This Turkey Won’t Fly

by MARCELLA CARBORUNDUREM-McVORTVORT,

Reality News Service Food and Drink Writer 　

It was a typical holiday dinner for Rochester Carioca and his family. Gramma complained that the twins, Philomena and Agamemnon, had stolen her dentures to replace a missing piece so that they could finish their game of Mousetrap. Rochester’s wife, Libretta, left the turkey in the oven long enough to force a redefinition – with highly negative connotations – of the term “crispy,” forcing him to buy a family-sized turducken at the last moment. Uncle Fester had to be bailed out of jail…again.

Yes, it was a typical holiday dinner for the Carioca clan. Then, Rochester’s nose exploded.

“I wadn’t eggpegding dat!” Carioca exclaimed.

This is the 23rd known case of spontaneous nasal combustion this holiday season. Authorities believe that there are more, perhaps many more, but fear of looking like Ralph Fiennes playing Voldemort in Harry Potter movies has kept more partygoers from seeking medical attention. The one thing that all of the…newly nasally challenged people had in common was that they were eating store bought, microwaveable turducken.

In light of this correlation, Monsanto immediately recalled all of the company’s turkeyceuticals, a recall which could affect as many as three million turkeys genetically engineered to contain pharmaceuticals.

“It took 17 years for the FDA to approve our turkeyceutical line of products,” Monsanto Vice President in Charge of Setting the Record Straight Myra Breckinbridge stated. “Not only have they been proven to safely deliver health enhancing drugs, but the arsenicy aftertaste has almost completely been eliminated.”

“It really is turkey just like mom used to make,” Breckinbridge added, quoting Monsanto’s marketing campaign.

“Oh sure,” Carioca responded, “if bomb was a chebist, a boultry farber and a bioengineer awb robbed into one! I don’t fink this is what febinists had in bind when dey said women could hab it all!”

Carioca did allow that Monsanto had gotten the arsenicy aftertaste of his mom’s turkey right.

Breckinbridge stated that the problem seemed to be in the way the drugs in its turkeyceuticals combined with the drugs in Creative Bioimagineering’s pharmaceutical duck and NextChemGen’s pharmaceutical chicken. The turkeyceutical contained cancer medicine in the white meat and acne medicine in the dark meat; the chicken contained blood thinners in its breasts, a drug that moderated the insulin level in diabetics in its thighs and aspirin and vitamins in its legs and wings, and; the duck contained 27 separate drugs in various parts of its skin, meat and bone marrow.

This made for a dangerous, albeit tasty, chemical soup that authorities now believe was responsible for the blazing proboscises.

Ira Nayman. Luna for the Lunies! (Kindle Locations 273-316). Ira Nayman.

When I look at the news headlines of today, I can’t help but think how absurd our world has become. The sheer ridiculousness of our politics and pop culture sends me into a spiral of worry for our children’s’ future. I have wondered if there is a more sane, alternate universe out there, but I now I have my doubts.

Ira Nayman’s, Luna for the Lunies!, is his latest offering from the Alternate Reality News Service. It is a collection of satirical news articles set in a myriad of alternate universes, and if his vision of other realities is even close to correct, then I fear that the absurdity of our own is only eclipsed by the others.

Ira takes a wickedly dry sense of humor and rips apart the popular culture, politics, and technology of our modern world through a series of satirical articles that range in size from a handful of sentences to pages in length, and believe me when I say that no one and nothing is spared. It is a laughter inducing indictment of our society and I loved it.

The writing is reminiscent of Douglas Adams, but a bit more over the top. The names and ideas are over the top, but delivered with such sincerity as to notch the satire up to a whole new level. The majority of the articles are independent from each other, but there is some crossover (such as the disappearance of Ho-Lee Krackauer, a member of Google’s Flying Sasquatch Squad, and the literary disease, Apostrophosis), and a short story, “The Reality Threshold,” is interspersed between the chapters of the book.

This is an excellent read, but I recommend taking it in chunks. It is not a sit down and read end to end sort of book. The use of articles makes it disjointed and fits with the concept, but the lack of unified story gives you little incentive to keep turning pages. I read the electronic version (for Kindle), but I can imagine a paper copy of this book gracing the coffee table of any person of intelligence and wit…once it is available in hard copy.

You can buy Luna for the Lunies! at

Smashwords for $0.99, so I suggest you go and do just that. And while you’re at it, please visit Ira Nayman’s website: Les Pages aux Folles for more satirical and science fiction goodness.

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• Book Review: Luna for the Lunies!
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