New Year's Eve. What am I, of all people, doing sitting at home writing instead of going out somewhere and having a simply fabulous time or pretending to have one in order to fit in? I know. But the fact is I'm sick, or rather I'm fighting off a cold in the common parlance. It wants to take hold, you see, viral contagion is trying to establish a stronghold in my body, a strategic position from which to invade my systems. I have no idea why it has this goal, and my "fight" consists in sitting on a couch eating delicious brownies. So instead of throwing my head back and laughing in that infectious if world-weary way of mine in some glittering nightspot positively teeming with beautiful damaged personalities I'm instead studying the Consumer Reports special alert on unsafe propane-fueled turkey fryers, even though I have absolutely no interest in purchasing a propane-fueled turkey fryer or eating deep-fried turkey for that matter, and in fact have never even heard of deep-fried turkey, although I have of course heard of fried chicken so it's not much of a stretch to imagine it.

These turkey fryers are veritable death machines, so dangerous that Underwriters Laboratories refuses to certify them, which puts them somewhere between a 1965 Corvair and Mark Pauline's electric lawnmower on the spectrum of user safety. If such a fryer doesn't overturn and cover you in several gallons of scalding oil it will almost certainly catch fire and (as Consumer Reports colorfully puts it) engulf the entire unit in flames. Moreover, any number of seemingly innocent but foolhardy actions such as turning the unit on can cause hot oil to spatter on the chef, likely to result in piercing cries of anguish and desperate clawing at the face in addition to fire. Every possible way for these turkey fryers to malfunction, in fact, involves spattering oil, fire, and shrieking.

So now I bet you're glad I stayed home tonight.