The Turkey Dump

[Cowperson]

A masters student researching how people prepare for the inevitable is looking for university students facing the "turkey dump" this weekend, when their high school romance ends during the first trip home for the holidays.

Getting "a kick in the giblets" over Canadian Thanksgiving from your high school sweetie after you start university seems to be quite common and a University of Guelph student was to incorporate the phenomenon into his master degree in social psychology. He wants 100 first year students to volunteer for his study.

A National Post link you might have to subscribe for.

http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpos...ce-b4dbbe2ea698

Cowperson

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Oh man, I thought this was going to have somethig to do with what I do immediately after waking up the day after thanksgiving. :doo:

[KevanGuy]

I thought the article was going to be about WKRP.

[BlackArcher101]

Geezz, you mean some couples actually made it to thanksgiving? Better than getting an e-mail 2 weeks into school though. :darnkids:

[octothorp]

Originally posted by KevanGuy@Oct 5 2004, 08:23 AM
I thought the article was going to be about WKRP.

Yeah, my first thought too.

"As God is my witness, I swear I thought Turkeys could fly."



The other part of the study would be how many of the dumpees were secretly thinking "Thank God; the girls/guys at college are so much hotter anyway."

[troutman]

http://radio.about.com/library/blwkrpturkey.htm

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a serious miscalculation. The poor birds plunged to earth, never even having a chance. Their tragic "last flight" was relayed to WKRP listeners by reporter Les Nessman, played by Richard Sanders:



“It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. It's flying something behind it, I can't quite make it out, it's a large banner and it says, uh - Happy... Thaaaaanksss... giving! ... From ... W ... K ... R... P!! No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, Johnny, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenberg tragedy has there been anything like this!”

[KevanGuy]

LOL one of my favorite TV moments ever.

http://radio.about.com/library/wkrpturkeydrop.ram

[Cowperson]

Originally posted by troutman@Oct 5 2004, 04:00 PM
http://radio.about.com/library/blwkrpturkey.htm

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a serious miscalculation. The poor birds plunged to earth, never even having a chance. Their tragic "last flight" was relayed to WKRP listeners by reporter Les Nessman, played by Richard Sanders:



“It's a helicopter, and it's coming this way. It's flying something behind it, I can't quite make it out, it's a large banner and it says, uh - Happy... Thaaaaanksss... giving! ... From ... W ... K ... R... P!! No parachutes yet. Can't be skydivers... I can't tell just yet what they are, but - Oh my God, Johnny, they're turkeys!! Johnny, can you get this? Oh, they're plunging to the earth right in front of our eyes! One just went through the windshield of a parked car! Oh, the humanity! The turkeys are hitting the ground like sacks of wet cement! Not since the Hindenberg tragedy has there been anything like this!”

I agree. One of the funniest TV moments ever.

Believe it or not, I think this kind of thing has actually been done in real life without the humour. I'll try to find an example.

Cowperson

[Cowperson]

A few helicopter Santa stories:

This isn't a "drop" but funny nonetheless from a string of stories by actual helicopter pilots:

The local Santa Claus was invited to make a fly-in appearance at a shopping mall. It turns out this Santa had a prior engagement where alcohol was served. Judgment was affected.

Helicopter lands, kids come running, Santa jumps out. More kids. Santa throws handfulls of small candy canes for the kids. The candy canes hit the rotor blades shatter and small pieces of candy cane are spraying the crowd.

Everyone is yelling at Santa to stop. Santa's too loaded to notice, throws another handful of candy canes into the rotor blades. Crew wrestles Santa into the helicopter and quickly depart.

Another story, this pilot the only person in the aircraft, trying to fly and open bags of marked ping pong balls out the door at a shopping mall promotion:

I decided to open my door as best I could and hold it open with my left foot while I pulled the bags open one at a time and poured them out all the while trying to fly with my knees and keep the aircraft over a reasonable drop zone without my feet on the pedals or hands on the controls in a strong wind.

Well needless to say each bag of balls ended up in a completely different area. I still can see that swarm of people racing across the parking lot, which was filled with parked cars, to get to the ping pong balls which the wind was scattering everywhere. Since I could only drop one bag at a time each drop would end up in an entirely different place and with each successive drop the tide would turn and the race to the new drop area was on. People were climbing over cars, pushing each other down, tripping, falling and anything else you can think of as they raced back and forth across that parking lot. I have no idea how successful the promotion was but I do know there were a lot of skinned knees and scratched paint jobs before it was all over. I never accepted another ping pong ball drop job.
And another one involving puke:

Playing copilot with friend on a Santa OPS in a 206B we were doing a High Recon of the intended area LZ. ( We drove there the day before and gave it a good eyeballing before we flew in) Santa was a cookie under 350lbs and a little nervous as was his helper, both never had been in a helicopter before.

Our first pass was fine, Santa asked if it was all right if he stuck his hand out and waved a little. That was just fine with us. As we made the second pass we had a bird strike, the guts went all over Santa's hand. (No injury to Santa) He looked at now gross looking bird entrails on his hand and got sick as did his helper. At 500 in our approach with the cross wind headed towards the crowd, both passengers begin to show the crowd the workings of the human digestive system, backwards. Liquid and chunks blew from the rear window vents. At first we didn't know what was going on, just a weird sound over the intercom. Then Santa starts screaming "abort abort" with a mouth full. Well, we did a go around, not knowing if he had seen something we had not or something went wrong in the back.

A crowd of kids, a shopping mall and a bunch of cars were in close proximity to us so the pucker factor went up a little hearing Jolly old Nick freak out.

Nothing was wrong, he just didn't want to be let out into a now disgusted mob... I mean.. crowd that he had just hurled his lunch on. We were responsible for cleaning the bird guts and his body fluids from the aircraft and that was going to be no fun, so he wasn't given a choice. We landed, Santa faced his puke soaked fans and we left.

http://www.rotorshop.com/stories.html

Cowperson

[Mango]

Eric Francis kept talking about this throughout the morning show today...and I thought he was making it up...