Rubber chicken

I was discussing my last blog with a coworker the other day and it came up that I had a mini rubber chicken on my night stand.

He asked why I had such stretchy poultry in the house.

I responded by saying because my regular sized one had fallen apart and I haven't replaced it.

Also, I think rubber chickens are funny. Hilarious, really. Put one in someone's underwear drawer and you have chuckles all around.

Diary of a mad chicken

Once, long ago, I was creative.

I wrote poetry, short stories. I drew pictures. I let my mind imagine what it would be like to travel through time and space. I laid in fields and watched clouds. I rolled down hills and went skinny dipping in Lake Erie. I wore unmatching socks, put bells on my shoes and wore 12-foot long scarves. Not all at the same time, mind you, though the 12-foot long scarf would have helped in the cold Lake Erie waves. I had dreams of driving a government-surplus U.S. Postal Service mail truck across country.

Then I grew up.

Before I decided to toss away whimsy, my friend Bob and I went to a joke shop in downtown Buffalo, each with his own goal. Bob bought plastic vomit. That's the kind of guy Bob was. I bought a rubber chicken and named it Caligula. That's the kind of guy I was.

After carrying around Caligula and doing all the jokes I could with my emperor's namesake, I decided to make a movie about Caligula. The endeavor focused on a rubber chicken that went mad with power in his crazy, stuffed-animal-populated kingdom. I called it "Caligula: Diary of a Mad Chicken." Of course.

I used my grandfather's 35mm manual camera and some color film to create my multi-media slide presentation in my parents' basement.

When I completed my masterpiece, I invited over friends, requesting that they dress up. A few wore suits and ties, but most wore attire befitting "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." And I served refreshments -- cheese balls on toothpicks. I was a glorious host.

The soundtrack is lost to the ages. I know I used The Beatles' "Everybody's Got Something to Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey)" and a track off Rick Wakeman's "No Earthly Connection." I think I used a song called "Rape, Burn and Clap" off "Liztomania," but I could be wrong here.

The depraved chicken was a star, but the ravages of time and heavy drug use all celebrities experience had eaten away at the very chicken itself. By the end, Caligula was torn, tattered, barely a shell of the rubber shell it once was. Caligula was no more.

The tiny chicken I now have came from my wife. She knows how to cheer me up. It reminds of when I was creative.

Thought: Symbolism here. Weird symbolism, but symbolism nonetheless.