Thursday, February 6, 2014

Stop Being A Chicken!

I pride myself upon being an albatross around your neck. I've always had a great admiration for albatrosses and all albatross-related activities, and felt they were somehow greatly misunderstood. I also have a thing for your neck and all activities involving it.

I am as busy as a bee. I'm not well-versed in all things bee, but I guess they must be really freakin' busy. I mean why isn't the expression as busy as a wasp? Or maybe there is a little alliteration going on, so why not as busy as a beetle? Or as happy as a bee? I mean do we know bees are that busy? Am I? Are you?

I am attempting to be as happy as a clam but fear that I am falling way short and am probably more accurately as happy as some slightly less happy mollusk or shellfish. I mean we are talking about a clam here! Sure I'd love to be as a happy as one of those guys, but that is like wishing for the impossible. Talk about setting the bar too high.

When I quit things I always quit cold turkey mostly as an homage to my childhood friend Timmy the Turkey. Timmy and I spent so many memorable hours together on the farm, until my dad said it was time to eat him. I remember that day as if it was yesterday- what a mixture of emotions - sadness, hunger...and that's it actually, so it's rather a duo of two emotions rather than a mixture that implies a complex combination of a long laundry list of feelings. I recall it as if it was yesterday, sitting there the next day eating cold pieces of turkey doused with my own salty tears. God rest your tasty soul, Timmy the Turkey.

I am hogging your time once again, akin to Generalissimo Francisco Franco's politically oppressive rule of Spain during World War Two....wait a sec, something just doesn't seem right...let me check something out...upon further review of Franco's Wikipedia page, what I am doing with your time is nowhere close to what Franco did in Spain. I mean I am hogging your time, like right now while you read this, but the analogy just didn't work in the slightest, even I have to admit that. Sorry.

I will tell on you like a rat. You know you deserve it, you know what you've done. I have no other option but to rat on you and tell all what you've done. You may not like it, but rat on you I will. I am undecided if telling on you like a rat, involves sounding like a rat as well, and if it does, I have a lot of work ahead of me tonight before the big day tomorrow.

I learned the hard way not to look a gift horse in the mouth. I did and I lived to regret it. It was educational and disgusting.

Stop being a chicken! I am asking you for the last time to cease all chicken-related actions. Do you understand? No. More. Chicken. I mean it is cute and everything - the waddling, the shaking your tail-feathers, the fear, head-bobbing, but enough is enough. On the other hand, I fully endorse you counting chickens before they hatch. I mean it is somewhat risky. You never know what is going to happen and if you gamble too much and lose, you may regret it. But, what is life without some danger, some intrigue, some as-yet-unhatched-chicken egg-counting? Just to summarize - under no circumstance acting like a chicken, but putting a lot of stock on the eggs of said chickens is totally fine. If that makes little to no sense to you, then I wonder why you talk to me at all.

I am often a large pink elephant in a room. Here is how it usually goes down. There is a room. People enter the room, usually through the door but occasionally using a ladder and coming through the window. There is some small talk - the weather, the ball game, Louisa's hilarious pant suit. There is some silence, normal at first but quickly becoming awkward. People uncomfortably sense my presence. They want to talk about me but they can't. If people did discuss my being around everyone would feel a whole lot better. But, do they talk about me? Noooooooo!!! Don't talk about the elephant that just happens to be in a room with you?!?! Does that make any sense at all? I'm a flippin' elephant and I'm in a room? That doesn't warrant mentioning?!!?! That's right, go enjoy your awkward conversation sissies. That's me - the big, ol' pink elephant - making situations and conversations more uncomfortable everyday. You're welcome!

I picked up a side job last week as a guinea pig. The first few days were awesome - I felt pampered and loved. But, then came all of poking and prodding, the needles, the deprivation chambers and the hot sauce sampling. The pay is okay, I wanted to shave my back and experiment with electrodes anyways and it does keep me off the streets, but I have this strange feeling that all I am is a pawn in someone else's experiments. And though they try to make me feel important, I have a feeling that I am easily replaceable.

I am in the dog house, again. This time I went there on my own volition, unlike other times when I was either sent there or went there to get away from it all. This is day number give in the dog house. The smell is a bit much, lying on the damp grass all night is giving me a sensitive skin issue, and I could do without being licked all the time by my new roommate. As each day passes, I am feeling more and more like a dog and I have an overwhelming desire to sock that annoying cat and to dig up my own yard and poop on my own flowers. After which I will shame myself, not feed myself and possibly kick myself - par for the course on a usual Saturday afternoon.

The cat got my tongue. It really hurts! Why didn't anyone warn me how much this would hurt!?!?! I mean I didn't think it would be a walk in the park, but the searing pain is over the top ouchy. Last time I fall for that prank.

Funny story. Okay, so I spent much of my summer as a duck-impersonator. This challenging task was made much easier due to the hours upon hours of duck observing I did as a youth. While all of my friends were out being typical teenagers  - hanging out by the mall, watching movies, tanning at the beach - my days were monopolized by three activities, making homemade tar, eating nachos and watching ducks. I always had a feeling while I sat there with my book, writing notes about the ducks with my tar-stained, greasy, nacho-covered fingers, that someday it would all be worth it. I walked around Main Street quacking at tourists, dipping my feet into paint and making webbed-footprints on the wall to confuse people, and using my beak to rid myself of small insects. This awesome summer came to a depressing end, when I sprained my ankle trying to run away from a sinister wolf-impersonator (I found out after the fact that he was being chased by an actual duck who, in turn, was being chased by an actual wolf). I will never again flippantly call someone a lame duck.

I am the judge, jury and executioner in my very own kangaroo court. I thoroughly enjoy the challenge of the judging and the wisdom gained by doing it. Being the lone juror is pressure-filled but I am up to the task. However, I cannot bring myself to execute or even jail any of the guilty kangaroos, they are just too cute and have such strong and powerful legs that they can kick me with repeatedly like an actual human boxing bag.

I am just coming off a three-month stint as a stool pidgeon. To say it was fun would be to use an incorrect and confusing usage of the term. I was relentlessly and harshly teased by a large variety of birds both flightless and the annoying ones who fly. My guess is that the others think that I was a spy for "the man". I keep telling them all that it is not a man but a statue of a man - I mean he is green and never leaves the park...actually they are right, that could describe a bunch of real men I know too. I am out now - back to my regular life and as hard as it was being a stool pigeon, I was well compensated. However, I am waiting for some recognition for learning fluent and convincing bird in such a short time.

I had an incredibly bright and incredibly strange grade four teacher (she was also incredibly tall and incredibly good at the cha cha, but that isn't important right now). She also had an avant-garde method towards teaching that was extremely cutting edge, which all of the kids loved. One of my fondest memories was when she taught us the birds and the bees. I know what you are thinking, a class of giggling, immature kids learning about s-e-x. If it was only that simple. She taught us a dramatic and highly interactive unit about genetically enhanced birds and bees that reproduced at an exponential rate that put even bunnies to shame. These advanced birds and bees enslaved the early humanoids and made us complete the most mundane household tasks - folding the laundry, drying the dishes, cleaning out the lint tray. I was never quite clear who enhanced them or why and I was also quite unclear about the actual birds and bees which became quite obvious on a number of embarrassing occasions. One of the great unanswered questions of my youth is what happened to those genetically enhanced birds and bees. I guess I'll never know. And also what happened to my grade four teacher - I often worry about her.

I am a horrible swimmer and I think a major part of the problem is that I was taught to swim like a fish. Actually, the methods of swimming that were used on me were just one part of an entirely-fish based early childhood education system of which I was the trial student. I was taught to eat food off of hooks without getting cut (I am mindlessly caressing one of the scars as I write this), to drink like a fish (harder than it looks - the pursed lips make it next-to-impossible), and to travel around in groups like a "school". When I started at mainstream school at the age of thirteen my eating and drinking habits drew lots of negative attention and I had an impossible time convincing my classmates to travel so closely together as I had been taught. I still drink like a fish to this day and am the author of the controversial text "Do Fish Drink and, If So, Do They Prefer Filtered Water?"

My days of following others like a sheep are over. I am taking some courses at the local community college to expand my brain and to learn to better think for myself. That, and most of the people I used to follow have installed proximity detectors that beep loudly if I am too near by.

What a slug! I can't believe how slow that dude is!?! I mean can he not move a little bit faster? Does he realize there is a long line behind him and we all have places to be? I am flummoxed by his sluggishness and I am wondering about the silvery trail he is leaving on the ground behind him but I am not going to ask as I don't really want to know.

It is true. I was the black sheep of the family. Hard to get your mind around that as I seem like such a nice, reasonably normal guy what with my school boy complexion, my bouncy ball and my stamp collection. Not only was I the black sheep, but as I discovered in embarrassing fashion, I was also the only sheep. In my mind I was this cool, hip black sheep with an incredible vertical and the other members of my extended family were all shepherds. No roaming for me. And limited grazing in the yard. Also far too many sheerings for my taste. At least I didn't get branded like my cousin. Upon closer inspection on my fifteenth birthday I wasn't a sheep at all. 








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