Kid A Chicken

According to this website, chickens are being slaughtered around the world at the rate of about 1000/sec. This evening, the boys and I ate two of them.

Eric's recipe for Kid A Chicken

• Put on Kid A.
• Preheat your George Foreman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine™ to medium.
• Use organic, free range chicken breasts.
• Pepper with Jamaica Me Crazy Seasoned Pepper™.
• Salt with Jamaica Me Crazy Seasoned Sea Salt™.
• Lightly powder with Spice Islands Gourmet Blend Curry Powder™ sprinkled from a teaspoon. Rub the powder into the breasts with the back of the spoon.
• Baptize with Rose's Sweetened Lime Juice™.
• Christen with extra virgin olive oil.

Cook for ~10 minutes. Midway through grilling, lift the grill's lid and sprinkle the breasts with additional drops of olive oil. Permit the chicken to cook for ~four minutes with the lid raised. Close the lid for the final minute of grilling.

Serve hot. Explain to the children—or to whoever happens to be your captive audience—that the meat will be slightly tougher than they're used to because the chickens didn't live their entire lives inside a cage, in the dark, but were permitted to walk the earth, after their fashion, like Jules Winnfield after he returned the briefcase to Marcellus Wallace. (Children appreciate hyperbole, not least because they're rarely fooled by  it.)

At some point, turn the conversation to art. Using Kid A as Exhibit A, explain to them that over the course of their lifetimes, they'll discover that most great works of art are initially befuddling. Eventually, however, those same works will strike them as inevitable. Indeed (they'll exchange smiles when you use the word "indeed") the transition from befuddling to inevitable is the means by which we recognize a great work of art.

Don't neglect to be grateful for their gratitude, for their company, for the chicken, for the searching generosity of artists everywhere, and for Labor Day, which at some level makes all of this possible.