Thanksgiving blessing #1

Thank you, O Lord, for the food we are about to eat. For thy roasted birdie, thy yams and mincemeat.

Thank you for thy prodigious mountains of mashed potatoes, slathered with thick brown scoops from thy decorative gravy boat, next to steaming piles of green-bean casserole and stuffing.

O yes, the stuffing ... Lord, please bless the dried cubes of bread and zesty seasonings which we have crammed into the gullet of Your divine creation, the turkey, after reverently yanking out his giblets.

And thank you for keeping us safe from harm when the knives and forks start flying and we dig into that can of cranberry sauce, sitting up in the cupboard since the Reagan era, that tangy, cylinder of jiggly crimson goo emblazoned with the words "best if served by Dec. 92."

We pray unto thee, O Lord, that we may not suffer severe gastrointestinal discomfort after we shovel the bounty of thy heaping plates into our unworthy pieholes.

And forgive Uncle John, Benevolent Father, for not finishing his fifth helping of turkey and dumping it in the trash, while skinny orphans in third-world countries rub their bloated tummies and cry, wondering why they have no oven-browned Pillsbury Pop-n-Fresh rolls.

Thank you, O Lord, for thy fermented grape. You know, the wine, which Thou hast provided to make us feel tingly or perhaps to knock us on our butts if we imbibe to freely.

And thank you, Heavenly Father, for the football we are about to receive ... on your wondrous invention, the TV. Please bless Bill Parcels so his Cowboys may pummel the Bears and bring gridiron glory unto Thee. (A Chicago fumble in the 4th quarter could help, O Lord.)

We ask that You grant us safe holiday travel, O Divine Traffic Controller, protect us from road rage and from that idiot babbling into a cellphone and swerving into our lane as his unruly brats scream "Are we there yet?"

We beg you, Dear Lord, to keep one omniscient eye on our president as he does his best not to accidentally touch off World War III or some fiery nuke-u-lar armegeddon.

And please accept our humble thanks, Supreme Creator, for endowing our turkey with tryptophan so we may drift off in peaceful slumber, blissfully safe for a while from unpleasant intrusions by terrorists and the Patriot Act.

Blessed are You, Divine Father and Heavenly Pal , for filling our grateful hearts with hope and our rumbling stomachs with pumpkin pie.

Amen.

Thanksgiving blessing #2

Dear Lord --

Thank you for the food we are about to eat. And thank you for giving us a stomach, esophagus and intestines to digest and draw life-sustaining nourishment from your heaping bounty.

And thank you, O invisible man in the sky, for giving us a brain so that we may try to make sense of this crazy world of yours ... so that, together, we may find a way to replace hatred and war with love and peace.

And thank you for giving us a heart, your wise compassionate heart, to keep the beat as we sing a song of love for friends, family and all humanity.

Thank you for these and so many other wonderful and beautiful things. You are indeed the man (unless you are a woman or an androgynous gender-neutral deity). Anyway, thank you for creating us. We owe you one and will do our best to care for your world and all its creatures.

Amen.

By John Breneman

If you're scrapping around for something to be thankful for this Thursday, count your blessings that you'll never have to spend Thanksgiving at Uncle Ma and Aunt Pa's house down off'm Greenleaf Parsons Road in York, Maine.

There's a lot of yelling, a little scuffling and some right poor manners. But at least ain't nobody lost a finger since '82 -- knock wood -- when we had to shut off Uncle Ma from carving the turkey for good.

Last year things started to get out of hand early when an argument flared up between Aunt Pa (short for Pauline) and Grandma Weezie over where the Pilgrims had the first Thanksgiving dinner back in 1621.

Pa insisted that the feast took place at the Plymouth Colony down in Massachusetts. But Weezie, who still has most of her wits about her at 110, swore that the Mayflower gang drove a bunch of wagons to the top of Mount Agamenticus for a meal consisting primarily of lobster and sauteed kelp.

"Don't get my dandruff up," yelled Weezie, as Baby Cyrus spewed niblets onto his Speed Racer bib. "It's well-known that Miles Standish used to haul his traps out of York Harbor from a skiff named the Mayflower Marie. Hmmph, Massachusetts indeed."

"Yeah, whatever," said Pa, who went back to shellacking her 53-pound turkey with a pungent concoction of parsnip brandy and pumpkin-flavored cough syrup that she borrowed from the neighbor lady.

But it was too late. Weezie was on a tear. "Don't you be bad-mouthing them Pilgrims, especially that one that wrote the Decoration of Indy-Pendants. They's heroes. Heroes! Ain't that right, Mr. Bojingly?"

Now, Mr. Bojingly didn't answer right off, mostly because he was a chimp and didn't speak English too well. Uncle Ma (short for Maurice) had gotten him for Weezie to help out with chores around her shack. Mr. Bojingly instead just flicked a dollop of corn-pone batter at Aunt Pa.

Weezie went on to say she'd seen a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade where Regis Philbin and a bunch of shameless fake Pilgrims were gyrating to the beat of "Who Let the Dogs Out?" under the shadow of a 90-foot-tall "Hillary for President" balloon.

Fortunately it was almost time to eat. Spread out on the table before us was a cornucopia of traditional family favorites, some of them you may recall from the writeup I done a couple years ago around this time.

Oh, there was Kung Pow chipmunk and scallion Jello. Spam pot pie and Weezie's five-alarm fruit salad. Baked stuffed chinchilla and a new recipe that Aunt Pa called "bowl weevil surprise."

"I hope everybody's hungry," said Pa, as she opened the stove and began to pull out the bird.
Ma's two pit bulls, Patches and Carnivorous Rex, edged closer to the oven as Pa struggled with the majestic 53-pound specimen. Just then the turkey crashed to the floor and the dogs attacked, devouring the helpless bird like a pair of mad, furry piranhas.

When the snarling canines finally finished their job, a horrified silence fell over the kitchen. Then Carnivorous Rex burped up the wishbone. Fortunately Pa just reached further back in the oven and pulled out another turkey, slightly bigger than the first.

"I always like to cook a backup bird," explained Pa. "You never know when them pit bulls is gonna act up."

When we took our places around the table, the usual dispute erupted over whether to simply thank the Good Lord for the bounty before us or, as Weezie suggested, to pray for an end to the hostilities in South Berwick and a speedy recovery for Idiot Third Cousin Twice Removed Jimmy, who was suffering from a neurological disorder that Weezie called "polio of the mind."

Jimmy just grinned and started jabbering. But Weezie cut him off before he could advance his repugnant theories about the superiority of white meat over dark.

Auntie Tums wanted to petition the Lord for U.S. sanctions against North Korea and a benevolent, omniscient solution to the troubles facing Social Security and Medicare.

Ma proposed an amendment under which we would box up our leftovers and mail them to the starving people of the Sudan. But Pa countered that a taste of his special 43-bean salad might make a real difference to the folks in East Timor.

Amen.

The next 45 minutes were a surreal, audiovisual blur of knives and forks gnashing, glasses clinking, tangled arms and murmurs of "Please pass the ferret."

We were all pretty stuffed and exhausted when it came time for dessert. But that didn't stop any of us from gorging ourselves on Auntie Tums' Deep-Dish Mincemeat Meringue Pie, winner of a brown ribbon at the Cape Neddick Fair. Or from laughing like hyenas when Mr. Bojingly spilled some banana souffle on his crisp white Armani shirt.

Y'all are welcome to come by on Thursday. But if you do, make sure to tell Aunt Pa that hers is the best dang roasted salamander gizzard you've ever tasted.

Humor Gazette editor John Breneman swears that any resemblance to actual Breneman family members in the above story is purely coincidental.

Four American presidents join forces in Arkansas to fight for truth, justice and the American way.

By John Breneman

It was raining presidents at the president-filled grand opening of a library honoring the reign of President William Jefferson Clinton.

The star-studded stage outside the glistening William J. Clinton Presidential Center was flooded with presidential testosterone as the War President, the Wimp President and the Peanut President all paid tribute to the Penis President.

Hoping to project unity to the divided and hopelessly confused nation, the two Democratic and two Republican presidents were all hugs and kisses for the cameras, except when President Bush Sr. said how much he "hated" Clinton for beating his ass in a debate and for being 10 times more charismatic and visionary.

The current President Bush had kind words for Clinton, saying that in the soft focus of history he is "not such a scumbag after all."

Red and blue TV viewers in now-quiet battleground states sat on the edge of their seats as media pundits gushed about Clinton the "rock star" and how his legacy will be forever semen-stained by sex with a groupie.

Two of Clinton's rock star buddies, Bono and the Edge of U2, were the headline performers for a crowd that included noted standup comics Robin Williams and Karl Rove. Noted non-president John Kerry was also on hand, sporting a $27,000 L.L. Bean Rain-Buster kevlar umbrella.

The $165 million glass-and-steel Clinton center is the most expensive library ever erected, partly because extra square footage was needed to house the former president's expansive collection of pornography and sex scandal member-abilia.

The structure features a dimly lit "porn alcove" with rare XXX titles like "Midnight Filibuster" and "Hillary Does Congress," and an interactive exhibit where visitors can experience the heady sensation of taking a puff of marijuana without actually inhaling.

Related story:
Clinton memoir penned with company ink

Armchair pundits offer electric chair analysis

Speculation now shifts to whether the heartless, Viagra-popping Peterson's complete lack of a human soul will hurt him during death penalty deliberations.

By John Breneman

Now that a jury has found California psycho Scott Peterson guilty of killing his wife and unborn son, the sensational round-the-clock media coverage shifts to whether Peterson will get the death penalty.

Public opinion is divided on whether Peterson should live or die, but polls show there is near universal agreement on one thing - the Scott Peterson "story" must be put to death as soon as possible.

"Death penalty, life in prison ... doesn't matter to me. That murdering scum deserves whatever they give him," said a man on the street. "But I'll tell you, I'm sick of how the media has been beating this case to death. I swear if they don't let up I may go on a spree myself."

Though several legal analysts pointed out they had predicted a verdict might be reached on Friday, none had a clue how inane their commentary sounded when woven together with other similarly obvious and repetitive soundbites.

When word came late Friday that the verdict was first-degree murder, the same legal analysts were reintroduced as armchair electric chair experts to speculate about whether the clone-faced Peterson will live or die ... or use the appeals court process to haunt us eternally from some media overkill netherworld.

A tip of the hat to Arafat

By John Breneman

Yasser Arafat is dead, but his legacy as a world leader in stylish headgear lives on.

As his followers mourn by firing bullets into the air and hoping they don't pierce too many skulls on the way down, geopolitical haberdashery analysts agree that Arafat's monumental contributions to hatwear will be remembered long after the pesky Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.

"Not since Abe Lincoln and his legendary stovepipe tophat has one man had such a profound impact on the history of headgear," said Richard "Cappy" Stetson, chairman of the prestigious Fedora Institute. "Castro, Bush, Hamid Karzai over in Afghanistan... These guys all wear hats from time to time, but nobody can touch Arafat. I once saw him craft an exquisite, Allah-approved turban out of a discarded Wal-Mart bag."

Now that Arafat, a 12-time winner of the United Nations' coveted "Best Hat" award, no longer sports a living head on which to display his famous checkered tablecloth, it is believed that other world leaders are eager to fill the void.

A spokesman for Pope John Paul said the pontiff has privately admitted he would love to cap his distinguished career with the U.N. hat prize but understands the competition is intense, with Fidel Castro reportedly working on a drab olive green number that his valet says "combines the flair of the Blues Brothers with the timeless barbarism of Idi Amin."

Chinese President Jiang Zemin has been spotted in a tri-cornered Colonial-era number that is said to be black with gold trim. he C.I.A. has picked up some "chatter" indicating that Osama bin Laden has been experimenting with a jaunty straw hat. And the Iranians are said to be developing a baseball cap composed entirely of enriched uranium.

President Bush, meanwhile, has publicly downplayed the post-Arafat hat scenario. Aides say they are urging Bush to stick with cowboy hats and fighter pilot helmets, but Bush is said to prefer a red, white and blue dunce cap with a nifty propeller on top.

A word from your president

"My fellow Americans..."

By Chris Elliott

President Bush 'out,' media 'in' as
biggest thing to complain about in '05

By John Breneman

Following through on his pledge to heal the bitterly divided nation, President Bush joined Sen. John Kerry today to introduce a bipartisan national dialogue about the sorry state of "the Media."

Republicans hold contempt for the elite liberal media as exemplified by the New York Times, while Democrats blast organizations like Fox News for brainwashing gullible viewers with right-wing propaganda.

And polls show growing disgust over the Media's failure to provide the citizenry with the complete, unbiased information it needs to make decisions vital to our democracy.

In fact, many are now blaming the Media for failing to prevent the war in Iraq by more vigorously questioning the president and his men about the phony weapons of mass destruction and the dishonest effort to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

The Media could not be reached for comment, but an anonymous source close to the media said Howard Fineman will be covering the story in this week's Newsweek, then pontificating about it on Crossfire, Hardball, The O'Reilly Factor and Imus in the Morning.

A recent Humor Gazette tracking poll reveals that 83% of all GOP voters say they support President George W. Bush's strong leadership in waging the war on truth.

Poll reveals Bush favored by
mushroom cloud enthusiasts

Below are the results of the latest Humor Gazette tracking poll:

52% of registered voters say they feel safer despite living in a "battleground state."

42% of Republican voters say they believe Arnold Schwarzenegger will help President Bush defeat the "terrorist girly men."

84% of feel safer under Bush because he was so effective in preventing the 9/11 attacks and capturing Osama bin Laden.

70% of brainwashed Republicans believe President Bush's campaign pledge that John Kerry will take all their money and let terrorists kill them.

92% of oil industry executives say they feel safer under President Bush because he is not afraid to wage war on the environment.

21% of conservative doomsday enthusiasts say they support Bush because they are curious to see what a mushroom cloud looks like.

86% of FOX News viewers say Kerry is unfit for command because ... "flip-flop," "global test," and "gay daughter."

79% of FOX News viewers believe the president is a stronger military leader than the war hero Kerry, even though Bush ducked Vietnam then went AWOL from the cushy National Guard post his daddy got him.

61% of all Worldwide Wrestling Federation fans believe Teresa Heinz Kerry would shred Laura Bush if a steel-cage First Lady catfight death-match were held today.

74% of conservative pundits believe Bush grimaced Kerry into submission in the first debate.

54% of Republicans support Bush because they believe he is pro-Christ.

49% of Democrats oppose Bush because they believe he is the anti-Christ.

81% of all southern Republicans believe the words "Massachusetts liberal" mean "flip-flopping baby-killer."

73% of young Republicans say Bush has the edge due to his experience as a fraternity president at the electoral college.

92% of all Americans believed Bush when he promised to capture bin Laden "dead or alive."

62% believed Bush when he said bin Laden's best friend Saddam Hussein definitely had weapons of mass destruction.

41% of GOP propaganda enthusiasts believed President Bush when he dressed up in a military flightsuit and said "Mission Accomplished."

63% of Democrats think stem-cell research offers hope for a cure to President Bush's rare form of cerebral dysfunction.

87% of registered voters aren't sure if they live in a red state or a blue state.

Finally, approximately 50 percent of all voters appear to have been hoodwinked by the most dangerous American president of all time.