Thousands Gather For Stuffing Of Giant Rockefeller Center Turkey

November 18, 2008 | Issue 44•47

Once again this year, dozens of happy children slipped and skidded across the ceremonial turkey fat on the ice rink.

NEW YORK—In what has become a Thanksgiving tradition, more than 10,000 locals and tourists alike braved the cold Monday to watch the annual stuffing of the Rockefeller Center Turkey.

The nationally televised event, which has rung in the holiday season for nearly 80 years, began at 5 p.m., when workers propped open the skin flaps of the 55-foot-tall bird, and pushed an 11-ton mixture of bread crumbs, onions, and other fixings into its massive trunk.

"This year's stuffing is shaping up to be the best one yet," said Mayor Mike Bloomberg, addressing the crowd from a podium next to the giant avian carcass. "Look at that beautiful glistening turkey!"

AUSTIN, TX—A new piece of legislation proposed yesterday on the floor of the Texas Legislature would require that all whiskey bottles be tossed overhead and shot clean out of the air the moment they are emptied.

"Every Texan is responsible for disposing of his or her whiskey bottles in the proper fashion," Plano lawmaker Mitch Travelstead said. "By law, this means no longer stopping to wipe your lips with your shirt sleeve, or howling like some rabid dog at that big yellow moon. It's time we got serious." While the new law will likely be strictly enforced, legislators maintained that those without access to firearms could also dispose of their whiskey bottles by having their children toss them off the back of a speeding pickup truck, or by depositing them into the nearest recycling bin.

ZIRAKPUR, INDIA—Abhinav Bindra, the gold medal winner of the 10-meter air rifle event at the Beijing Olympics, revealed Wednesday that he supplements his income by providing his marksmanship services to firing squads. "It's certainly not as challenging as Olympic-level shooting, but the money is good, you get to travel, and the hours are great," said Bindra, who received $5,000 from the Indian government last Thursday for executing a Pakistani man found guilty of smuggling drugs. "I'm grateful that I can earn a little extra money doing something I love. I just wish it was a little more steady.... If I could get five or six executions a month, I'd feel more at ease." Bindra said he relies heavily on the Internet to find freelance execution gigs from Saudi Arabia to Texas and recently used Craigslist to apply with a firing squad in Colombia that is hiring people to gun down cowards.

LANGLEY, VA—In an alarming report released Monday by the Central Intelligence Agency, Syria may be harboring upwards of 15 million known Arabs within its borders.

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Suspected Arabs move freely through a Damascus marketplace.

"Reliable intelligence collected by our agency indicates that Syria has conspired to lend physical and economic support to a massive number of people belonging to this group," CIA director George J. Tenet said. "The shocking truth is, there are nearly as many Arabs in Syria as there are people in New York and Los Angeles combined. In fact, Syrians openly refer to their nation as the Syrian Arab Republic, despite knowing full well America's opinion on these matters."

Explaining the CIA's methods of gathering data on the rogue ethnicity's presence in Syria, Tenet said it relied on a combination of satellite imagery, computer-system infiltration, reports from Syrian covert operatives, intercepted radio and television transmissions, and The World Almanac And Book Of Facts 2003.