Things that are Awkward

It is awkward trying to pretend your friend's hairless dog is not super creepy

Fashion is a Two-Faced Bitch: Mean Clothes

Hi World,

You know what I hate about clothes?  They are nice to your face until you buy them and then they turn on you.

They make your ass look big behind your back.  They pretend to be blue to get you to buy them, but turn purple in the bag on the way home.  When you confront them,  they stare back at you, all innocent-like, "What?  Me?  Blue? Prove it, Bitch."

Clothes also love to mess with your head by changing size.  That blouse looks great on you in the store but the minute you cut off the tags it will start its metamorphosis into the most ill-fitting garment Taiwan ever produced.   "Wait a second", you'll say,  "Why would I purposely buy a a shirt that somehow appears  to be camouflaging a watermelon, while simultaneously showing way too much  cleavage?  How did that happen?"

Because.  Mean Clothes.

Another trick that clothes find hilarious is the invisible stain/tear. At night, while you fall asleep, fantasizing about running into your secret crush while wearing your hot new dress, that same dress is giggling in the closet with its new friends.   Do you know what they are doing?  Drawing on each other with lipstick,   ripping out their threads, and growing sweat stains.   It's true.  Don't expect to catch them at it.  Clothes are sneakier than Santa Claus.

The meanest,  most two-faced  clothes in the universe are made from 100% cotton.  Cotton is the Gywneth Paltrow of fabrics.  Society Darling.  So wholesome looking.  If cotton  had teeth,  you can bet they'd be bigger than a Kennedy's and overly whitened. Cotton seems to have it all, but it has a dark side. Cotton is moody. Seriously, Cotton should be heavily medicated.  One minute, it's all granny panties, sweats, and your favorite t-shirt.  Next minute it's a white dress shirt that gapes at your chest and rides  up your back,  or it's a dress that looked good exactly once before it lost its shape.  Cotton secretly thinks that you are not good enough to wear it and wishes it was only available in Europe.

If Cotton is the alpha fabric, then Silk is her high-maintenance, neurotic best friend.  Silk is great as long as it's getting its way.  Silk is the Glenn Close of  fabrics.  It will not be ignored. Do not think, for one second, that you can wear a silk gown to a gala event, and then throw it back in your closet like a cheap rayon slip. You will pay for that mistake with a whole closet full of clothes that smell like body odor. Compliments of Silk. Silk looks normal on the outside but,never forget, it was raised by worms.

There's probably a new girl in your closet.  She's called Spandex and she's in your jeans.  She's not actually new. She made some unfortunate style decisions in the 80's and people talked bad about her.  She went into hiding for  awhile, but then she ran into Denim on the sale rack at Walmart one day, and they hit it off.  They've been together ever since.  You see them everywhere.  They might look like a classy pair, but give them a few drinks and things  go downhill fast.  They start fighting. Denim says something nasty.  Spandex gets upset and storms out, leaving the seat of your pants hanging somewhere just above your knees.  Call them the Liz Taylor and Richard Burton of clothing.

And that brings us to denim.  Denim is a sadistic a-hole bully most of the time.  Cotton is bad, but cotton is merely vapid.  It doesn't mean to do the things it does,  it just has no filter. Denim knows better. Denim is streetwise, not to mention manipulative.  It enjoys showing off your butt crack, making your waist scream for mercy, and forcing your intestines to take up residence in your rib cage. It invented muffin top. If you ever expect to get along with Denim, you have to show it who's boss.  Keep throwing it in your washing machine until it breaks.  This might seem mean,  but so is camel toe.

It is you or them.  If you take just one thing from this post,  please hear this:  Your clothes are nothing without you. You do not have to take their crap.  I heard about a safe house in NYC.  It's called "What Not To Wear". They can help.  Call their toll free line, and never be bullied by your clothes again.

Chicken out

Nice Girl.  Victim of Mean Clothes.

I'll Bet You Think This Post is About You. Don't You?

Hi World,

When  we are young, we do stupid things. It starts, maybe, with touching a hot stove and progresses to running with sharp objects, and may even involve some petty theft.  If we are lucky, we don't scar, we don't fall, and we do get caught.

As we get older, and  assimilate all that we've learned, most of us get with the program and commit fewer cringe-worthy acts.  And then we die.  But that's another post.  

The late teens and early twenties are one of those periods of time  when we are particularly at risk of embarrassing ourselves. Maybe it's the hormones still raging, maybe it's the abundance of technology, maybe it's a growing sexual confidence.  Whatever the cause, our twenties can be a minefield of social gaffes.  

I think, in my early twenties, I may as well have walked around 24/7 with my skirt tucked in my pantyhose and toilet paper flowing from the bottom of my teetery, tottery,  too high shoes. I was that witless sometimes.

But this post isn't about me.  Any witnesses to my lapses in judgement have mostly lost their memories by now. Kidding. People I used to know, please do not write me about things you clearly  remember.  No one is interested. Trust me. 

We're lucky, you and I, that we can pretty much count on our skeletons to stay put in their cozy little closets. The famous are not like you and me.  Their regrettable moments are always at risk of making an appearance on some seedy little blog somewhere.  Like this one.

I say ________ you say _________

Monica Lewinsky

Marla Maples

Brittany Spears

Madonna
Anna Nicole Smith

Angelina Jolie

Marilyn Monroe

Paris Hilton

And you know, sometimes, even after you get a little older and wiser, you still mess up.  Do these names bring back any memories:

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Jimmy Swaggart 

Tom Cruise

Bill Clinton

Charlie Sheen

Woody Allen

(Is it me or is there a trend here?)

What I'm saying is this:  If we see a little sister make an ass of herself, maybe we can cut her some slack for being young and foolish. Why should Little Sister be deprived of the opportunities the rest of us had to humiliate ourselves in public? 

Chicken  out

probably regrets this photo

Don't You Know Who I Am???

Hi World:

I've decided to be famous. What the heck, it's Wednesday.

No, I haven't suddenly become skilled, good looking or intelligent.  There's nothing about me that screams "A Star is Born".  Not gonna let it hold me back.  It didn't hold back those toothless guys from Duck Dynasty, or Honey Boo Boo's entire family, or any number of bored housewives.

I'm  pretty sure fame is attainable with the right PR agent.  In my case, it's going to have to be a super talented one because I really don't have a lot of time  to invest.  Some people know people who know the right people.  Others network and go to casting calls.  I don't know anyone and I'm way too lazy to network.

I've thought of a few different angles my PR agent should consider in developing my new, more interesting persona. First,  I enjoy interacting with the world via these Chicken files. That could be useful  My agent could spin me into some uber-cool, mysterious recluse blogger who in real life is talented, famous, wealthy and possibly the secret love child of Bob Dylan and an associate professor of romance languages from the University of Oklahoma..

The second card up my sleeve is that I'm nocturnal.   I know!  Nocturnal is so trending right now.  These days, I cover up my nocturnal behavior by never posting anything before dawn.  There are people out there who want to do bad things to me.  I try to throw them off my trail.  Can you picture it?  Nocturnal supernatural blogger living in exile.  That is so me.  You know, I may be from Prague.  That's a spicy  place to be from.

Finally, I am descended from a long line of farmers.  I'm not sure if you have noticed, but farmers will soon be replacing chefs as the new blue collar celebrities.  Right behind Red Necks.   I can't, personally, grow a dandelion, but it doesn't really matter.  The blood doesn't lie.  Put me in a house dress, give me a basket, and take a close up of my cankles; I wouldn't even need a fucking herb garden to get my own Food Network pilot.

So let's recap.  I want to be famous without leaving my house or engaging in work-like activities.  My three angles are:

1. Reclusive love child of Bob Dylan blogging anonymously
2. Nocturnal supernatural exile with ties to the House of Rosenberg
3. Descended from farming royalty, has the cankles to prove it,  looks damn fine in a house dress.

Yup, I think this is a solid plan.  Thanks for talking me through it.  Could you also get three hundred of your closest friends to follow me on twitter?  While you do that, I'll be busy constructing a more interesting Face Book page, planting mysterious references to Bob Dylan throughout my blog, shopping for a volcanic house dress ensemble and practicing my Czech accent.

Chicken out

Weird Science: Sex Studies

Hi World,

As you all know, Men's Health is an excellent resource for anyone with a thirst for science.

Paradoxically, Men's Health is also an excellent resource to consult for information regarding women's sexuality. I learned a lot today from this article on crazy sex studies.  I do not know how many readers Men's Health has, but judging by the cost of ad space, it's a big number. Even if 50% of those readers are teenage boys looking for photos of women in school uniforms sans underwear, there apparently are also quite a few men out there searching for clues to the feminine mystique.  If those men included these sex studies in their research it is likely they are behaving in ways that don't seem to make a lot of sense to the women in their lives.

For the full study, please do consult the research, but, as a quick reference, I've put together this primer. When you find yourself asking, "What the hell could be going through his mind right now?", let  this be your guide. Pass it on to your women friends and do your part to further the species, as well as the occurrence of vaginal orgasms (which are apparently the only kind of orgasms worth counting).

• If he hands you  a pair of socks, he wants sex, but first he has to calm you down and make you feel safe.
• If he says you look sad and he wants to give you some of his mind altering medicine, he wants sex without a condom
• If he casually asks about your testosterone levels, he suspects that you may be masturbating on the side.  
• If he appears to be studying your mouth intensely, he's using your lip shape as a guide in judging your ability to achieve a vaginal orgasm.
• If he seems overly interested in the way you walk. he's trying to judge whether or not your pelvic muscles may be blocked, as this would affect your ability to have a vaginal orgasm. Chances are good he wouldn't know a blocked pelvic muscle from a mannequin, that's the funny part.  

I hope you found this helpful and have a new appreciation for the lengths your mate is willing to go to help you find your happy place. Not that most of us give a rat's ass where our orgasm originates, we're just so grateful to be having one at all.

For the male readers out there, just in case you have ever wondered what your four primal instincts are, here's a primer for you. Please take it with a grain of salt as clearly they missed the most important primal instinct ever-the ability to induce vaginal orgasms.

Note to everyone in the world:  Never, ever, under any circumstances, should you google "vagina images". Just don't.

Chicken out

chicken has a new appreciation for symbolism

Writing Practice

He checked the space where he had twice come across the she-cub, traversing a half mile around the area, until he was satisfied he was alone and would be able to move about freely. The cub had complicated his scouting trips.  He knew she was of the pack but was not yet sure who she was  He did not know if she was able to call to him from the other plane, or whether their meetings had been accidental.  The cub was a mystery he would deal with later.  Later tonight he would be expected to report on any findings in his area. He needed  to know what the perimeter was holding back, and how dangerous it was.  The other scouts in the pack would report on their lands.

He stopped, thirty feet from the wood line, and sat back on his haunches.  He growled low in his throat, a warning to anything close by.  For awhile, nothing happened.  He was early. He lay down low in the cool grass and waited for something to disturb the stillness.

He felt it first.  Its energy came seeping from between the trees but did not cross the line onto the reservation. Instead, it pooled in one area and then spread out horizontally before moving up above the tree line, as though it were smoke hitting a glass wall and traveling in all directions, looking for an outlet.  He could not see it well, but there was a visible ripple in the air periodically that indicated its presence.  He didn't need to see it to know it was there, however.  His skin was crawling with the feel of it.  He backed up a bit, slowly, and slowed his breath to avoid the chemical scent in the air. There was a vibration in the ground now, a thrumming, steadily growing in intensity.   He and the cub had felt it the other night, as well, but they had been further back-at least 50 yards more than he was tonight.

He sensed movement in the woods.  Three deer suddenly  broke into the clearing, moving fast, as though being chased. As they hit the line that separated Indian land from the rest of the great state of Maine, they slowed, as though the air had become suddenly thicker and harder to move through. They appeared to be pushing against it,  unaware, as they should have been, of a predator  close by.  The  buck among them attempted to use his antlers to pierce the invisible shield keeping them back.  He backed  off, lowered his head, and charged.  He slowed, although clearly he was straining to move forward, and was pushed back as though something much bigger had caught him by  the antlers and force-walked him backwards..  He shook his head,  backed up, and tried again with the same result.  He hesitated,  then turned left and ran along the tree line, the does following him.  A black bear was next, throwing itself against the barrier repeatedly, before following the path of the deer.  He now could see hundreds of smaller animals doing the same thing.  In the sky, birds came swooping in with the same result.  It was as though a rubberized net was catching them gently, absorbing their motion, and forcing them back to the forest.

The wolf followed after the bear, keeping on his side of the tree line.  On the other side, the animals seemed unaware of him. Was it because they could not see him, or because, in their panic, they didn't notice him? He hoped there might be a place, an opening, where they could slip through. The reservation should have been open to them, as it always had been.  The charms were not meant to keep out wildlife.  If they were being prevented from crossing the line, he suspected they were somehow infected by whatever was being kept out. In that case, any life on his side of the barrier would be safe but, he wondered, would they be able to cross the perimeter to the other side, where they might be endangered?  He briefly thought of testing the border himself.  He decided against the risk.  If something happened and he couldn't get home, he wouldn't be able to warn the others.  He would come back, on his own plane, and  explore during the day to see what, if any, damage had been wrought.   He tracked the bear for several miles before losing the scent. The deer were also gone.  They had either all moved back into the woods or something had happened to them.

He stopped to rest for a moment, keeping a wary eye toward the woods.  He needed to warn his pack, and then he needed to find his daughter.  If he had to drag her kicking and screaming, she was coming home. Frankly, he never gave a thought to the old legends.  They were the stories he had been raised on-a part of a heritage he took for granted, never questioning their truth or origin. He no longer felt he had the luxury of indifference. He rose and trotted in the direction he had come, crossing into the fog and becoming part of it, just as the sun started its ascent on the day.

Bryce slowed his walk to match Janie's pace. He  was on the verge of being late to school again, but he couldn't bring himself to rush her, knowing that she hadn't been sleeping well for the past several nights.  On the other hand, he couldn't be late too many more times before the school spoke to his Mom about his tardiness.  If that happened, he knew, they would revert back to their old schedule of getting up an hour earlier every day in order to ride into school with his Mom, a nurse for the Franklin County school system . He had convinced his Mom last August that he was old enough now, and responsible enough, to get himself to school, dropping Janie off first with Mrs. Johnson, who would put Janie on the elementary bus with her own girls., and then walking the half mile to the middle school with the other kids in the neighborhood.  Here it was, only late September, and he was already in danger of letting her down.

"Bryce, look"  Janie said,  pointing at something in the grass to the right of the sidewalk.  "What is that?"

"It's a grasshopper, Janie." Bryce said, stepping off the sidewalk to get a closer look. As he stepped into the grass he felt a crunch  underfoot and lifted his foot quickly, looking down to see what it was he had stepped on.  It was another grasshopper, several in fact. The grass was littered with them.  Why were they only in the grass?  Bryce stepped quickly back to the sidewalk and turned to stop Janie from following him.  He needn't have worried.  She was standing  stiffly in the middle of the sidewalk looking intently at something.  She nodded her head,  turned  to Bryce,  and  muttered something that sounded to Bryce like the Abenacki word for "back" before collapsing on the sidewalk.

"Janie!  Janie, can you hear me?  Janie?  Come on, Shorty, wake up!"  Bryce  smoothed her bangs from her face and patted her cheeks.  Her skin was pale but he could tell she was breathing.  He didn't think he would be able to carry her far and he didn't want to drag her into the grass with all the dead insects.   Reaching around  in his back pack, he found his water bottle and dragged it out. He took off his sweatshirt and wet the sleeve with the cold water, then rung it out, and pressed it lightly against Janie's forehead.  It was working. She was coming to. She opened her eyes, groggy at first. She looked up at Bryce, her eyes filling with tears.

"We have to go home. We have to get away before they get here. Gran said.  She said we have to go right now."

Other People's Stuff

Hi World,

Here's some stuff I found interesting through the week.  See you tomorrow!



New York Times series on dealing with anxiety through art

Psychology Today article on Sociopaths

I followed Maggie's (from Flux Capacitor) link and bounced around until I ended up on this fascinating site

Remember that kid from The Shining? Did you ever wonder what happened to him after his Dad went all, "Hereerrre's Johnny" on him? Read an excerpt from Stephen King's sequel, Dr. Sleep

And that reminds me of the Ghost Hunters episode about The Stanley Hotel, made famous by The Shining

Redrum Redrum Redrum

Chicken out