Free Range

Speaking of chickens (and family chickens), dooce did a hilarious bit on organic chicken broth, received a bunch of chicken-lovin' hate mail, and then shared the hate mail. Gotta love it. Kinda made my day.

Okay, maybe I wasn't speaking about chickens yet . . . but I'm stuck in a cage right now with a bunch of them, and they are metaphorically eating their own feces and pecking at each other. As my Grandma B would say, they are dirty, dirty birds. I'm all about subverting the system from within. Sort of how I've set up my life. But all of the pecking . . . well, it hurts sometimes . . . and is just annoying the rest of the time. But I can't figure out how to be free range.

Speaking of metaphorically, I taught two vocabulary words that I never needed . . . for that MSU English degree anyhow. "Tenor" and "vehicle". So I (and others who will not be mentioned) would be the tenor of the metaphor and chickens would be the vehicle. Yeah, they are so going to need to know that.

And had to talk about Christianity today, while covering "Boast Not, Proud English" which hurts everyone's brains. Should probably stop ruining the paradigm that "everyone in the world is Christian". It starts those "Emily is a satanist" rumors, at Christmastime . . . AGAIN. Just used a hypothetical to make a point -- "So if the people were coming to convert me . . ." They got stuck on "why would anyone need to convert you?" which wasn't the point. Interesting conversation, but certainly isn't going to win me any popularity points with the chickens.

So it's been a great week. It's almost over. Just have to live through tomorrow. And there will be more pecking. And eating of our own feces. Wonderful image, isn't it? (by the way, if you let the chickens wander around . . . they still will eat their own shit . . . my Grandmother's chickens were "free range" in 1918, before the concept. And they were dirty, dirty birds then too.)

And before you send me hatemail, yes, the chickens . . . they should be allowed to wander around and choose to eat whatever they want. And I don't usually eat chicken, thus not supporting chicken farms. Cause it's not family chicken, unless someone in the family cooks it. And the Crabbypants? We don't usually cook. It makes a mess. And what are all those restaurants for?