1. If you are a vampire who is craving blood badly, keep a flask of it in your suit pocket and discreetly take a sip or two when no one else is looking. It's extremely bad form to latch onto your mother-in-law and drink a couple pints before the pumpkin pie is served.

2. There is no such thing as a low-carb Thanksgiving. A low-carb Thanksgiving would consist of turkey and nothing else. Do you really want to eat a tiny sliver of turkey while your family puts away barrels and barrels of stuffing? Not a chance. So shut up about it, already.

3. Be sure to give thanks for the great state our country is in. We're a place of tolerance, where no one is discriminated against and . . . ha ha ha ha! I'm sorry, that was just too funny to finish. Wiping the tears from my eyes now.

4. Remember all those reports of people who were injured attempting to deep-fat-fry their turkeys last year? Put them out of your mind. Give it a go in your own living room, and see what happens! If a fire results, let it flicker for awhile before calling the fire department. They love a challenge. If they are delayed for more than an hour and your home has becoming a raging inferno, you should probably turn off the Thanksgiving Day parade and go outside. You can always catch that Garfield balloon next year.

5. If someone at the table is choking, try the Heimlich maneuver to free the obstruction from their throat. If that doesn't work, invoke the blessing of whatever god you pray to and go through their pockets for loose change.

6. A First Thanksgiving pageant is always fun for the kids. This requires some advance planning, however. You'll have to buy or make their costumes, and erect some sort of pyre for them to toss witches on. What? That was the Puritans?

7. When carving the turkey, make the "eee eee eee eee" stabbing noise from Psycho. Then during the prayer, you can include a word of solemn thanks to Alfred Hitchcock, who's been making our holidays better since 1960.

8. Many of the turkeys eaten this year will have been genetically engineered. Yours may have freakishly long wings, or a second head that resembles Peter Frampton. Your turkey also may have magical self-restorative powers; if your bird comes back to life before it's carved, just stab it quickly and dig in while it's still warm. Zombie turkeys are good eatin'.

Enjoy. Be safe. And don't let the turkeys keep you down.