Readership is slowly growing, but I still feel like I can get away with blogosphere murder. Maybe just a misdemeanor? Unless someone really wants to dig deep in the archives, they’ll never see how rubber ball bouncing these posts can be. Either way, my mind often scatters and as I put the multiple shards to paper, not all are worthy of a story or poem. These are the things that keep me awake at night, awash in irrelevance. But as the kids like to say, if I have to think it, so do you. Some things you just can’t unsee. #1 Every home you visit feels professionally staged, never lived in. It’s like your friends and family live in a Room-To -Go or an Ashley Furniture store. Yet, you're own house isn’t just lived in, it is LIVED in. Not only do you know where the bodies are buried but also the pet hair tumbleweeds and all those dimes you keep neglecting to pick up. Your friends have all those things. They just hide them better. And their houses are spectacular! #2 Surely someone has wondered what branch of the military Colonel Sanders served in. Not the real man. But the mascot. #3 I've yet to encounter a religion that specifically reveres the chicken, nor have I encountered a religion that explicitly and specifically forbids the consumption of chicken flesh. Someone educate me. #4 What did the chickens do to be so despised? #5 Cultural appropriation is nothing new and it seems plausible that, at a level just above its worst, the appropriation misunderstands the whole idea behind that piece of culture. The end result is a bastardization. In a bad way. #6 There is a good way to bastardize something. Don't worry about it. #7 I wonder if, in some part, the names of superheroes are based on a bastardized culturally appropriated idea of individual names in various Native American societies. Or, at least, the minimally researched old white man's understanding of them. I can honestly see someone looking at the English versions of names like Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse and going "Yeah, I can use that." #8 I’ve revisiting the movie Immortals which features a yet-to-be Superman Henry Cavill and career revival era Mickey Rourke. I enjoyed the film when it came out but my remembrance of it places it in a post Zack Snyder 300 era where everything considered derivative was dismissed. I watch it now and I’m seeing new layers. Sure, I understand the comparisons in the action scenes but the in-between feels more like a theatrical play, both in acting and set design. There’s more subtlety here and I’m enjoying it immensely. #9 Honestly, I'm working backwards on superhero name idea. It didn't start with superheroes. It started with G. I. Joe, Transformers and how their characters are named. Is it a stretch? No doubt. But I've felt many of the 80's cartoons and toy lines were coded this way, intentionally tribal in the appropriated sense. Yes or no, greed is in play regardless. Do not think I don't see the absurdity in the thought. #10 Absurdity like this is what keeps me up at night. That and... #11 In both fiction and reality, there are some beliefs that run along the lines of "consume the flesh to gain power.” Could be a beast. Could be an enemy. Could be the flesh of an otherworldly entity. “Eat your gods!” as someone off his rocker once said. #12 What power then do we hope to gain from chickens? #13 Do humans just hate chickens? Were there secret chicken wars we waged to bring them to heel? Was Colonel Sanders the Alexander the Great of the chicken world? Or was he Genghis Khan? #14 I stand by my two favorite jokes and will tell them over and over again. #15 Oklahoma: Texas:: Canada: USA # 16 Fur is murder. Cannibalism is manslaughter. #17 Was Chicken Run a propaganda film?
Photograph taken, copyrighted and provided by Juxtaposedphotography. Used by explicit permission from the artist.
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