CHICKEN WEEK YEAR 2 - DAY 2 Part 3

We don't waste any of the chicken. No sir. No how. No waste.

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CHICKEN WEEK 2 DAY 2 - Part 2

Darker the breading became, the hungrier I grew. The spices, the zest. Yes. The heartburn and eventual later pain, even a future death of a heart attack as I drive my car off a bridge, they will all be worth it for this taste.

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CHICKEN WEEK 2 DAY 2 - Part 1

I do not know the process that it takes to smash a chicken into a cracker. And as I enjoy eating these, I never do want to know.

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CHICKEN WEEK 2 DAY 1 - Part 4

We start young and full of life. Like chicks. Baby chicks. Do you know they used to dye baby chicks inside the egg so when they'd hatch, kids would get a colored bird? That seems against God.

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CHICKEN WEEK YEAR 2 - DAY 1 part 3

In Chinatown, they hang the chicken and the shoes together. Just don't wear the bird.

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CHICKEN WEEK YEAR 2 - DAY 1 part 2

The preparations for this year's chicken week have been underway for a long, long time. Photos have been taken all over the country. Well, the state. OK, two cities. Give us a break. We both work a lot. That, however, does not mean that we don't love and honor chicken week with the intensity that some people celebrate the 4th of July. Chicken week means eating chicken every single day. Wait! We do that already!

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CHICKEN WEEK YEAR 2 - DAY 1

It's a duck, but it was near the chicken.

It's chicken week all over again.

Yes, it's a week to celebrate the love that is chicken. Fried chicken, which she now knows how to make perfectly, live chickens, toy chickens, chicken wings with bacon on them.

It's all about chicken!

Plus!

Happy birthday to my favorite chicken lover! Woo!

Let's get the chicken week going!

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There are not many dogs who have their own email addresses. She is one.

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Bleary. I stare out bleary. That's the word. It's the time of the night when the alcohol makes your tongue numb and when beer just tastes cold. The flavor has been taken away by the need to drink away everything until you reach the stage when you can barely stand. Tomorrow, all my problems will still be here. But tonight, my hands are coated with paint and tiki cups are filled with Jack Daniels and I'm drinking the last of the beer. One night, I got so drunk I couldn't even walk, so I crawled down to the original in the strip and sat in a table by myself and ate chili and sandwiches until I could think. I knew I had to be home, I knew what I had to face. But I didn't want to die. So I just kept eating sandwiches, so I could drive where I didn't want to go. But I had to go and I doubt anyone noticed me crawling down the dark sidewalks, eyes bleary. Wondering why life couldn't be the way I wanted and drinking until I couldn't remember who I was. Smoking until the pain in my body and head goes away and passing out for four hours so I can lead another day. I should have just skipped that restaurant and drove. It would have all worked out better.

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I fail to come up with a rational explanation for this. It's almost there but not quite.

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Backwards prayers. Like, "There's gonna come a time when you're gonna go with whoever's gonna get you the highest." And "Always remember not to trust me." Your prophecies said that this would happen. They foretold the end of the world and like the people who refused to listen, many are the drowned in the wake of reality. Mouths full of salt water compose choirs of lung blown singers assembled to leave behind messages that will never be heard or, worse, ignored. Left to float away, miles away and left in nets, ruining the catch of the day. I hope there isn't a heaven. when it's over, I just want to sleep and not think. That'd be my paradise. My feet are already getting stuck in the soft ocean's floor, the seaweed already has my throat. My lips are already moving and you'll never hear what they have to say. I never wanted to swim in the ocean, because I knew there were so many dead things below. And now I'm one of them.

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Everything worked out the way they all wanted it to, he surmised, as he slid back from his chair and sipped from the many times refilled drink. "She was sitting there crying. She smashed all the glasses on the mirror," she sang through his headphones. His fingers hurt from pounding into the keys, writing these words. Sometimes, if he sits still too long, he falls asleep and wakes himself up by screaming. The lens showed what you wanted in your heart all along. It made him happy. Wistful, but happy nonetheless.

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There are alternate realities.

I used to think mine was the main reality, but now, what helps the days go by faster is to realize that my reality is the one where things were different. So that somewhere out there, there's a place where someone rolls over in the night and says, "Wow, imagine how much different it would be if things didn't work out?" Someone will mumble, "Don't think like that." And hands will be held under pillows and sleep will come. I exist so that this reality can be for someone else.

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Ellwood City stories #5

When I see the sign after the bridge, I feel like life makes sense. I smell the coffee and cigarettes and baking, just like my youth. Just a dozen non-fancy sugar coated.

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Ellwood City stories #4

More like a Monaca story.

This is where I spent 3 years of my life. Loading trucks. Building bikes. Cleaning toilets.

Going in the store, I saw people I used to work with, but they didn't know me. It was 15 years ago. I was a brief flicker in their years in retail.

I wonder if I had stayed behind where my life would be and then I drive away as fast as I can.

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Angelo is not impressed with my work. He just wants to make a big mountain of pillows and sleep while I play video games. That's the life he wants for his dad.

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Last night, the sky was bright like the sun and wondered if you saw it. I wanted to sit on the porch and just enjoy it, stay up all night and never go back in. The clouds became flakes of paint on the sky of the world and they slowly crackled down, as the ground was filled with broken trees, the night sky was still and magic. I could see energy floating through the air. I could hear the love laments of the cicada. Smoke curled my nose and I closed my eyes and fell asleep surrounded by the world.

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I wonder sometimes how I got where I am and sometimes I can obsess that where I am is not where I want to be, but I know better, because none of us has that choice. So I just enjoy whatever and wherever and whenever now is, whatever place it ends up pulling me along. There is no fate, there is no destiny, there is no magic. All there is is the moment that you have right now. And then it's all black.

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Her mom gave her a fake forest fire when she left home. It spins and makes her room seem like its burning down like the couches outside her home, perched high above hell.

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Pikichu continues his lonely vigil above the cigarettes at the all night Wal-Mart. Druggies, drunks, the sad, the lost, all four of the above. He watches over them and gives them the nails to their coffins.

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As opposed to...

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