[MD] The Sound of Chickens

[John Carl]

Hmmm... I sent this at lunch but it bounced.  I'll try again...


So tell me something fellow moq'ers.  Is a tasty meal in a really good
restaurant something we should chew on?

Or eschew?

For being the low-down pandering that it undoubtedly is.

It fascinates me that it was that particular question which shut Phædrus up.


I mean, there we were, rolling merrily along, keeping score and everything,
dialectic was trailing rhetoric, 2 to nil.  You'd think the game was in the
bag, and suddenly our hero gets thrown by a completely innocent question
like this.

Maybe the question isn't quite as innocent as it first appears.  Maybe
that's the trouble.  When you think about it, the question goes to a lot of
issues between the integrity of the individual intellect and necessity of
pandering to popular taste.  It's a topic that Socrates himself didn't have
a good grasp on, or he would have ended up sippin' wine instead of hemlock.
 And it certainly gave Phædrus more than a few headaches as social rejection
showed him its teeth.

So it's a good question and I think worthy of rolling around our tongues,
sniffing, whiffing and judging the aromaticicity of it's palatte.

Personally, I've got chicken on the brain, working for a permaculture
chicken farm as I do, and just popping in to share some thoughts while
building nesting boxes... See, my nesting boxes are not just designed for
the convenience of the humans gathering the eggs.  I work for a nice lady
who wants her chickens to be happy.  Not just free range, but fun range, as
I pointed out to her yesterday.  So the boxes have perches, are off the
ground and include a covered porch just outside the entrance.

Happy chickens means better tasting eggs.  I don't know if I can tell the
difference with my tongue, but I can with my mind.

Every monday, we have a lunch meeting where Gætane (my french-canadian boss
lady) fixes the meal and so far I've suffered through three of them.  I say
"suffered" because she's shown me some of the best cooking I've ever ate,
and it makes me a little sad to think of what I've been missing my whole
life.  Her ingredients are grown on her farm and her chicken is raised,
killed and dressed by her own hand.  I've heard fresh chicken was better,
but that was the first time I ever had any.  It makes the Tyson stuff seem
mushy and bland in comparison.  It was like, "oh, this is what chicken is
supposed to taste like".

There's a little apartment attached to the shop I work in.  Right now it is
full of crap and in need of a little fix-up, but I am scheming for that
place.  I can picture me living there, working there and eating there for
the rest of my life and getting buried under a tree and being very, very
happy.

If life tastes good, it is good.  Pandering isn't even an issue if you care
about what is good more than you worry about what is popular.