Chicken Religion

 

You think I fucked up all the Eagle’s juju don’t you? Silver Linings Playbook

The term in China for hookers and side bitches is “Chicken Girl”. So named for their thin stature, preening/strutting/hen-like behaviour and low value. Men are welcomed to have a chicken girl, but not to love them. It’s a status thing, a wife is proud if her man can afford a chicken girl, it’s also an outlet for various fetishes that good married couples don’t indulge in. I am not opposed to this arrangement and the moniker makes absolute sense to me. I have been known to live in the hen house from time to time.

This is neither here nor there. I just find it interesting.

In mankind’s continuing journey towards enlightenment, They (the random They) sometimes conduct random experiments.

I cannot back this up. I am going to attribute this to a conversation I had with St. Anthony during one of our meandering truck rides to somewhere. I think it was an addendum to ‘Ratopia’. We traveled well together, conversations having to be heard to be believed, just believe me. I don’t lie even when I should.

At some point in the 70’s or 80’s a group of scientists got together. Decided they should spend some government money on this little gem. They had two groups of actual chickens and a machine that spit out corn when a target was pecked. Simple enough. Here is where it gets fun.

The control group had to peck the bulls-eye 3 times to get a piece of corn. Every time without fail.

The second group got their reward at random. Sometimes pecking once and getting a handful of corn, sometimes pecking twenty times and getting one little nibblet.

First group went about their chicken business, pecking, scratching, making chicken noises and would, at fairly regular intervals peck the bulls-eye and have a treat.

The second group started exhibiting odd behaviour. Every chicken developed a ritual they would perform before approaching the machine. Scratch the dirt 3 times with the left foot, turn in a counter clockwise circle. Something, anything, every time.

The chickens formed a superstitious religion around random acts of kindness.

Sound familiar?

Walk into a Catholic church on Sunday. Stand-sit-kneel, count your beads, light your candles (in a daze ‘cos I found God _ Nirvana)

Walk into a Buddhist temple. Light some incense and for the love of God do not point the soles of your feet at Buddha, but rubbing his belly is okay.

Go to a Bingo Hall. These people have Troll dolls, rabbits feet and lucky daubers set out before them in a day-glo altar to honor and appease the cruel Bingo Gods.

Any major sports franchise and play-off beards. It’s a thing.

20 years in strip clubs. No different. Girls with shoes that really should have been put to death months prior, “but they are my lucky shoes”. One girl had a bingo dauber in her purse, for reals. Lucky panties, lucky earrings, I got in a fight with a girl once because I used her lucky body spray and thereby rendered it unlucky. I had a good night, sorry Bailey.
Me? It varied, sometimes a coin, a rock, I had a purse held together with safety pins because every time I tried to use a new purse, I had a bad night.

Back in the far off past that we call the 90’s I had a crush on a boy. This was in the time before cell phones, Facebook telling us every time one of us has a sandwich etc.
What’s a girl to do when this boy works random shift-work on contract, disappears for weeks at a time and rarely answers the phone? Well, if you are me and acting quite a bit like a vapid chicken girl…I turned to chicken religion.

Rob Brezny’s Freewill Astrology became my bible (still is) and If I got the right rings on the right fingers, listened to a certain song, put my pantyhose on left leg first yada yada I had a better chance of running into him. BINGO.

I went through a calendar year of this, ‘accidentally’ running into him at a bar, going home with him at random intervals until I got sick of it. Found someone who was nice to me, fucked that up too and in the process, scared the first boy into locking me down. Not on purpose, I was genuinely sick of getting a foot in the ass and cab fare twice a month. People treat you exactly how you allow them to. I walked and he walked after me.

We, as humans, (and chickens apparently) feel the need to find order in our environment, if no order exists, we make our own. Controlling things that cannot be controlled and the end result? Self-fulfilling prophecies wearing masks of comfort. Not a bad philosophy, and it works. It just becomes counterproductive when one gets in a loop of thinking ‘nothing good ever happens to me’.

I kept track of all the money I made for a decade. A super computer couldn’t find a pattern if I gave it a million years to do so. Now I have relaxed and realized I get what I need when I need it, I also have a contract with the universe that gives me everything I want whether it’s good for me or not because at some point I will see the lesson and share it with all y’all (amen).

Life is beautiful. Don’t get me wrong, I still talk to the moon, have a bottle of perfume set aside for important encounters. I have a touch stone in my purse, light incense and smudge the house on the new moon. I am not above manufacturing my own juju.

Now, I think if I get the throw pillows just right on the bed, maybe he will climb back in it with me.
Wolf shirt powers activate?
Or I could just use my words.