Brian Smith, freshman business studies major, has been observed making the same joke time and time again. Based on multiple earwitness accounts, the joke goes something like this: “Hey, I mean why bother buying a turkey for Thanksgiving? I wanna just go out and find one of these turkeys they have on campus and just fucking blast it, ya know?”
At this point Brian often makes a blasting noise with his mouth and mimes the action of firing a gun, before continuing. “I mean everyone’s so picky these days. Back in the good old days that’s how it was done.”
Interestingly, the response from his peers seems to have little to no effect on his enthusiasm for telling the joke again. In an interview, Bethany Jamison, Brian’s neighbor and, according to Brian, friend, said, “It’s so annoying. No one even laughs at it, but he keeps telling it like it’s gonna be different this time. It reminds me of when he asked me out for the third time. I had already told him I had a boyfriend, then that I had a girlfriend, so this time I just told him I had both. I didn’t really know what else to say.”
Brian’s self described “friend — no actually, put down ‘acquaintance,’ I don’t want people to think I’m weird,” Fred Brough, had a slightly different perspective. “I mean, I thought it was funny the first time, it just got old. I kind of regret laughing at it, because now I hear it all the time,” he said.
The joke has also caused some backlash among the turkey community at UCSC. One local turkey told us, “Look, at this point it’s not even that he’s joking about murdering us. It’s just, like, if you’re going to make those jokes please at least have more than one.”
Brian, however, is unfazed by the criticism. “Guess I’m just old fashioned,” he remarked. “People these days just don’t appreciate the value of good humor or good hunting. Like I say, that’s how it used to be done.”
Brian is reportedly 18 years of age and has never voluntarily gone outdoors once in his fucking life.
