have on stuff we don’t need in the name of Jesus, who, as the Bible tells us, loved a good deal.
ITEM THREE: The ol’ Paragraph Stacker spent Thanksgiving morning watching Johnny Carson reruns on PlutoTV. The episode was from the early 1970s during the Energy Crisis. Carson mention gas prices were up to 62 cents. There’s nothing like an old TV show to remind that things can always get worse.
ITEM FOUR: Idea for new late night talk show: “Sitting At Home Waiting for Death.”
ITEM FIVE: COVID-19 is like we’re all living in a hospice — except without the morphine drip.
ITEM SIX: [Insert cliché, perfunctory list of people and things the typist is thankful for here.]
ITEM SEVEN: A turkey is the de facto mascot of Thanksgiving, which seems fine until you consider that it’s the only major holiday to have a mascot that gets eaten as a part of the celebration. That’s dark, America. Very dark.
ITEM EIGHT: BREAKING NEWS … sister station WKRP-AM in Cincinnati reports the Pinedale Shopping Mall has been “bombed with live turkeys.” We will update as more news becomes available.
ITEM NINE: Are you falling asleep during the football game because of the tryptophan in the turkey or because the football game is a turkey? The world may never know.
ITEM TEN: Folks, a lot of us will be traveling this season after enjoying a little or a lot of holiday cheer. So, please, PLEASE, be mindful of your blood-gravy levels.
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