Chicken Dance

Sometimes you have to let the purple monster off its leash to perpetrate some random idiocy…

Listen up long and hard my crisp-bellied friends, there are enemies among us. They stalk the camps with their long, toothy jaws slack and moistened. They track your young daughters’ loping gazelle-paths through the crackling campfire towers of dusk with hungry and unrepentant prurience. Recluded to dark shadows, these sinister androids lay in the cool hollow with slinking arachnids, cosy to your tent office, and keenly listen to your most secret desires. Ready, upon their triumphant return to their wicked lair of depravity, to broadcast these lies to the thousands upon thousands of luciferic manrobots of the liberally unwashed peoploids.

Ye shall cry, “O, Frippled Zarch, how could such enthusiastic accusations of a fevered imagination be considered as truth?” I am laying in wait of such foolish retorts. Yea, I shall spring with the supple fortitude of a wet midsummer sapling, and spake deep into thine heart of eardrums, the sacharine truth that should drip like so much honeyed poison down the spider silk of your slumbering ninjas. Reel in unbelieving and revulsive tumescence as this fantastic revealing spurs thine eardrum of hearts to crush itself in a herculean effort to pump its rhythmn with increasing fortitude. Howl with the beastly nightmares of our forefathers naked in their blood-wearing wolfskins and angry ant-stomping elders who hath drunk from the spore-laden piss of the virgin yak!

Yes. Knoweth this, O piddling cesspool of childish chalk drawings. You are the robot of which I spittlingly describe. Freedom is a word you have been emblazoned with. It has been seared into your bottocks with the terror-iron of your master’s brand. You feel it every time you deign to rest your aching corpse from the unending toils of the mines. If you dare to drop the splintering pickaxe from your endless gouging at our earth’s ovaries - you gasp in agony and clutch stupidly at your deferred payments and gradual erasure of human dignity. The gate slams shut and you find yourself on your feet again, muttering the company motto and bashing your mind into the tiny crevice between your gonads.

Whew!

Transcribed from a stone tablet found in the sub-sub-basement of a zoo monkey-house in Minto New Brunswick (known as Bedrock City in pre-historic times). I’ve substituted some of the extinct ingredients for foodstuffs that are more readily available in our current time period. Depending on when you are planning to prepare this dish, you may have to do so as well.

This recipe is extremely easy. In fact, when the stone tablet was found below the monkey-house at the Minto Zoo, a pair of howler monkeys, drunk on prison wine, were preparing their own version of it, which involved mashed bananas and their own feces. We suggest sticking to our suggested ingredients - clean up should be quick and overall it involved a mere quarter hour of labour (or chopping).

Time: Total time to completion is estimated at 40 minutes, depending on your chopping abilities and paranoia about world politics.

Serves 4 howler monkeys and possibly homo sapiens as well.

The Rib part of the recipe

• 1 large-assed pot of boiling water that can be salted if you wish. If your local grocery does not have boiling water in supply, you can substitute with water at room temperature that has been heated to one hundred degrees centigrade. You can also whip a bottle of beer in there for good measure and then drink one while you watch it boil.
• 1 or 2 sides of pork ribs (depending on how hungry you are and/or the size of your large-ass pot) cut into portions of 2 or 3 rib-bone hunks. Get the long ones, that look like the brontosaurus ribs that Fred Flintstone likes. If you have never seen the Flintstones, what the hell is wrong with you? Even Martians have seen the freaking Flintstones.

The Freaking Sauce

• 2 cups water (non-boiling, at least at first)
• 0.5 (½) cup dark soy sauce (it’s thick but less salty, which in this case is a good thing. If you need to substitute with light soy (the kind most non-Asian grocery stores sell, I suggest using half the soy and twice the molasses noted below.)
• 1 cup golden yellow sugar
• 1 Tablespoon of molasses
• 1 cup bleached white sugar (the kind that hippies hate)
• 2 mountainous Tablespoons starch (this may be a wee bit of overkill on the thickness, we’ll see) I recommend using tapioca starch, but that is because I am allergic to corn and not for some cretinous “political” reason. Food and politics are an ugly mix, IMO.
• 2 Tablespoons white or fuchsia vinegar (possibly taupe if you have it)
• 4 to 6 Tablespoons of crushed fresh garlic (you could get fruity and substitute with roasted garlic but it has a much more mellow flavour and that’s not what we are after here, is it? Also, though I loathe to suggest it, you could get all bachelor on this and use the 5 year-old garlic flakes you have in the cupboard — but you should note that this is a recipe for “garlic” ribs, not “catpiss-wet cardboard” ribs. Do you want to enjoy this meal or not?)
• Tablespoon of Lime Juice (shaddup)
• 1 Shallot minced
• 1 wee lump of the crushed fresh garlic
• The white part of a bunch of green onions, thinly sliced. Save the green parts for later… like a couple paragraphs down.
• 2 Tablespoons canola oil

The stuff to make the ribs look less lonely on your plate (rice)

Start with 2 cups of uncooked long-grain rice (basmati is my favorite but that’s just me) which will end up as 4 cups cooked long grain rice (basmati, if you are me and there is basmati in the house). I’d tell you how to cook it but you wouldn’t believe me. Just use the unsatisfying method you have been using since forever. Should I mention basmati again? No? Basmati!

Garnish

• 2 Tablespoons white sesame seeds, lightly toasted in a dry pan if you know how to do that without singeing your eyebrows.
• The green part of the bunch of green onions chopped into little ringolo-shaped bits

The Deed

1. Wash your ribs, remove any yucky bits or bone-chips that could stab you in the mouth. Use a sharp knife to trim away any clear and sticky membrane (unless you enjoy chewing until your jaw feels swollen to the size of a grapefruit) and remove any excess fat. Some people enjoy the fat, but I find it reminiscent of putrid slimy things that slither beneath rocks in the garden — especially after being boiled in viscous liquid for an hour.
2. You could toss the entire rack into the pot, but we’re using a large-assed pot for this and not a fucking-huge pot. So, cut the ribs into pieces of 2 - 3 bone sections and throw em in. Boil the crap out of it for 30 or so minutes - then remove from heat. Did I mention to throw a bottle of beer in with it? Some molasses doesn’t hurt either, but there is plenty more of that in the next part.
3. Drain the ribs and set aside. If you want to, cut them into singles. Otherwise just leave as is.
4. Then, without warning - suddenly mix together, with frightening intensity, (in a bowl, not in your mouth - that comes later): the soy sauce, Professor brown sugar, the white sugar, the two cups of water (unboiling variety, otherwise OUCH!).
5. In an even smaller, yet entirely separate, bowl, mix the starch with a dribble of water and tell it to wait patiently until called upon. Starch can be very antsy to get right down to biznass, but tell it to hold tight.
6. Get thyself a saucepan that shall be large enough to contain a litre of sauce and the rib hunks thenceforth be introduced into the sauce in due time. Begin heating said saucepan, initially to a medium-high temperature.
7. Slog a couple tablespoons of canola oil into the pan and allow it to heat up. Then whip your minced bits of garlic, optional minced shallots and the white ends of the green onions (sliced molecule thin). Stir fry these preliminary ingredients for approximately 15-20 seconds or until they begin to release delightful aromatics. Be careful not to scorch the garlic/shallots, as this tends to suck out loud.
8. Then toss in your initial sauce ingredients minus the vinegar, lime juice, mega-garlic and let them heat up to a bubbling fury. With your non-stirring hand grasp the previously mentioned trinity of delicousness: Vinegar, lime juice and garlic (the massive pile), and fling these ingredients with reckless abandon into the roiling, sticky mess (of course, take care not to splash yourself with this searing goo, otherwise ye shall burst into flames and run screaming from the kitchen like the lucky henchman in any 80s action film starring Jean-Claude VanDammit or Stephen Livingston Seagall) Give it the ol’ stir-a-roo.
9. This is the point in the recipe where you get tired of reading these lengthy and completely irrelevant instructions. You throw up your hands, wondering why you ate them in the first place without even bothering to sever them from your wrists. You may want to quit now, but I tell you - you must not! You have a vat of boiling sugars on the stove top, threatening to burst into a thermonuclear fireball at any given moment, that needs tending to. Plus, it is time to add the starch.
10. Once the starch is stirred in, turn the heat back to medium-medium-low, so that the mixture begins to thicken nicely but continues to bubble in a manner much akin to a tar pond. With the help of two cavemen-like hirelings, slowly lower the brontosaurus pork ribs into the tar pond, er I mean sauce. Let it do its thing for another 30 minutes, then remove them from the heat and serve them to your undeserving guests over a platter of rice, spooning some additional sauce over them and sprinkling a metric fuckload of your toasted sesame seeds and the green onion ringolos on top. It looks right wicked that way, eh.
11. Eat them all, even if it means visiting the vomitorium halfway through.

I saw a dead bird on the fence today.

Part of it was missing, and

part of it was black, and

the tiny little flies that dotted its back

looked at me and said, “Shiiiiiiiiiiiit.”

-fin-

Earlier I thought of a kind of place. Not truly a physical place, but involving the physical space. Not tied to a specific spatial coordinate, an imaginary, yet agreed upon location at the intersection of two imaginary lines.

No, this place can be entered into by any consciousness-bearing sentience that stumbles upon it. This is the problem with a dualistic outlook, you are so very limited in your experience because you are held down by your own limitations.  I can see why the Buddhists harp on about habitual behavior so much. These are the places in which to start to see that we are bound by our own patterns. Our programming, conditioning. We are fish in water who do not know they are in water. What? No… that’s fucked up.

Analogy is weak. Language is weak. When I consider who is thought, by most, to be our great achievers, great thinkers and discoverers, geniuses, leaders and such - I just see a bunch of people that have managed to scrape out a slightly better handle on a primitive set of tools.

I must be quite up on myself then. Not really. You misunderstand, but don’t worry about that, I do it all the time too.

Hiding in the deep country. Staying away from the other creepers, scurrying like vapid rats to the trickle of moisture in some dank public house. Their mutterings only give rise to distration and boiling rage of the hobo. He’d try desperately to stay awake. Pouring carafes of scalding coffee into his raw esophagus in the early afternoon. Snuffling vast rows of cocaine and speed into his diamond-encrusted nostrils  with such voracity he experienced ground effect and was able to injest at a much higher rate of suction. As a last ditch, with tears tracing clean lines of skin down his powdered white body, he beat a railroad spike into his scrotum using a rubber hammer and playing Captain Beefheart at a volume his miniscule economy KMart speakers were not phsically capable of reproducing.

In the end, having succumbed to unconsiousness, his chewed and bleeding lips continued to mouth obscenities as he slipped beneath the shifting waves of sleep.

“Jeesuz Swinny, this place is a fucking mess!” Jessica sloshed her way through the ankle deep trash, food, animal hides and McD wrappers. “Who’s fucking scrotum is this spiked to the coffee-table? Yours, again?”

“Hnuuunh. Yeh.” An eye opened, nearly bled and closed again. “That was mine.”

My apologies.

Language pisses me off. Moreso, how language’s users/creators largely are ignorant of the importance, function and beauty of the language they are viciously mistreating.

Language has been described as a kind of thought-virus (Wm. Burroughs, a mental hero of mine), the central pillar upon all knowledge, civilization and intellect is precariously balanced, and as a brightly glossed toy - something that can be twisted and bounced to elicit new and surprising veins of inner exploration.

It is certainly fascinating to me, language. It really does shape our entire conception of reality. From the deep kernels of genetic knowledge, to the power to compel humans to obey commands—I stumble over but a few of zillions of much more profound examples, to somehow convey a sense of what I’m struggling to capture here within this line of… language.

Of course, language comes in a spectrum of flavours so finely variegated that no divisions can be discerned. A majority of these existing in increasingly finer shades of subtlety. I’m certain, that of these multitudes, we are only cognitively aware of a very base few. The simple synthesis of our perceptions and then the understanding of these signals could be argued to contain its own codified set of instructions - a language that permits the cogitator to take a step beyond merely dealing with what is “happening right now” and contemplate strategies (language) and project (language) into future outcomes (among other imaginary realities). Music, obviously. The communication between human and animal, owner and pet. A language does not need words, only a consciousness to push the wave it is surfing on.

What am I going on about? Bedtime.

Gack crossed the street before traffic provided a lull. He almost always did this when he wished to cross. He rotated pan dimensionally on his right heel, tucking his left leg locked, in behind his right knee. Elbows notched, hands ready but loose, chin tucked. A soft, half-reverse, pirouette drop-in from the curb. Then that drunkard waltz, dodging and stumbling as if being shoved by unseen hands. His eyes most often were closed or appeared so. Horns honked. Tyres cried rubber tears of smoke for his passage over the river that killed so many froggers in the past. Slowly he pressed his path. His loping walk swinging ear to the asphalt, that one might think he coming in for a soft landing and a snooze. Then he arrives, safely on the opposite side and is waving and shouting for you to follow.

“Fucking Gack pulling that shit. Jeezus christ he’s gonna get himself fucking pancaked some time and It’ll be me explaining it to him mum. Fuck fuck fuck.” Fists in pocket, head hot under hoodie, stamping to the crosswalk. Gack’s beautific, punchable face beaming smugly from the corner as he waits.

“Jeezus fuck, it’s dark in here.” Timbot flipped the light switch on, off, on , off, on. Nothing. “What the shantytown flaggrant?”

“I think that pizza-bitch ratted us out to the Grups.” Offered Answer-bot “Or maybe they just shifted the scramble frequency again.”

“Can you get us the updated crack?” Blue butane flame flared for a moment, illuminating Tang as he lit his mod-accurette. The lights came back on.

“Done.” Answer-bot was already back in the kitchen where he had been attempting to reanimate a dried up old housefly he’d found on the drapes.

“Have you guys heard from Doc today?” Timbot seemed a bit agitated, more than usual.
“Shit no. He’s on emerge duties until Thursday.”

“What day is today?” Days of the week lose their meaning except in dealing with the rest of humanity.
“Today is Tuesday.” Answer-bot poked his head into the room between the beaded curtain. He was gone just as quickly leaving nothing but a wake of beaded tinkling.

Quadcore practically fell into the captain’s lap after bursting, all slippery slap, into his quarters.

“Cappin Wunnup,” Lots of bobbing adamsapple and gulping from Quadcore, “It’s Burt, sir. He’s gone and sawn the ship in half!” His voice rocketed into registers unfrequently discerned by human apparati. The Captain stood, pushing Quadcore to the planks of the floor.

“Not on my ship he don’t.” Captain Assplank Quiffley Wunnup III growled forcefully as he ascended to the forecastle, bounding like mythically large lumberjack might bound over hill and dale. Combo, the ships assmop, watched him pass as he was just finishing up his service to first mate Fingerlicken. It looked to him as though the Captain was flying.

When Wunnup reached the fo’c’s’le he sidestepped to the poopdeck, slid aft and then took up his station on the peckerhead. He could see that the entire crew had assembled on deck. This was good, saved him the bother of calling Fingerlicken up here to blow the ship-conference trombone.

“Where’s Burt?” Wunnup spat. Hhhhockptoo. There was something wrong. The crew were all gesticulating wildly. They looked somehow farther away than they had seemed at first.

“Right here, sir.” Burt stepped into the Captain’s view from behind a large, conveniently located barrel. A handsaw, wet with ship blood, dangled at his right. “Something amiss?”

“Oh Burt!” Wunnup cried with visibly moist relief “Thank spasmodic chambermaids you are here. That Quadcore said ye’d gone and sawn the chip in ha-” He stopped just then.

“What is it, sir?” Burt picked a bit of lint off a pickle he’d been carrying in his breast pocket and bit into it, crunching with great enthusiasm.

Captain Wunnup exhaled suddenly and then smiled, “I had one of those weird pains again. You know in my foot? I get them sometimes. It’s completely strange. Feels like a square centimeter of the top of my left foot is on fire. Quite unsettling.”

“Oh yes, sir. Quite unsettling. My marm used to get them, bless her sainted left pinkie toe.” Burt smiled with splendid asskissitude.

“Right then. Peckerhead’s yours Burt.” Captain sailed a limp salute as he melted into the belowdecks. “As you were.” He felt it was important to impart a bit of the rough treatment to these boys. Build their mental such and so.

It wasn’t until sometime later, when standing knee deep in seawater, that the Captain understood that something was up. He’d gone for his after-nap gourmet pickle break to discover that his stash of contraband, rehydrated cuban hand-brined dills had been stolen. His memory flashed back to Burt picking lint off of something vaguely pickle-shaped.

“Maybe Burt knows who stole my pickles.” The captain suggested to himself. Burt was a good guy.
Burt was halfway back to port in one of the life-boats when the Captain’s half of the ship slipped silently below the waves. The crew half, having been overloaded with polystyrene-bead filled beanbag chairs, remained unnavigable but quite afloat. The crewmen had already resorted to loafing, cribbage and buggery by the time rescue craft found them.

Deth Killer was here earlier. Stanley’s not smiling. He’s wiping up spilled ammonia from the bar. He was looking for you.

Me? What the fuck?

I didn’t ask. Whaddya want. Not a question. Stanley never asked. Statement.

Ahm, mentholated shitsturber, Stan. Nods and turns to the supplies. Stanley is back with an organic vapour visor over his bald head. Is he coming back?

I told him when you are usually here. He’s uncorking a brown bottle of something viscous. Sorry man, I don’t fuck with Deth.

S’ok. We’re cool. Semi-autonomous cloud of green vapour is hollaring something about hairclippings in his sausage. Stanley dustbusts him up without batting an eye. Vapour mask is off now. Canister out of the back of the dustbuster. Special modification for capturing these shaftjobs he explains tapping a couple of drops of heavy black liquid into a shot glass. It begins to hum. Sec, chum. He sloshes a sour splash of Little Kremlin vodkee over the dark spots and waves a lit wooden match over the concoction. A jet of green flame farts up for a nanosecond leaving the distinct smell of burnt wiener in the air. Fiddybuk, Stanley drawls.

Glass caps on the counter swept into his apron. Here he is now. Stanley is to the end of the bar recieving another drink order. Deth Killer is standing in the shadow of the entrance.

Deep sinus murk. Crushing blindness. Deafening osmotic mildew invasion and staggering heat. Deth Killer moves without moving. Sand is his hourglass and your are the days of his lives. What? He is upon everyone at once. Whispers. Torment. Flatulence.

Cut that shit out! Stanley’s lost his cool for a moment, but it’s ok. He’s in charge here. Yer bothering the customers!

Apologies. Beam focused. One bothered customer.

I’m bowing to popular demand (well, Google search stats) and including a couple of posts related directly to the performance of the Chicken Dance. This is the first of this content.

The first thing you will want to do is find a wedding. Generally, despite some notable exceptions, this is the only place where a chicken dance can be predicted to occur. Chicken dances have been known to bust out spontaneously in non-matrimonial situations, usually as demonstration or to place emphasis on a conversational point—but if you are serious about witnessing and/or joining in on a true chicken dance session a wedding is the place to do it.

If you don’t readily have a wedding to attend, you can troll the announcements section of the newspaper (if newspapers still exist). It can sometimes be advisable to look for weddings occuring not in your area of residence if for no other purpose than anonymity.  You may also wish to look for weddings that are scheduled closely together, if you are especially taken with the dance or if you screw it up the first time you will have another opportunity to try it again shortly afterward. Bonus: Cake x2. Also, look for receptions that feature a live band (polka, if possible) - far more possibility that the chicken dance will occur.

Once you are suited up (formal wear is required to acheive the correct juxtaposition of social appropriacy with performing an utterly ridiculous gesticulation that involves your entire body) you will want to insert yourself at the wedding reception at the correct time. Chances are that the chicken dance will be performed as a time-proven ice-breaker, quite often after the aunties have had a drink or two and there are still only a couple of the “whacky” relatives on the dancefloor.

I cannot emphasize this point enough: Unless you have an actual invitation, go to the wedding reception, NOT the wedding itself. Performing the chicken dance at the wedding ceremony increases the possibility that you will have your well-dressed ass politely handed to you by the bride’s burly family members. Keep things on the couth, OK?

Now comes the time for the actual dance. You’ll know that it is about to begin by noticing one of the most common signs: the band/DJ will announce it (sometimes called the “bird” dance by the uncouth), you’ll hear the opening bars of the song, the whacky relatives will shriek with sadistic delight and everyone else will be wearing expressions of extreme dread. Don’t let any of these throw you off, remain calm and assume the initial chicken pose.

Here is something to refer to as we get into the meat of this bird.