Yah - I know the feeling of that.
One day I sent a friend a letter, but decided it should be an electric chicken.
Mostly because I HAD an electric chicken and thought it would make a nice letter.
But it’s hard to post a chicken.
So I dismantled the electric chicken and kept all the really chicken-y bits - you know - feathers, the beak, the combe, the sinister red LED eyeball and the sound module that went bok-bok-bok (btw the word “bok” is not something you should shout-out in Turkey - i didn’t know that at the time, neither did the chicken, and to this day chickens (electric or non) have a hard time in Turkey. Turkeys on the other hand, do OK - oh the humanity!).
I prepared a suitable piece of bond foolscap for the letter and mounted it on an A4 sheet of half-inch polystyrene foam, wired the eye next to the beak and mounted the little speaker under a perforated bit of paper adjacent to the coffee-ring next to the obligatory “PPS” that I would write later, and taped my most recent cigarette-butt over it to make the sound better.
The little bok-ing sound module and the glowing red LED eyeball got a bit boring, so I decided that I should customize the controls so the operator could have more fun, added 2 separate circuits including 9-volt batteries and touch-switches. Lots of wires - some connected, some not, none of them red.
(one-paragraph sentence allert!!! - remember to breathe while you are reading this!)
I thought about the touch switches in combination with the kind of handling our postal service is famous for and decided it prudent to create some switch-protectors to prevent the switches being triggered and the batteries being drained in transit while the package entertained the postal workers who would be kicking it to each other for hours on end (standard postal sorting process).
(breathe here)
All constructed, and my letter written in the spaces between the new postable-electric-chicken, I added another couple handfulls of yellow-died goose feathers and consigned the lot into a large padded postal envelope, sealed, addressed, applied the appropriate number of 5-cent stamps and dumped the lot into the collection box at the end of my street.
This was in 1978. As you can see, I’ve mellowed a little bit since.
Evidently, our postal service had an x-ray security scan in 1978 - so many years prior to 9-11 (are there really 9 days in a week now?). I know they must have, because my friend telephoned to say that my letter had been delivered by a policeman and was dripping-wet (not the policeman - I believe he was dry, could be wrong).
Which only goes to prove that a well constructed electric-chicken-letter CAN be kicked around a post-office, nuked, left in a bucket of water overnight and still be delivered legible and in perfect working order by a suitably dried member of your favourite constabulary.
(this is a true story - I have left out some of the details that nobody would believe - even on C&F.)
I thought it important to impart this last, teeny bit of consensus before loading my little whystule shoppe into a trailer and driving a thousand kilometers to the Queensland Woodford folk festival that will last until January sometime. Oh joy!! more than a week in the tropical climes of Queensland in a tent amongst the 40 degree(C) heat, rain, fire-ants, mud, humidity, mosquitos, pressing crowds and noise (some of it music). Heh - I might even see one or two of you there (now who’s the nutbag?!!). Unless I get moderated, I’ll talk again sometime in 2008 after I have been suitably dried.
Merry Christmas to one and all!!!
