chicken-slang?

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:51 AM -0800 11/2/05, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>So far as I know, "chicken" was not and is not and kind of
>recognizable drug slang. In my experience, incoherence, impenetrable
>personal allusions, and intensionally mystifying ambiguity have been
>frequent features in rock lyrics since the late ' 60s.
>
>And the beat goes on.
>
>JL

It is an item of sexual slang, of course, but that's not relevant in
the context of the song, unlike the allusion in the last line of
Stanza 3 below.   No, I repeat my conviction that the airborne
chicken is all too literal.

Larry

>Lois Nathan <LBNath88545112 at AOL.COM> wrote:
>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender: American Dialect Society
>Poster: Lois Nathan
>Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20Re:=20chicken-slang=3F?=
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>OK, Larry, if you're right, your story is coherent. Mine has a missing
>link. Maybe the text doesn't have the dimension I expected it to have.
>However, the two other stanzas of the song are suggestive of
>possible drug-related
>images (stanza 2) or are at least ambiguous (stanza 3) :
>stanza 2 :
>There's a guy with a ticket to Mexico
>No, he couldn't look much stranger
>Walking in the hall with his things and all
>Smiling, said he was the Lone Ranger
>
>(Mexico was well know for drug trafficking...and anyone looking strange and
>claiming to be the Lone Ranger has got to be under some influence.)
>
>stanza 3 :
>Hip woman walking on a moving floor
>Tripping on the escalator
>There's a man in the line
>And she's blowing his mind
>Thinking that he's already made her
>
>("moving floor" is ambiguous : floors move to carry you somewhere OR they
>don't really move, you just perceive them that way if you are under
>an influence.
>"Tripping on the escalator" is also ambiguous : falling or tripping as in
>"on drugs". Etc...
>
>So, I was looking for coherence on that theme in the first stanza. I
>couldn't find any reference to "chicken" as drug slang, but I don't
>have easy access
>to RHHDAS or OED. But, perhaps there is none and the song isn't as coherent
>as I would have liked.
>
>Lois
>
>
>---------------------------------
>  Yahoo! FareChase - Search multiple travel sites in one click.