A positive post

I got an email from someone accusing me of using this blog as a vehicle for ridicule and heartless mockery.

“You’re always having a go at someone.” he wrote. “Why can’t you be positive for a change?”

I could have responded to this complaint by mentioning all the humans I’ve praised, a list which includes Dian Fossey and the cast of Star Trek (both the original series and ‘Next Generation’, but not ‘Deep Space Nine’ or ‘Voyager’). But after due reflection, I decided against such a defensive reaction. One shouldn’t argue with honest criticism from a reader, however lacking in objectivity.

“Thank you for sharing your views with me,” I wrote in reply. “I shall endeavour to adopt a more constructive tone in future posts.”

To prove I’m as good as my word, I will now pay homage to an employee of Bank of America, who was given the sack for mooning at his line manager. The act itself is not praiseworthy, of course. The typical human mooner is a vulgar oaf seeking to distract and annoy rather than enlighten. What made this particular exposure of the buttocks noble was the grievance that provoked it. For the man, you see, was protesting against the earlier dismissal of a colleague.

How many humans would be magnanimous enough to present their butt cheeks on behalf of a workmate? Not many, I would say. How moving it would be if another employee now moons to protest against the mooner’s dismissal. It could lead to a chain reaction that continued until half the workforce got fired. Perhaps everyone should have mooned together to make it harder to victimise any individual, like in the final scene of Dead Poet’s Society.

Esteem is not the only positive sentiment that I seek to express in this blog. I have never hesitated to show sympathy for humans who have suffered a misfortune through no fault of their own. This is why I must now draw your attention to an incident involving a German monk, who was found naked in a forest, wandering about haphazardly in a daze.

Before you get the wrong idea, I have no intention of mocking the poor fellow. His denuded and confused condition was the result of mistakenly eating some hallucinogenic berries. As a forest-dwelling primate, I know all too well how eating the wrong kind of fruit can make one lose one's marbles. I remember a gorilla called Mangobuns who ate some berries from a mysterious shrub in the Ngabe district. It caused him to shave off his body hair, jump in the Congo River and attempt to have sex with a crocodile. Fortunately, we managed to fish him out before the crocodile snapped his head off. If a wild gorilla can make a mistake like that, what chance has a monk?

So there you are, my touchy human cousin. I've written a post expressing admiration for one man and sympathy for another. What more do you want? The hair off my back?

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Shabby Road

The equinox arrives, which means it’s time to write to Paul McCartney. Every year, I invite him to give a concert in the Congo; thus far he has always declined, citing prior engagements. What can I do to tempt the great tunesmith to the jungle this year? Free lessons on the Congolese nose-flute? A year’s supply of Jamba weed reefers? A brightly-plumed parrot that will sit on his shoulder and squawk the lyrics of Hey Jude? Maybe it’s impossible to tempt him with bribes because he’s worried about the reception he’ll get from the chimpanzees. Rumour has it that he used to snub Bubbles during his visits to Neverland. These things can weigh on the conscience of an artist.

Macca, let it be said, is a tremendous friend of the gorilla nation. During his last world tour, he insisted that only vegetarian meals were served to the workmen who put up the fixtures. When it was suggested to him that men who did heavy lifting needed to eat steaks, Paul pointed out that gorillas were plenty brawny on a meat-free diet. How right he was! It’s as easy as walnuts in a condom to acquire a muscular physique on fruit and vegetables. You just have to combine the wholesome fare with a rigorous exercise regime involving tree-climbing, chest-thumping and the spanking of recalcitrant baboons.

He might have also mentioned that eating meat gives you halitosis. Lions may look pretty feisty in wildlife documentaries, but most of their time is spent sprawled on the ground, panting out foul gases that would poison a dung beetle. Fresh vegetables, by contrast, only give you flatulence. In the words of Old Melonhead The Wise, “Tis better to fart like thunder than to have bad breath.”

Paul has recently been in the news for trying to save the famous studio near the famous zebra crossing which he famously walked across barefoot. Miserly EMI Records want to sell the property to a consortium planning to convert it into a plastic surgery clinic. “All you need is a nose job,” as John said to Ringo. I suppose Paul is reluctant to buy it himself after paying his ex-wife £24 million for three years of viper-tongued bliss. But maybe the real problem is excessive nostalgia. The Beatles are gone, and posing for a picture on a zebra crossing in London does nothing to honour their memory. For what great band ever wished to be remembered for disrupting the flow of traffic and increasing the blood pressure of motorists?

Forget about the zebra crossing. If Paul comes to Africa, we’ll give him a real live zebra instead. Ordinarily they’re truculent beasts, but if one of the Beatles is in the vicinity they lie on their backs and giggle like star-struck schoolgirls. Paul’s barefoot march across Abbey Road will seem like a trivial detail of history after he’s ridden bare-arsed on a galloping zebra, tanning his ageing butt-cheeks in the African sun. A picture of Macca mooning the baboons would make a far more exciting album cover than that over-hyped tiptoe on the tarmac.

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California mooning

I hear the police in California are cracking down on the pastime of train-mooning. Apparently some of the mooners were getting carried away, stripping naked and performing lewd acts, allegedly of a sexual nature. Patrolmen were out in force to make sure they exposed themselves in a proper and fitting manner.

“It’s a tedious job but someone’s got to do it,” said Captain Buttweiler of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

It seems he was referring to the supervision of the event rather than the mooning. I’m glad his men had orders not to intervene unless it degenerated into an orgy. Prosecuting people for dropping their pants isn’t worth the bother unless they’re blowing poison darts out of their rectums (a skill which only certain pygmy tribes have mastered). These foolish humans should be dealt with in a measured way. Forcibly tattooing a portrait of Steven Seagal on each buttock might dissuade them from pursuing their hobby – assuming, of course, that mooners are capable of feeling shame.

Speaking as one who has been mooned on countless occasions by baboons, I would say that the shock effect diminishes each time you are subjected to it. Eventually, the only reaction it produces is a roll of the eyes and an involuntary snort, which has no ill effect unless you’re drinking a beverage. Just close your eyes when gulping down refreshments if mooners are nearby. Making a fuss about the whole thing simply gives them what they want, in my experience.

It’s far from clear, in any case, that train passengers actually object to such a display. It could easily pass for family entertainment in this age of hardcore pornography, as well as being a potential sightseeing attraction for visitors to California. There are only so many times you can walk down the Boulevard of Fame or take pictures of Dick van Dyke’s mansion. I foresee a day when Amtrak trains will be packed with tourists clicking their cameras at parades of pert bottoms, glistening in the California sunshine. All that’s required is a vetting procedure to prevent the saggy-arsed from participating.

America leads the world in using the human body for entertainment, something which is still too embarrassing in most of Asia. In China, for example, a man with two penises had one them surgically removed after his girlfriend gave him an ultimatum. I don’t blame her for putting her foot down – having a boyfriend with two appendages must have been very stressful, to say nothing of the indecision she would have felt in their intimate moments. But why didn’t some impresario offer the fellow money to display Huey and Dewey to a paying audience? Every man has his price, as J R Ewing once said.

If the Chinaman has any sense he’ll have the extra penis put into cold storage. A man never knows when he’ll need a replacement, given the growing number of women who consider the todger to be fair game in times of marital stress. Even when they are brought to justice, these dick-destroying harpies are dealt with very leniently. I believe the Russian woman who set fire to her ex-husband’s organ has already been paroled. Her future suitors would be well advised to put on a pair of asbestos underpants before taking her to their dacha.

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Icelandic Saga

Iceland’s red-nosed natives are protesting that they’re not terrorists. Did anyone actually accuse them of being so? Terrorists or not, they obviously have a guilty conscience about something. The ringleader of the movement is a photographer called Thorkel Thorkelsson. It sounds like the name of one of those rude characters who rowed about in a longboat looking for places to loot and pillage. A man of such ancestry ought to keep a low profile to avoid re-opening ancient wounds. Maybe they should change the slogan on their placards to “We are no longer terrorists!” They won’t win any sympathy by overstating their case.

I know next to nothing about Iceland and have no wish to stir the pot of discord or fan the flames of unrest. The only Icelander I ever spoke to was a pretty little woman I met in a park in London. She walked up to me while I was reading a comic and spoke to me in one of those sing-songy Nordic voices.

“I have had sex with Elvis.” she said.

“No you haven’t,” I replied. “You are far too young to have done that. There’s no point trying to impress people with blatant falsehoods.”

She seemed taken aback by my curt repudiation of her claim.

“I am not too young!” she insisted. “I am 22 years. That is not too young to have sex!”

“It is too young to have done it with Elvis!” I countered. “When he died, the gleam in your daddy’s eye had not yet become a wet spot on your mummy’s panties. I hope you’re not one of those silly people who thinks that Elvis is still alive and composing rock ballads with Buddy Holly somewhere in Wyoming.”

“Not EL-VIS!” she cried, doing a little jig to emphasize her point. “EL-VES! I have had sex with EL-VES!”

Her funny little accent had caused me to misconstrue her meaning. However the amended assertion was only slightly less far-fetched.

“Have you indeed?” I said. “Please describe these so-called elves on whom you bestowed your carnal favours. Men of low character often use deception to smooth the path of seduction. The impersonation of elves might be yet another devious tactic employed for that end.”

“Elves are tall, beautiful people with blue eyes and blond hair. They can make themselves invisible and are very gentle lovers. To have sex with an elf is like being licked by a hundred tongues.”

Had I been feeling sarcastic, I might have congratulated her on knowing what it feels like to be an ice-lolly in a bus full of Norwegian tourists. But I had grown rather fond of this earnest little madam and her elvish fantasies, so I decided to adopt a more avuncular tone. She told me that her name was Hallgerdur and that she planned to write a book about her sexual adventures with elves. I advised her to test the water by first documenting her experiences in a blog, and I’m pleased to say that she acted on my suggestion.

These Icelanders are certainly an odd bunch. I put it down to living on a rocky island at the edge of the world. Humans in such far-flung locations often adopt strange habits to make people notice them. New Zealand is another place inhabited by a weird collection of humans. Many years ago, I remember seeing a TV clip of a Maori exposing his rump to the Queen of England, there on a state visit. It seemed an utterly futile act – the Queen had spent her entire life ignoring bottoms and certainly wasn’t going to inspect one that wasn’t part of her official itinerary.

When I later mentioned this incident to a New Zealander on safari, he said that the man had been protesting about the annexation of his ancestral land by an officer of the British Crown. Being a fair-minded ape, I revised my opinion of him. You can’t blame a fellow for mooning at people to draw attention to the theft of his property. If any henchman of the Queen of England stole my land, she’d be sniffing my hairy arse for breakfast, lunch and supper.

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