12/2/11

Chimneys used to be cleaned by throwing a live chicken down them...

Well now isn't that interesting...who in the hell came up with the original idea for this in the first place???  At some point in the history of man it was determined that fire alone wasn't good enough...that a closed in space would better contain the heat output from the fire...so houses were built...shortly after it was determined that there also needed to be a vent up above so that the smoke could escape and yet the warmth of the fire could still be enjoyed...and chimneys were added to fireplaces...poking thru the roofs of homes everywhere...this was followed by the need to develop a cleaning system that would remove soot and shit from the inside of the chimney thereby preventing house fires...and somebody climbed a ladder on a nice summer's afternoon...looked down the chimney flue...and thought to themselves...holy crap that needs to be cleaned out...somebody bring me a...CHICKEN...that's what will work...not anything resembling a broom...or a scraper...no...a CHICKEN...bring me a chicken and I will show the world the method behind my madness...I shall embark on a chimney cleaning expedition unlike the world has ever seen before.  What happens if your chicken gets stuck during the whole cleaning process...whaddaya do then...toss in a fox...probably a good thing this didn't catch on as the be all end all of chimney cleaning processes...it could have blossomed and the world we live in today would be a much different place...women the world over woulda been pushing poultry across kitchen floors...drowning poor chickens in the toilet...plunging them into hot soapy buckets of water to do the mopping...street sweepers probably woulda used turkeys since they're generally a little bigger...and could you imagine having to wax the floors at your local Wal-Mart...feathers and chicken feet spinning around at high RPM's...I doubt the shine would be the same...anybody know who the brainchild behind this little invention was???  Nobody???  Me neither...and for good reason...bonehead ideas seldom reward the thinker with any notoriety...no my friends...it is ignorance like this that allows an individuals achievements to be pushed aside and their names stricken from the annals of human history...poor bastard...he probably had some other equally imaginative ideas...like using rocks to clean windows...or applying 80 grit sandpaper to unwanted body hair...some ideas...with the help of advertising and marketing catch on rather well...while others...hindered by ineffectiveness are soon forgotten...just suppose this little idea had worked...how didja get the damn chicken back ut of the chimney...and once exposed what became of the soot covered barnyard bird anyway...was it outcast by the rest of the chickens for changing it's feathers...forced to integrate with the crows...was it subject to other forms of social injustice...forced to sit in the back of the coop...or maybe chickens don't see colors like humans do and it was simply reacquainted with the other white chickens...and produced what we now call Brown Grade A eggs...thereby negating the widely held belief that these brown eggs came from latino bred chickens south of the border...and here's another reason this idea never shoulda been tried in the first place...if Santa can fit his fat ass and a bag of toys down a chiney without so much as getting a smudge on his shiny red suit...a skinny ass chicken hasn't a hope in hell of cleaning out chimney with any effectiveness at all...maybe they shoulda tried an ostrich instead...I'm quite surprised that with all the hairbrained inventions people come up with we don't live in a society where jobs outnumber people to perform them...do yourself a favor this winter...if you have a chimney you can't clean yourself with modern methods...do NOT attempt the chicken in the chimney method...I'd hate to hafta tell everyone I knew the individual who was awarded the Darwin Award this year...and I'm quite certain your family doesn't want that lifelong embarassment associated with the family name!!!   Have a great day!!!