Aversion to the Foul

A Gierk Dot Com investigation

    I have a friend that does not consume the bird.  I don't find this strange, there are a lot of people out there that won't eat a many of things, including myself.  But face it, when a person declines a certain type of food it's followed by a reason.  I.E.  "Hey Man, you want mayo on your burger?"  "No thanks, that shit is nasty"  Nasty being the reason why they don't want it on their burger. It's pretty obvious why they don't want it.  Not to mention a lot of people just don't like mayo.  So no explanation is really needed.

       But my friend puzzles me and made me start an investigation.  He says he doesn't eat the bird because the bird is crazy.  I try to push him into the real reason, but he insisted that foul of any kind isn't food but crazy.  "You ever see them walking or flying around, their all crazy, they make no sense and do strange things."  "You mean that they flock, eat shit off the ground, peck their heads back and forth when they walk?" was my retort.  "That and much, much more, just take a close look at them, look into their eyes.  It's like staring into the eyes of Charlie Manson."

        And that was all I would get from him at the time.  So I started a investigation.  I went out and got some funding from www.BayAreaJobBoard.com  to pursue my project.  I talked to the owner of this dot com site and he said that maybe my friend was the crazy one and not the bird.  The owner even said that I may also be a little off balance. (He was kind enough to point out all my grammar and spelling errors at www.thagierk.com )  But never a less he gave me cash to fund my investigation.

The Investigation

        Bird: noun,warm-blooded egg-laying vertebrates characterized by feathers and forelimbs modified as wings.  (nothing about them being crazy in this definition) I looked in many dictionaries and found nothing to support my friend. 

        I went to a county fair down in Gilroy to look at and ask the birds if indeed they were crazy.  They wouldn't respond to any of my questions.  Just sat there in their cages and pecked their heads.  I sat there and pecked my head with them before I was kicked out by the Future Farmers of America Patrol. (But not before I snapped some pictures.)           

        I asked a coworker if he thought birds were crazy, he quickly turned around and tried to find a price for crazy birds on Ebay.  So much for his college education. 

        After thinking about it for a little bit, I decided to watch a movie called "The Birds" by Alfred Hitchcock.  In that film I found many situations in which the birds went crazy.  Dam right loco.  But they were crows, and we all know that crows are evil by nature.  Many a artists have written, painted, and talked about crows as evil metaphors.  I've never heard about a Blue Jay losing his fucking mind and killing people, not even in a horror story.  Then again I know of no one who killed a crow and ate it.  Not that people don't do it, I just don't of any.  But lets face it, my friend doesn't like chicken, rooster, hen or turkey as I'm sure the rest of us do.  So I'll just try to stay in the chicken/rooster/turkey family.

        I looked at some children's books and videos and found that artists do find chickens stupid.  Hence Chicken Little and the Sky is falling. On T.V. I watched a cartoon called "Cow Chicken". 

  Both the chicken and the cow I found incredibly stupid.  I may eat more chicken and steak just because of that cartoon.   Speaking of food.....

        I went to Google and looked up Crazy Chicken and about five listings down I found this recipe http://www.geocities.com/webcipes2/chick/i117.html .  Mixing cola and chicken does sound crazy.  But does it make the chicken crazy?  I don't think so.

        I tried to talk to the PR rep for Foster Farms, and he quickly hung up the phone when I started using crazy and chicken in the same sentence.  No shock there.

        Driving pass KFC, I decided to drop in and talk to one of the employees.  Their lack of the English language and my direct line of questioning about the foul could not be more confusing to both me and the cashier.  A paraphrase transcript looks like this.

   Walking up to the cashier.

    Me: "Hi, how you doing? I'm Gierk, and I'm doing an investigation for www.thagierk.com

             would you mind answering some  questions?"

    Them: "Welcome to KFC can I take your order?"

     Me:    "Do you know if the chickens you use are crazy?"

     Them: "What number is that?"

     Me:     "No Number, just answer the question please."

      Them: (looking around to see if the manager is watching, he is not) "Me don't                    

                    understand?  What you mean is Chicken Crazy?"

      Me:    "El, Polo Loco?" "Is Colonel Sanders the Hitler of chickens?"

      Them: "No" she replies (manager walks over)  Is there a problem?" the manager asks

      Me:    (not wanting to hear his PC KFC ass, I change subjects) Yeah, can

                I get a number 1 with a side of coleslaw and mash potatoes."

       Them: (Manager taking over the register) Original or Extra Crispy?

      Me: "Extra Crazy, I mean Extra Crispy"

Manager ignoring my off handed remark punches in the order.

I then reached into my jacket and pulled out an envelope marked "Investigation Budget" and paid for the meal, put the receipt in the envelope and sat down.

As I sat down on the cold hard plastic seat I decided to go over my budget allowance and realized that the 20 dollars that was given to me for this investigation was almost out.  I had a receipt for the county fair (parking, food and gas) and with this meal I was almost out of cash.  I thought about going back to my sponsor and asking for more cash, but being that I submitted my investigation 3 months ago and still really had no end date, he may not fund me another round.  Hell, I think he might have forgotten that he gave 20 bones to begin with.  So I ate my meal and went back to my office, gathered my notes and summarized my investigation.

1. No proof that the bird is crazy

2. Future Farmers of America don't like ThaGierk

3. Chickens don't look crazy if you peck your head at the same time they peck their head.

4. Co-Worker is still looking up crazy chickens on Ebay.

5. Films portray birds as evil, Cartoons and Children's stories portray them as not so bright.

6. Foster Farms won't comment.

7. KFC serves a pretty tasty chicken leg and thigh but really couldn't answer my questions to my satisfaction.

    In conclusion, this chicken is crazy and not food thing throws me back to a book I read called the "The Human Zoo"  A sociology study in human behavior.  Humans living in big cities compared to primates being held in captivity vs. them living in the wild.  Primates being held in captivity do things that studies have shown they don't do in the wild.  Masturbation, throwing crap and killing for fun.  Humans who live in big cities do all kinds of weird shit that they wouldn't do if they lived in a small tribe in the middle of nowhere.  Part of the reason is, that when you live in small tribes, survival comes first.  So food, water, shelter, and protection is what you spend most of your day doing.  You don't have time to being hanging from a leather strap in the middle of a teepee while your girlfriend beats you with a whip.  Nor would a small tribe allow such behavior.  So what does this have to do with chickens being crazy?

    If they are crazy, then it's because they are being held in cages before being processed for food.  That can be the only reason, but how does that explain free range chicken?  It doesn't.  So I told my friend about the investigation I did, and after all I told him about what I learned his reply was this.

    "Dam Gierk, if I knew you were going to do all that I would have told you that I just don't like the texture of the bird.  That's why I don't eat them."  I now refer you back to paragraph one sentence two.