Pecked to Death by the Cannibal Chickens

Well I’ll be dipped in the colonel’s secret sauce!  I just learned something ground splattering: Chicken cannibalism isn’t the new, che-che underground cult I thought it was. 

That’s right.  It turns out chicken cannibalism has been known about and written about for years, at least since 2002, when Jay Rossier wrote in Living with Chickens that:   “…grown chickens will sometimes peck on their coopmates under certain circumstances, and the results can be bloodily disastrous in a very short time.”

Jay devotes more than one disturbing page to describing the age-old practice of chicken cannibalism.  Why those cannibal chickens don’t even wait till their meal dies to start a’dining!  Just get too close under “certain circumstances” and that chicken’s liable to take a’pecking on you (if you’re a chicken, that is).  That’s taking this whole ”living food” thing just way too far. 

When I was a small child, I had a chicken that liked to peck on me.  We named it “Pecky.”  And now I know that mean little pecker was really trying to filler-up on Me meat!  No thank you, I’ll take chickens who eat chicken over chickens who eat me any day of the year.

Of course, letting your chickens out to smoke and drink at the local cannibal chicken saloon is the quickest and surest way to stop this bloody disaster of live feeding.

Steve Gets Fed

“Burp–mmm–yum. Mmm.  Good,” muttered Steve.  A quick jump into the Lucky Creation restaurant had shut my bionic tooth up — for the moment.

“Yum–mmm–foood!  Mmm- Wait!  Where’s it going?  Where’d it go!  Where it go!!!???” Steve demanded.

“I swallowed it.”

“Why’d you DO that?”

“Listen, Steve.  We have to come to some kind of understanding.”

“Food! Food! I want want food!”

“Steve, Do I have your attention?”

“Foo-oood!”

“Steve, I didn’t get a bionic tooth so I can have some whiny six million dollar baby on my hands.”

“Oh.  So why did you get a six million dollar tooth, then?”

“As far as I can tell, Steve, this is a secret government experiment to find out if the Six Million Dollar Tooth program is worthwhile or not.”

“Well, it it? Is it worthwhile?”

“I have no idea, Steve. That’s what we are going to find out. You and me.”

“So what is the govenment secret and why are you part of it and what do you expect from me and does it involve something a little more exciting than this interminable dialogue???”

That’s when I shoved another fork full of Lucky Creation Chow Mein in my mouth and shut that freaken tooth up. Man, does that tooth ever sleep?

Steve, My Bionic Tooth

Well, no sooner had Steve and I left the dentist when we got in the first little bit of a good deal of trouble.   I was waiting to cross the street when a little voice in my head said, “JUMP!”  

I refrained from hopping into the oncoming Hummer’s pretty silver grill, but just barely.  What was going on here?   ”Who the hell just told me to jump,” I asked the contents of my head.

“That was me,” said Steve, my bionic tooth.  ”I just wanted to see how much influence I have on you.”

“Steve,” I said, “Dude, try not to kill me, okay? If I die, they probably will bury you in my mouth.”

“No way,” he said.  “I’m worth six million dollars.  They are not leaving me to rot in your mouth.”

“Listen Steve,” I said, casting about for a better argument. “Maybe you won’t be buried in my mouth, but you are there now, so we should try to get along.”

“Whatever.  Are you always this boring?  I need more action. Can’t you run out in traffic or something?  I like the taste of blood.”

“Oh Steve, this is going to be a long…” and my thoughts trailed off.  A long what?  A long lifetime, that’s what. Steve had been placed in my head for the rest of my days on earth.  My living days on earth, that is.

“JUMP!” he said, as a bus approached.  I considered returning to the dentist that moment, but decided to give it time.  Maybe we just got off on the wrong foot.

A Chip in the Six Million Dollar Tooth

Yesterday, the dentist got to drilling and cementing my six million dollar tooth, and before I knew it she was making an announcement.

“We’ve placed a chip in your tooth…”

“What??!” I said, confused.  ”Wait, don’t you mean you removed a chip.”

“No! We added a chip,” she said again, and I blinked.

“You chipped my tooth?” I asked, incredulous.

“NO!  Can’t you listen?” she hissed.  ”I said, ‘We placed a chip in your tooth.’  A silicon chip.”

“Oh!” I said, trying to determine if this was good news.

“Yes, and now your tooth is really smart.  Smarter, faster, farther,” she said.  She was looking out the view of her big San Francisco window.  The lobby of her building looks like an Aztec tomb covered in silver and gold, and I’d always wondered why that shouldn’t make me awfully uncomfortable.

“Gee, thanks.” I said.  “This is going to cost me, isn’t it?”

“That’s not all,” the Dentist smiled.  And then I heard it, the baby cries of a newborn tooth wailing and wailing in the back of mouth.

“It talks!” She said, and her eyes glowed with a strange light over the surgeon’s mask. 

“Waaaaaaaaaa,” cried my new talking tooth.  “Me hungry!!!”

To be continued…

Tune in later for the next episode of The Bionic Tooth.

The Six Million Dollar Tooth

“We can rebuild it, we have the technology.” That’s what the dentist said.  What she didn’t say was how many times the tooth in question would need to be built and rebuilt, but what do you expect from a bionic tooth?  It’s going to need some upkeep.  What do you think, you just throw six mill at the tooth and it’s over?  The maintanance IS the real cost.

“It will be stronger, tougher, and chew faster than any tooth in history,” she promised.

Cut to the Bionic Man music.  My generation can attest to the power Steve Austin had over our young minds.  That’s why I have named my tooth Steve.  Any tooth willing to undergo that many procedures for his country is my kind of tooth!

2008 Out with a Wham

For all my life I’d like to write a nice normal post about how great my writing career is going over on my straight-person Website, but it always sounds so lame and I end up back over here at Bad Apple with a twisted-up lampoon of what I had started. 

That’s probably because my writing career isn’t going all that well, people, and my best writing can’t hide that fact, even from myself.  And I’ve noticed lately that in this particular time and space and planet, life pounds on like a 24-7 shit storm, and it’s just barely possible to extract a positive number of calories while securing a home and two shoes that appear to match — socks and underware — the whole nine hundred and ninety-nine fucking yards.

One thing I know, though, is that however hellacious the toxic dump of my attitude may wreak right now, tomorrow is another day, and not JUST another day, friends, but a whole new year! And I’m confident that once my eyes pop open in the new annum, I’ll be a new girl in a new world.

So in 2009, I look forward to days of long blissful moments in between publishing my novels, weekends at the ranch in Yosemite with Salman Rushdie, a stream of chocolates, accolades, controversies and awards, and happy little posts from paradise.  May it happen to you, too!!

Extraordinary Cannibal Chickens

Things had been surprisingly quiet around here since a certain brown paper package arrived in the mail last month.  Seeing how the cannibal chickens took a major hit in their 401k of late, they seemed to be taking it far too well.  Except for the dark bags and circles around their cocks combs, they seemed about as content and at peace as any chicken who eats chicken can hope to be or should expect. 

What was the secret behind the gentle satisfaction that had crept into their clucks?  What was in that paper package, and could I have some?

Got BARF? Blogger Afflicted by Realworld Facts Syndrome

Has the real world afflicted your Bloggerness?  I myself have a raging case of BARF, aka Blogger Afflicted by Realworld Facts.  My blogger equilibrium has been ruined for months now, and I’m so sorry.   It really sucks to have to try to get a blogger groove going again after all my previous BARFing around earlier this fiscal year. 

Bloody hell, it’s like three steps forward three miles back, have you noticed?  And it’s all the fault of those greedy gas executives.  Okay, maybe I can’t claim a direct line between my inability to post with the price of gasoline, but it does explain my obsession with attempting to level my transportation spending by genetically manipulating old Hank over there. 

Not that I have the time to feed self and horsecraft anymore, or the money.  I for one find it exceedingly exorbitant to house body, soul and Hank/horse-hybrid in a Left Coast locale.  Why, life has become downright untenable out here Cal-lee-for-niy-aye Way.  

That’s why I plan to freeze myself and Hank-horse over there, here and now, in the prime of life (for me anyway – Hank’s another story).  Imagine the wonder when we awake un-aged, woman and centaur, in a kinder, more evolved future. What do you think? Want to make it a group date?

I’ll try to keep posting more before my date with The Big Freeze (just in time for the holidays!). Because BARF must be conquered one post at a time.

Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse is GOOD

Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse is so funny, you will forget it’s actually about the apocalypse!  I mean, after a while you are like, “This is so satisfying and so unpredictable and such a fun read, but… there is this little voice I can barely hear at all that is tapping me on the shoulder at the edge of consciousness saying:” “Yeah, but this is about the end of the world.”

But hey, if you gotta have an end of the world, (and lately I wonder if it has to be sooner than later) you can go a lot worse than to spend it with Victor Gishler and his Go Go Girls of the Apocalypse. 

An Extraordinary Flow of Sass

This site ain’t perfect, but it has its moments.  Here are a few of bad apple’s own personal favorites.

I can’t help it, I like Tomatofornia.  What is not to like about a tomato-fixated paradise on Earth?

Okay, I get a lot of cannibal hits — it’s wierd, but it works. The real stars here are the cannibal chickens.  They eat other chickens.  And go camping and stuff.

What, too stange for you? 

Maybe you really hate passwords, or maybe your democracy was secretly replaced with Folgers Crystal coffee, Tee Em.

And not to be missed…

…History: “How the Irish Invented the Potato Smoothie”

…Culture: “Snakes are People, Too, St. Patrick!”

…How To: “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Hitlers”

…and Health! “The Bug Diet”