Playing Chicken

I hate chickens.  

Don't get me wrong, I love eating them...  
In fact, I think my hatred of them as an animal just makes my love for eating them all the sweeter.  

And you know what?  
They started it.  

Actually, I have no idea how it started.  I just know that as a child, I didn't like seeing chickens unless they were fully cooked.  Their eyes creeped me out.  

To add to this, my fear of enormous animals led to a chicken... maybe a rooster, actually, mocking me.  

Let me explain that one.

Because I was afraid to ride the horse, the owners of said horse placed the fowl on said large animal to show me that I was more chicken than the chicken.  

Screw that chicken.

Mind you, my mom has fond memories of a rooster named Elvis.  He started as one of those dangerously dyed pretty colored chicks for Easter (which we don't celebrate) and grew up instead of dying from the poison or just a general failure of the average child to take care of a chicken.  

But this was not my personal experience.  

Chickens creep me out.  

I'm a big fan of Ripley's Believe it Or Not, and generally we're all good... 

And then there was this: 

Instead of dying like it was supposed to, this guy stayed alive without a head for years.  He was fed through the neck hole. 

A. Why would you ever do this to a living creature?  Just kill the fucking thing.

B. I cannot respect anything that can keep on walking around while missing that much of it's head, and all of it's basic thinking brain parts.  

Also, there was the "Big, Scary Chicken" incident...

I wrote about that already a bit here. 

Eventually, my well meaning friends started calling me by making chicken noises.  
This was actually unrelated to my hatred of chickens, oddly enough, and just that my legal name sounded like a chicken when said in the most obnoxious way possible to utter a sound.

This was made even worse when I left for the other side of the country and lived next to a bunch of chickens.  

I'd wake up thinking they were calling me.  

Guh.

You know, I actually have a lot of chicken stories...  

But I'll leave it at this one last part... 

My first real meeting of Rob's mother was a thing.  

Lovely lady.  I like her a lot.  

One of the first things we talked about was how she wanted a pet-

And I responded with, 

*Note:  Eyebrows thickened for emphasis* 

I actually said the word "veto" at a woman I was just meeting and trying to impress.  

I immediately regretted it, thinking I'd be thrown out, stoned, and/or burned alive, but she just chuckled and asked why...  

...and I went on to tell her all about the crap on this very post. 

 

Maggot Madness

 

 

 

So, the other night, I found myself rummaging through the refridgerator in a half asleep stupor:  

 

Soon after, I felt something strange. 

 

 

It took me a moment to realize what was happening. 

 

HOLY crud it was on my foot.

 

Oh ew.  OH ew ew ew.

 

 

You know, actually, it was kind of cute. 

 

 

 

But I was still:

 

 

 

See, in reality, there were two tiny wormy thingys. 

 

 

 

In my mind, there were thousands, writhing around in a pile. 

 

 



 

 

Actually, based on what my Knight said about what was still in the trashcan, that wasn't too far off. 

 

In any case, I responded to this by making a noise only dogs can hear and running to my Knight like the floor was made of lava because I'm an adult. 

 

The moral of the story is that if you ever eat chicken, once you throw away your excess bird-parts, you should really take the trash out as soon as humanly possible. 

 

 

 

 

 

 



How Minor Speech Impediments Make Snakes Terrible, and The Reason I Stopped Watching Barney

Recently, my 17 years old, decrepit, and not particularly functional cat Jackie was put to sleep.  
It was for the best.  
She was no longer happy or healthy.  
I'm sure she will rule kitty heaven with an iron paw.

Back in the day, she was playful, had ear mites, and in general was just a strange and adorable all black short hair.

When we got her, I was on the look out for a fluffy white cat, so I could name him or her Gabriel like the cat in The Crow.  

I was that kid.  
Yeah. 

But I found Jackie.  
I had heard stories of an orange cat named Pumpkin from before I was born, and I decided that since when I draw Jack O' Lanterns, the eyes, mouth, and nose are black, this black cat would be named accordingly.  

Basically, I named this cat after a cat I had never even met.  
It didn't even occur to me that she was a "Halloween" cat, but that would have made significantly more sense.

There are three other things you should know for this story.  

One, my sister loves all things snake related.  
We always had a snake or two.  
Being not a fan of worm like things, I was not particularly fond of snakes, but they didn't really bother me much at the time.  

They were just creepy green worms with heads.

Between this day and the time when my mom got bitten on the face by one of them, I'm not so keen on snakes now.  
My mom was fine.  

I was bothered.  

Years later, the Sandworms of Beetlejuice are fine... so that's a start, right?

Another thing you should know is that my bed was on the ground.  I had a box spring, a mattress... and that was it.  

This was my choice.

The idea was that my closet monsters were good, but my under-the-bed monsters wanted to eat my feet.  
Specifically. 

Eat my feet. 

So, I had the bed right on the floor to keep the monsters at bay/suffocate them horribly.

Lastly, I had a lot of trouble speaking as a kid.  
I had been almost entirely deaf until about four years old.  
It was just fluid in my ears, but I needed tubes twice, because the first time didn't work. 

So, a minor ailment that many people have did exactly what one would expect it to do to a child learning language early on.  

One day, I was awakened by Jackie mewing. 

 It was kind of annoying as I was trying to sleep, so I got up, picked her up and took her out of my room. 

After plopping her on the ground, I went back to bed. 

A few moments later, she was back, mewing even louder.  I tried to ignore her. 

Finally, I got up to get her out of my room again, knowing that this time, I'd shut the damn door.

Then, I realized that my head felt rather heavy.

The snake had gotten out of her tank and wrapped herself in my hair.  

She flew out of it when I ran the Hell out of my room screaming, "SNAKE IN HAIR!  SNAKE IN ROOM!  SNAKE IN HAIR!"  

No one had any idea what I was talking about, understandably.  

Still, I remember being quite frustrated.  

Eventually, I took my mother by the hand and dragged her to my room to show her the snake, who was happily slithering all over everything I ever owned. 

The snake's tank had velcro holding the top on from that day forward. 

...

As for Barney, this was another case of my poor communication skills, coupled with my very loose grasp of reality as a child.  Sure, having a vivid imagination is one thing, but not when it is horrifying. 

I loved Barney.  I had the doll and everything.  I think I liked that he was purple and green.  Years later, I developed a love for T-rexs, and I wonder how much of that is because of that dinosaur. 

One day, Barney was drinking a glass of "milk".
I felt very smart, knowing that there was nothing actually in that cup.

It was only pretend milk.
Knowing this, somehow the next part was not rationalized in a better way. 

In drinking, Barney tilted his head up towards the lights.  You could see the person inside of Barney, through the black mesh of his mouth. 

Instead of thinking, "Oh no!  Barney is just a dude in a suit!!  Childhood over!"  
I ran around the house, frantic, believing that it was of the utmost importance that I let everyone know Barney's dark secret.

Barney eats human beings. 

As though warning of the British arriving, I said "Barney ate somebody!  Barney ate somebody!"

I was told not to watch that show anymore.  I didn't argue. 
I even got rid of my doll, because it was forever on creepy to me. 

There was also an incident while watching the Ghostbusters cartoon.  

I loved that show... but when I was just a hair too young, there was something about ...a giant... ghost... chicken?  

Apparently, I was terrified of chickens.  
I don't know.

All I know is that I wound up running around the house screaming "BIG SCARY CHICKEN!  BIG SCARY CHICKEN!" because three word phrases are all I could ever muster whilst in a panic caused by television.  
 ...Or snakes in my hair. 

 

In all fairness, I still kinda hate chickens.

Nightmares? No. "Silly-weird...mares"

Dream I just had, plus me trying to "fix" it:

Three guys, 1, 2 and 3 in car.   1 is now Fred, 2 shall be Ned and 3 will be Ted.
Ned and Ted are in the back, and Fred is in the front, by the steering wheel.  Since the car isn't moving, we assume they're at the drive in or something.

Suddenly, Ned EATS Ted whole, and then slithers under car seat and bites Fred's foot. 

At this point, Ned and Fred come up again and they're eyeless, open mouthed zombies.

(Here is where I suddenly wasn't watching anymore.  I was now Fred, in the driver's seat.  Like, I saw that my hands were his cartoon hands and everything... so I see that only Ned is back there and I realize what's happened... and before he can zombie me, I start throwing my shoe at him and screaming and "hitting myself" until I wake up in real life...  Then, I make up the new ending in sort of half-asleep mode, to make myself feel better.  The next part is what my brain came up with:)

So Fred wakes up in the front seat of the car, looks back and sees just Ned sitting there behind him.  Fred responds by screaming and throwing a sneaker at Ned's head.  He keeps screaming, trying to wrestle out of the car, trying to grab bunnies from outside of the car, (I don't know why there were bunnies) to throw at Ned.  Fred fails at bunny throwing, dives out of the car and runs away screaming.

Ted gets up from where he was looking for something in the back seat, says "I found it!  ...Hey, where's Fred?"  Ned's like, "Dude.  He just started screaming and he threw a shoe at me."

Ted blinks.

Ned, "A shooooe."

Fred runs screaming off into the distance

Ted to Ned, "Wanna make out?"  They start making out furiously.

Fred gets to his girlfriend's house.  (She looks just like the three boys do, but she has eye lashes, hair and a dress shape) We'll call her "Ed...ina"?  Fred says, "You don't understand!" and tries to explain as she just blinks at him.

Caption on screen reads, "Three months later..."  Fred is wearing a chicken suit.

The end. 

I was already sick to my stomach, so I guess I already had the icky feeling I tend to have after a nightmare...
So my brain just went "OH!  I know what to do when the body feels like this!  Do something weird and scary!"

Aaaaaaaaand now I have the old Winnie the Pooh song stuck in my damn head.  This happens when I'm ill.  My body says, "How can I make this worse?  I know!  I'll make her go from one bit of song to the next, at random, whilst she vomits!  Joy!"