Ervin: Chicken Wing Apocalypse


All up and down the lit-up nightlife strip on Chicago’s North Lincoln Avenue, I see signs of the coming apocalypse.

Chicken wings chicken wings chicken wings! Every establishment has a sign in the window that says Come on in for some deee-licious chicken wings. Get ‘em while they’re hot! There’s even an establishment called Buffalo Wild Wings, with a logo of a great winged buffalo that has its hooves planted firmly on the ground.

This all frightens me greatly, this insatiable human appetite for chicken wings. When did that fad begin anyway? Whenever it began, that’s when the collapse of human civilization began, too. If a guy was to take the discarded bones from all the chicken wings consumed in a year on North Lincoln alone and pile them on top of each other, well, he’d probably be shipped off to a psych ward or something before long. But my point is this is an example of the type of delirious consumption that can’t be sustained. Chickens can only produce other chickens so fast. Eventually demand will greatly outpace supply. Surely this will disturb earth’s delicate ecological balance in some potentially cataclysmic way, which is what can happen when predator decimates prey. Or it might result in bloody street riots as desperate humans fight over the last remaining chicken wing.

This is what goes through my mind when I attempt to enjoy the nightlife on the North Lincoln Avenue strip. And then I’m once again gripped by another of those strong urges I often get to drop out. The hell with everyone and everything and their uncle! Humanity is doomed! I should just worry about myself. I should just go join a monastery! Or I should build a Porta-Potty-sized cabin in the mountains of Wyoming and finish writing my manifesto! Or I should find an uninhabited island somewhere!

And then I remind myself again that I can’t do any of those things because I’m crippled. Maybe I’m stereotyping, but monasteries always look like medieval castles. And medieval castles didn’t have elevators and ramps and 36-inch wide doors with lever handles instead of knobs. And the mountains of Wyoming wouldn’t work either because the only way I can experience nature is if it’s paved.

So my Porta-Potty-sized cabin would also have to have an asphalt driveway and a parking space wide enough for me to get in and out of my cripple van. And if I’m on an uninhabited island, how the hell do I charge my wheelchair? Am I supposed to plug my charger into a damn coconut? That’s why I hate it when someone asks the great philosophical question, “If you were stranded on an island and you could have only one record album, which one would it be?” It would be pointless to have any album at all because how would I play it?

If I wasn’t born crippled, which makes it hard to run away, might I have yielded to one of these impulses to flee the madness? I probably wouldn’t have joined a monastery because I believe (and again I may be stereotyping) that also requires being celibate. I could never sign up for that. I think sex is like the Louvre museum. Even if there’s no prospect of me experiencing it soon, it’s good to know it’s still there just in case. And I believe you also have to be vegan to live in a monastery, which is the eating equivalent of celibacy. But if you’re the sole proprietor of your own Porta-Potty-sized cabin or uninhabited island, all your eating and screwing options remain open. So I may well have followed one of those paths. And who knows how that might have altered the entire course of history.

The drop-out option most open to cripples does not appeal to me. There are places that are specially designed to accommodate cripples who are ready to give up and hide. They are called nursing homes. They’re really easy to get into. All you have to do is say the word and sign up for Medicaid.

So I’m stuck. There’s no way for me to escape the coming apocalypse. All I can do is shrug and order a plate of chicken wings.


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