Change of location...

Hey Chicken Diction fans, I have moved to Wordpress for indiscernible reasons, and soon enough I will have new posts up there to make it even more interesting. To see it, follow this link:

www.chickendiction.wordpress.com

See you there.

matthew

Because I'm feeling saucy today...

My public service announcement for the day.

Chicken education for you.

Looking for someone to support?

Me and my chickens heart Cynthia McKinney... (the interviewer, not so much).

For the record.

Occasionally I find the need to stray from the not-so-subtle object of this blog and address matters of near equal importance to the goings-on of my backyard brood of hens. So for all you folks out there who are caught up in the fantasy world of dynasty-love, regurgitated go-get-'em politics, or the cult of personality, here you go. Being better than Bush does not mean they are better than each other.

Chickens in the News! #4

If only our choices were as fun as this...

Chickens in the News! #3

I'm not sure exactly how this is news, but it was in the news.

Blessed chick: Hen that lays green eggs
Associated Press
Wednesday, January,30 2008 (Mexico city):

Ordinary-looking hen with brown feathers has become a celebrity in Cuautitlan, a small village north of Mexico City, because every day she lays an egg with a green shell.

At first glance, Rabanita looks no different from the other chickens in the yard.

"Since the December 5 she has been laying green eggs," said her owner, Elvira Romero.

Romero is a housewife who got the hen as part of a government aid package to help villagers.

"Well, my children say 'Oh Mummy, God looks favourably on you so that you were given as a prize a chicken that lays green eggs'," said Romero with a smile.

So far, there is no explanation for the colour of the eggs.

Romero says that Rabanita does not have a special diet different from the rest of the chickens, just the usual corn, tortillas and chicken feed.

Scientists believe that shell colour - which does not affect the colour or flavour of the yolk or white - is determined by the genes, and say blue or green shells are frequently found in the Araucana chicken strain.

Green egg layers attract a premium in some parts of South America, where poultry breeders aim to produce chickens, which lay nothing else.

Honestly, this is ridiculous. As if this is some sort of new discovery...Reuters obviously is not reading Chicken Diction!

Chickens in the News! #1

Welcome to a new mid-week Chicken Diction series, called "Chickens in the News!" This will be a weekly post of a picture, story, news item, or other interesting happening, all involving chickens in some way or another. As our chickens get older, and therefore wiser it has become apparent that they are that much more world-savvy and I believe it is important to more fully represent their worldliness by including news about chickens around the world, in your backyard and mine.

For the inaugural installment of "Chickens in the News!" we we go to Shainghai, China where chickens are not only very skinny it would seem, but naked, dead, and hanging from a wire. Not all chickens enjoy the luxury of a Tucson backyard paradise, remember that young whippersnapper Chicken Diction aficionados. One of this blog's goals is to expose the harsh realities of the varied and complex lives that chickens have throughout this sometimes cruel world.

(This picture courtesy Reuters.com.
Okay not really - they don't know I have it, I didn't pay for it or ask permission, but I bet they didn't ask permission of that little girl either.)

Tragedy continued.

Well they identified the young man who was shot and killed near my house. Manuel Fimbres-Moreno was 26. He will always be 26. I did not know Manuel - at least that I know of. But I am terribly saddened by his murder and cannot begin to imagine the pain of his family.

They arrested someone on suspicion of killing him. The kid they arrested is 21. Certainly it is not proven that he is responsible, but undoubtedly prison is in his future given the broken beyond repair system of injustice. For me it is simply a furtherance of a terrible tragedy. But this time, more than ever we will be complicate in what takes place as the tax payer funded "justice" system will do everything possible to ensure that no rehabilitation will ever take place.

Are we now safer that a young man will spend years in prison learning how to be more violent, less feeling, possibly drug addicted, and completely removed from his family? And when he returns to our community (96 percent of all Arizona prisoners do) will he have any better idea how to positively impact the people around him? Or will he be hardened, broken, and lacking any real understanding of what responsibility would actually mean in a situation like this? Will he ever have a chance at anything different than just that? These are questions I ask myself, but are never asked when laws are passed and people punished. Whatever happens to this young man, will we as a community be better for the judgment that is made on his life? I am positive we will not. This makes the tragedy of last Wednesday evening even that more horrendous.

Tucson police identify man who was fatally shot last week...

The day in news - as I see it.

Handcuffed kids steal US border agent car

MONTERREY, Mexico (Reuters) - Three Mexican minors detained in California on suspicion of smuggling drugs stole a U.S. Border Patrol car while still wearing handcuffs and drove it back across the border to Mexico...(oops)

Myanmar Buddhist monk stands before police


Ahmadinejad visits NYC and is treated as Bush should be


Navy to mask Coronado's swastika-shaped barracks

CORONADO, Calif., -- The U.S. Navy has decided to spend as much as $600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications to obscure the fact that one its building complexes looks like a swastika from the air...(why not just stick with honesty?)

Because it matters what people say on blogs.

But it does matter what happens here.
Check this out too.

At least I don't have hyenas for pets.

There are some friends of mine who think that having chickens in my backyard is strange. Seriously. Everything from blank stares to uncomfortable pauses followed by a "wow..." that trails off into some other discussion. The number of times I get asked "what do you have chickens for?" is quite astounding considering that each person in this country consumes 250 eggs per year(two eggs every third day) and 53 pounds of chicken (that's about a drumstick a day). Regardless of the (unenlightened) crazed looks I may sometimes receive from friends and acquaintances, nothing compares to this. ↓

This family in Syria keeps hyenas as pets. Now, I once spent the night on the Serengeti in Tanzania while studying there. Me and 26 other people were camped out in a circle, only to be woken to the most devilish cry from the depths of hell I have ever heard in my short three-decade life, coming from a full-grown smiling, big-eared animal seen above. I can't imagine waking up to that on a regular basis, and if my neighbors and friends knew just how terrible that sound was, they would be overwhelmingly thanking me for my choice of backyard chickens. But from now on when I get strange looks about raising chickens for eggs, compost, and entertainment, I will say, "well at least I don't have hyenas for pets." That'll make 'em think.

This saying will surely join "it's hotter than the inside of a live chicken!" in its place as a colloquial, well-read opinion on the general state of things. I now give it to the blogging world as but a small contribution to an ever growing sea of knowledge that helps us get through our day. You're welcome world.

Back after three years...

Well I don´t know what to say. Three years is nearly too long to comment. The monsoons have arrived in Guatemala and the days are interrupted by a dousing of moisture that hangs in the air somewhere between refreshment and stickiness. The city bustles like it always has and the shopkeepers are the same and different all at once. With the presidential elections only a few months away there is a tangible electricity in the air over who might win and what real effects that will have. There is never a good choice for president in Guatemala, and meanwhile celebrations of the very military that is responsible for a holocaust against her own people go on in what looks like a police state and is clearly a descent into the horrific past all the while forgetting the terror that gripped the country not so long ago. We have been in the city for two nights now and we are itching for a departure to the mountains and the winding roads of the countryside. I don´t know how easy it will be to download photos while here but I will certainly try. For now, follow the link on the word ¨celebrations¨ and you will get a great idea of what takes place in this slice of the world. (We happen to be staying at James´s the photographer´s house so I can´t but help shamelessly plug his blog, never mind that he has incredible pictures.)

Just another day on the US/Mexico border.

With a phone call everything can change so quickly. One minute you are chuckling to yourself over some private joke that you remembered from the evening before, and then the next minute your friend’s voice is over the phone from somewhere south of Tucson in the middle of the desert telling you they found the body of the woman they were looking for. She had been crossing the border and then the desert like so many thousands of others, looking for work. The body had already begun to decompose he tells me, and the hair on my arms stands up – I don’t know if it is from the air conditioning that just kicked back on or the gravity of his words that kicked me in the gut. There was a strain in his voice that was palpable and it wasn’t the static that from poor cell phone coverage. There are times when phones have this unnerving quality, like a massive car wreck between juxtaposition of events and interconnectedness of us all. Sitting in the shaded confines of my office, the picture of a woman’s body, decomposed and lonely, was never clearer, never more distinct, and yet miles if not worlds away from me. The very border that killed her made my reality possible. The insufferable heat she succumbed to was my privilege and my enjoyment. The car wreck of our circumstances is not easily cleaned up.

Somewhere, only an hour’s drive from where I write, more phone calls are being made to the necessary authorities, and surely prayers are being whispered on the dry burning wind of the desert. Water is touching the lips of those who endeavored to find this unnamed person, and sweat is being wiped from brows with the knowledge that the cars are not far off. A woman who died with nothing but courage, is now with companions she never knew. The family she was walking towards is certainly weeping at the news of her confirmed death, and yet sighing with the relief that she will not be one of the hundreds who simply evaporate into the oblivion of the desert. Close by, I am sure there are those who are sidestepping such an ending, walking a tightrope to survival and the possibility of work in the North. Meanwhile we jump from air conditioned cars to offices and back, our agendas tightly under our arms, and our destinations “legally” sanctioned by convenience of laws made on our behalf. As long as there are jobs here and US sponsored poverty elsewhere, women like this will die alone in the desert. As we are responsible for the policies of this country, we are then responsible for this woman's death.