Non-Exploding Chickens

From time to time, as the terror alert level creeps closer to blood red, as Homeland Security threatens to review all my past reading material, and as strange acronymic law enforcement groups discuss good and bad protesters and what to do about them at secret meetings in my city, I fantasize about getting away from it all. Then, when I'm done doing that, I think about bagging it all and moving to New Zealand.

You all know about New Zealand. That's the country at the lower right-hand corner of the Mercator map of the world that looks closer to Australia than it is, is proud of its flightless birds, and is now the place everybody imagines when they think of Hobbits and Middle Earth, thanks to the movies. Why wouldn't I want to go there? That's the question I've been asking myself ever since Ronald Reagan got his way with the electorate and my ex won the house.

Well, now I am getting answers to that question, thanks to the internet.

First of all, they have non-exploding roosters there. That's right, they have roosters that run around and look as if they are exploding roosters, but they are only fooling you and they don't actually explode.

What happened was a rooster was seen in Christchurch near Sydenham, New Zealand, running around with canisters with protruding wires strapped to its legs. That, as we all know, is a clear and unmistakable indication that a rooster will probably explode. Then the police chased the rooster into an alley, killed it, and called in an army bomb disposal unit to deal with the canisters, which were determined by them to be non-exploding.

My point being that the whole terror alert thing has gone too far. It's gone so far it's reached the lower right-hand corner of the world. Think of it this way: if you have to spend three hours chasing down non-exploding roosters for fear that they will explode, EVEN IN CHRIST-for-God-saken-clear-off-the-map-CHURCH, NEW ZEALAND, you can't be safe anywhere.

But I discovered that story by accident. I wasn't looking for information on non-exploding roosters, I was looking up SkunkShot gel.

I wanted to know what SkunkShot gel was and why it was being used by the police in Los Angeles to keep homeless people out of potential squats. My search led me to Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Motto: Te Whare Wananga o te Upoko o te Ika a Maui (Translation: We Wish We Were on a Beach in Maui.) It turns out that SkunkShot gel began with the realization, by scientists at Victoria U, that North American skunks stink.

That is a more impressive discovery than it sounds, since, after all, North American skunks are not native to New Zealand. I imagine many trips back and forth between New Zealand and North America to get the exact stinkiness worked out in scientific detail.

Really, that last paragraph was just me being abusive. What the scientists actually did was create a gel with skunk-smell ingredients, now available in the form of SkunkShot. You can use it to make anything you want smell like a skunk. The Los Angeles police have been using SkunkShot to stink up potential squats. They are so creative. No doubt the subject came up at the LEIU conference.

My own thinking is that SkunkShot has a lot more potential than that. For example, Metro has been concerned for years that homeless people have gotten in out of the rain under bus shelters. So much so that they've torn them down. No more! Just apply SkunkShot to those shelters and those people will keep away for good!

Problems with panhandlers, Seattle? SkunkShot your sidewalks! They won't be back!

Yes, New Zealand is all right. They only make the stuff there. And the roosters don't really explode.

No Rest from 9-11

When I think of terror I think of Hitchcock's Birds landing on the jungle gym behind what's-her-name, Tippi Hedren. Terrorism is supposed to invoke terror, right? As I remember it, it was Mao Tse Tung himself who once said, "Effective terror is targeted terror which uses fear to immobilize the enemy. Boy, that Hitchcock Bird movie was scary, wasn't it? Know what else? The bourgeoisie suck." Not that Mao Tse Tung was into that sort of thing. He was mostly into American jazz.

So, anyway, here I am, three weeks after September 11, looking back on it, assessing how scared I have been.

Immediately after the attack I began to avoid skyscrapers. My newest insight: "Skyscrapers bad." No more Sunday picnics at the top of the Washington Mutual Building enjoying the bright, idyllic, scenes of falcon chicks as they happily feast upon predigested squab. By contrast, the Space Needle suddenly looked safe to me for the first time since 1962. Now I welcome massive 7.0 earthquakes in old "human-scaled" four-story buildings.

I started freaking out at the sight of turbans, excuse my sixty-ism, because Osama bin Laden wears a turban according to the only photo anyone seems to have of him. (What's up with that? It's been three weeks and nobody can find his high school album?) Of course, as you know, this meant I couldn't ride cabs. If someone could please find a picture of bin Laden wearing a homburg, that would improve matters a bit. I still wouldn't take cabs though (no money.)

I began running from Stans. I knew Osama bin Laden himself wasn't a Stan, but he was friends with some Stan. I couldn't be too safe -- I had to stay away from all Stans. Fortunately Stanley isn't a very common name in the circles I travel, which consist primarily of communists, former elected officials, historians, streetwalkers, and circus performers, so that only meant being afraid of one guy.

I can no longer stand to have airplanes in the house, nor can I pet them. I used to love airplanes, but now I am afraid that the big ones will turn on me and bite me, and that the little ones will dump messes on my head.

I am now terrified of box-cutters and razor blades, especially in the hands of swarthy men. Strangely, I have at the same time lost all my fear of carving knives, hatchets, bayonets, pistols, grenades, assault rifles, tanks, cruise missiles, tactical nuclear weapons capable of fitting in a suitcase, and postal carriers.

Arabic writing, or anything that looks like arabic writing, like two smiley faces next to each other, one upside-down, or a small flock of worms escaping a hot sidewalk, makes me scream like a little girl.

When I watch the Flintstones, or even just think about the Flintstones, I shudder at the very name of Barney Rubble. CNN has the same effect. Dan Rather makes the blood drain from my face and my spine tingle. No change there.

Worse than being afraid of CNN, I can't watch disaster movies on the VCR anymore. No more Towering Inferno, Titanic, Earthquake, Twister, Volcano, Dry Spell, Bees, Andromeda Strain, Asteroid-Hits-Earth (any), Backdraft, Updraft, Downdraft, Independence Day, Independence Day (worth mentioning twice), or Waterworld (not really a disaster flick, but disaster enough in itself.)

OK, I'm ready to admit now that I have been lying throughout this column. "Irony is dead," indeed. It'll take a lot more than what bin Laden's got to kill the irony around here. I am not at all as scared as all that.

Still, I suspect that some of the above may describe a lot of Americans. If so, then my one and only big fear may be realized: that Osama and his obedient terrorism-fodder have successfully bombed us back to the Fifties.