My giblets are on a slow simmer, my oysters have been shucked, and my breadcrumbs – as well as my dinner guests – are thoroughly toasted.
I can’t believe it’s happening again already, but here we are with a kitchen full of turkeys to roast before everybody passes out from the side effects of our two favorite legal holiday sedatives: tryptophan and football.
So get your hands off that sweet potato, and let’s get to work.
Our first gaggle-brained gobbler is a doozie, Loveland City Councilman Steve Dozier, who might as well be a pigeon for how he’s dumped on Kirsten Kokkin’s “Triangle” sculpture.
The bronze figure depicts a man and a woman holding another woman over their heads to symbolize our collective reliance on one another.
The problem is that the human figures are naked, and Dozier is such a dirty bird, every time he sees the sculpture, it gets him all atwitter. Breasts, thighs, legs – good gravy, what’s next on his forbidden list? Chestnuts roasting on an open fire?
We’ll stuff this too-titillated tom with plain white bread – no spice, no seasoning – and roast him till he’s dried up and shriveled. It really shouldn’t take long.
Next on the butcher block is that hen with only one wing – on the right – Secretary of State Gigi Dennis.
Plucked by the governor in August 2005 to supervise what was supposed to be an unflappable election process, Dennis instead let fairness take flight. This nattering nuthatch tried to feather her nest by imposing restrictions on using union dues for political activities.
She was hoping to clip the wings of Democrats but got caught in the net of the Colorado Court of Appeals instead.
I’ve got just the stuffing for her: lame-duck meat. And let’s let this one stew in her own juice. Then we’ll serve her with a nice side dish of post-election Republican humble pie.
Now get the racks ready and sharpen the skewers. We’ve got two heartless buzzards here that need to be declawed, trussed up tight and dunked in the brine till they squawk.
The Salazar turkeys, Sen. Ken and Rep. John, are a couple of fickle fowl from the same flock. They need a good tenderizing before they’re ready for company after both voted for President Bush’s torture bill.
Stuff them with their own broken legs, photograph them wearing nothing but parsley and turn up the heat extra high.
Then use whatever force is necessary to remind them if Congress doesn’t have the courage to fight fascism at home, our gooses are all cooked.
Speaking of yellow-bellied sapsuckers, Lance Cpl. Lance Hering is on the menu this year, even though he flew the coop in August.
Hering is the brazen booby who the cops say enlisted a friend to fake his disappearance in Eldorado Canyon State Park while he migrated across the border to escape another tour of duty in Iraq.
Dozens of searchers worked frantically for days trying to rescue him only to learn they’d risked their lives for a hoax.
There will be no stuffing for him, even if he does poke his beak back across the border before dinner. Too much time, energy and attention already has been wasted on him.
Next, let’s turn up the stereo and sing along as we preheat the ovens and fire up the fryers out back.
We’ve got one hell of a job ahead dealing with all the turkeys from the Bennett School District this year.
This is the gaggle of goofy goose- steppers who went birdspit over music teacher Tresa Waggoner’s lesson on the opera “Faust.”
The video depicted a devil, since selling a soul to one is the whole point of the opera, and the bird-brained board members went batty.
Waggoner was all but tarred and feathered before her contract was kaput, and she was set free.
Stuff these dodos with filet of sole and plenty of habanero peppers. Roast them and then fry them for what seems like an eternity.
It’s time they felt the heat.
Now butter your buns, baste your butterballs and relax until next year, when a whole new flock of turkeys will need stuffing.
I guarantee it.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
