Just where is this Turkey you claim is yummy?

Howdy from the Broken Spur Blog Dude Ranch, where the cattle are always easy-ropings.

Okay, I have no idea what that meant. I'm winging it today, bogged down by an accelerated work schedule and getting ready to fly to see my folks for Thanksgiving, a holiday millions of Americans celebrate by waiting in lines at airports to get on smelly, germ-ridden airplanes that are crammed to capacity. If you get an in-flight meal or an in-flight movie, they are both bad. One year, flying home from Chicago, we caught some suicide-inducting holiday film starring one of those precious kids from "Home Improvement." Another year, it was that positively satanic remake of Dr. Seuss's "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Dear Buddah, a beloved 20-minute bedtime story gets dragged out to two hours of a CGI Jim Carrey doing CGI mugging to a CGI crowd. And, why, oh why, did the Grinch need a back plot? He's the Grinch, he lives on a mountain, he hates the terminally cheery Whos (and rightly so), he has a dog. Nuff said.

Although the film (which you have to watch on flights; it's impossible to turn your head or read a book) did have one clever, almost throwaway, bit: The Grinch, in some extra-vile Grinchian mood, plots his day. One of the items on his list: Find cure for world hunger…tell no one.

Meanwhile, the passengers on international flights get movies like "The Insider" or "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." The best I could hope for is "Tomb Raider," but that's on the East-West flight and, alas, I'm on the West-East. So, Grinch me, baby, one more time.

Anyway, at work, I have four days to get five days of work done, and so far, I just might pull it off. I might have to work on the weekend, which sucks but it's a necessary evil.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to take a new approach to my writing, trying to stay away from being a lefty-left linkbot, automatically bashing Team Bush without any context or proper analysis. I'm trying to work on longer essays on a faster basis, but my work schedule is tripping me up, along with wanting to spend vital time with my lovely wife. I was going to write an essay about Eminem's newfound fame as an "actor," (read: he's just playing a sanitized version of himself) but I think the time for that has past. Timely is everything in the essay business, I suppose.

I probably won't be blogging a lot during the Thanksgiving Family Reunion Gauntlet. After all, I should be social. My folks are feeding me and wifey and giving us a place to sleep. However, I will have my journal with me (but oh, my kingdom for an iBook), so I will be writing things down.

Bipolar Action News

Because this is both terribly funny and depressing.

Item One: At least they didn't ask the American kids if they could find their own heads in their asses

WASHINGTON - Ask young people to pick out Iraq on a map of the Middle East, and only 13 percent can locate it — despite a barrage of headlines and broadcast reports about a possible war against President Saddam Hussein

Same goes for Israel or Iran, according to a National Geographic study that finds there has been little to no improvement in students' knowledge of geography since 1988.

The society survey released Wednesday found that only about one in seven of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, the prime age for military warriors, could find Iraq. The score was the same for Iran, an Iraqi neighbor.

Although the majority, 58 percent, of the young Americans surveyed knew that the Taliban and al-Qaida were based in Afghanistan, only 17 percent could find that country on a world map. A U.S.-led force attacked the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan in October 2001, and President Bush has said he is prepared to use force to rid Iraq of any chemical, nuclear or biological weapons programs.

Item Two: Which leads so smoothly into this...

GEORGE Bush's top security adviser last night admitted the US would attack Iraq even if UN inspectors fail to find weapons.

Dr Richard Perle stunned MPs by insisting a "clean bill of health" from UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix would not halt America's war machine.

Evidence from ONE witness on Saddam Hussein's weapons program will be enough to trigger a fresh military onslaught, he told an all- party meeting on global security.

Former defense minister and Labour backbencher Peter Kilfoyle said: "America is duping the world into believing it supports these inspections. President Bush intends to go to war even if inspectors find nothing.

"This make a mockery of the whole process and exposes America's real determination to bomb Iraq."

Item Three: Yeah, yeah. Victors. Spoils.

But even though we can have our homeland protected (along with Big Pharma companies, airport security firms and U.S. businesses that skip the country for tax reasons but are allowed to bid on security contracts) by a massive, bloated and confusing hydra of government agencies, we still are very vulnerable in one major way.