James D. Watson has died. He was 97. Co-founder of the double helix structure of DNA—okay. He wasn’t the first one. He took credit from some chick whose name I don’t remember, but that’s not important right now, what’s important is me, Bennington. Early in the evening of March 4, 1737, I was tooling around on my wood computer in what we today call Massachusetts when I discovered that the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is shaped in a double helix. Whoa. It still kind of blows my mind. I ran to Rooster and Monica to tell them, but they read me as typically manic and my proclamations “just Bennington being Bennington.” I reminded them that, as birds, any discoveries we might make in the field of science would likely go unrecognized or, worse, stolen by mid-wits and cowards. You probably didn’t know that Rooster and Monica discovered various concepts of gravity. I wasn’t aware myself until the 1980s.
“Benny, you have to make the ‘e’ lowercase,” she tells me. “Why?” Pause. “…Because that’s how Einstein does it.” We had this argument throughout the 1930s and into the war. We’re still not allowed to divulge our activities under the auspices of the United States Avian Authority Forces, but we can say that we were proud to serve our country in its time of need. Barring any scientific advancements in rooster-to-human communication technology, our efforts remain needed and unheralded. Now, you may ask, how is a bird typing this? Birds don’t know English. Oh, okay, it’s just some guy pretending to be a bird, or three birds, well, okay. If that’s the world you want to live in, go ahead. I’m face-to-face with reality every day of my life and it’s not pretty. I’m the writing on the wall.
Lately I’ve been telling people that I’m “blind to the world.” I don’t want the world to keep invading me. Our efforts as birds remain unappreciated (except for a small, enlightened few), yet out presence and abilities are increasingly recognized by a world that no longer feels “real” as we’ve known it for at least a millennia and a half. Customs, regimes, currencies, they all change in time, quickly too, but something else has been happening lately… we’re not sure, and have no historical precedent for what’s happening to people, but there’s a coarsening along with a sickly softness that makes for a wildly topsy-turvy experience. My Sensei doesn’t believe most of what I say, he still thinks I’m putting him on, and he’ll ask me about Howard Hawks or William Witney or George Sherman, but I’m more of a Dorothy Arzner guy, D.W. Griffith. My Sensei is not down with Intolerance.
Before you have your mind blown, you must prepare a sauce. Mixing in the bowl, we three roosters—okay, Monica, two roosters and one hen—found that [REDACTED] creates McDonald’s famous secret Big Mac sauce. We sold that shit to Roy whatever the fuck his name was and made a small amount of money relative to the BILLIONS AND BILLIONS of customers sold. You could say we’ve helped the world as much as we’ve hurt it, but to be fair, we still have no idea if Big Macs are bad for you. Morgan Spurlock made that Super Size Me movie and made it look all like he was dying from McDonald’s, but he was really a severe alcoholic who already had a compromised liver, so yo, check it: we need a new test subject. I’m not down myself, but I’ll be pointing the camera at whoever takes the gig.
My Sensei isn’t interested in producing the project. Mr. Fincher is off somewhere else, shooting another take. And I’m still here.
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