Posted on

It’s Christmas Again in Top Town

Hello, dear friends. With the Yuletide season upon us once again, I’d like to give you all a little stocking stuffer for your ears. I know it’s also last year’s present, but it’s the thought that counts.

“Have Yourself a Monkey Little Christmas” is a heartwarming Top Town tale, starring Rex Koko, private clown. When Rex is doing his stint ringing a bell on the corner for charity, someone manages to cloat his little red kettle. But who? The answer to that question sends Rex on an adventure involving a sick friend, 20 or so uncontrollable monkeys, and a miserly landlord who needs a lesson in Christmas charity. Brought to you by Ludwig Coal Company, “the kind Mother used to burn.”

I’ve also reposted the special edition e-book of the story at Amazon. It’s only 99c, and ALL the proceeds will go to the American Red Cross. You KNOW you want it, just to complete your whole Rex Koko set.

For the electronic story from Amazon, click here.

Posted on

“Merry Christmas, Ya Hairy Devils”

Life around the compound has been crazy-busy, which I’m sure everyone out there can relate to, so I’d like to take the time to wish the readers of this blog a safe and lovely holiday and a prosperous New Year. I suspect that everyone out there has had just about enough of 2011 and will spend the time off quietly regrouping and refreshing their souls. At least, I sure hope so. Real life will start cranking back up soon enough. Enjoy some drinks with family and friends, catch up on your Tivo or Netflix queue, take stock of what you value in your life and choose some things to leave behind on the trash heap. You deserve it, and you can’t really move forward without it.

I’d like to thank those of you who’ve helped me out this year, by buying my books, listening to the podcast, and generally keeping my name out in the public mind. I’d like to buy you all a drink and some Beer Nuts, but something else will have to do. So, below is the link for a genyooine unpublished Christmas story, starring Top Town’s favorite bigshoe, Rex Koko. It’s got everything: thievery, tightwaddedness, fraud, deception, and a happy ending. And lots and lots of Yuletide Monkeys. If you listen to the whole thing (less than 20 minutes), you’ll understand the title of this post.

So please enjoy this. Take time to enjoy life this next week, strengthen your heart and friendships, enrich your life in whatever way you can think of. Tis the season, pally.

2012 UPDATE: I’ve taken down the MP3 until next December, when you will all be able to listen to it again and make it part of your holiday traditions. No sense turning it into “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which used to appear on every TV channel at year-end because its copyright had lapsed.

Posted on

Happy Monkey Day!!!

It’s the tail end of a pretty miserable decade. Unemployment is still high, a record number of people are on food stamps, the economy hasn’t recovered yet, and we are still fighting two wars in the middle east. Most of Congress has shown themselves to be meretricious whores, when they’re not acting like WATBs, so we still don’t have national health care or any kind of meaningful oversight on the Gordon Geckos of Wall Street. The Bears completely suck, the Wolverines completely suck, the Tigers traded Curtis Granderson, and there are Asian carp lurking in the sewers. In light of all this….

WE NEED MONKEY DAY NOW MORE THAN EVER!

l

Just be ready for the hangover and regrets tomorrow.

Posted on

Why Creationists Hate Monkeys, Part VII

Because the monkeys are just biding their time, biding their time. An innocent foray here, a little poking of the security measures there. All innocent fun. While they wait, and watch…….

.

Orangutan’s great escape causes zoo evacuation
A 137 pound orangutan with a history of mischief short-circuited an electric barrier, then built a makeshift ladder to escape from her enclosure, forcing Adelaide Zoo to be evacuated on one of its busiest days of the year.

.


Posted on

Darwin Exhibit at Field Museum

The family took in a preview of the new exhibit at the Field Museum last week, and had a terrific time. “Darwin” is a thorough profile of the shaggy naturalist who laid the bedrock of modern biological science with his “On the Origin of Species.” I heartily endorse the show, which runs through January 1. You’ll come away with it with a new appreciation of how hard he worked at what he loved, and how his inescapable conclusions about evolution gave him incredible grief (weakened his own faith, threatened his marriage).

My favorite quote from his letters came from a missive sent during college to one of his favorite cousins and fellow bug-hunters: “I am dying by inches, from not having any body to talk to about insects”

I wrote a post about it for the Huffington Post, which you can find here. In it , I present a modest proposal (really modest, b/c I didn’t feel like belaboring the point) to airlift these types of exhibits to the American hinterlands and not-so-hinterlands where cretins believe that God created fossils and other evolutionary evidence just to confuse us and test our faith.

Posted on

Post Super Mortem

I don’t know what to say about the Bears loss in the Super Bowl, other than that it was a game they could have won. Unlike most years, the game wasn’t a blowout, and despite the numbers that kept accumulating to show a lopsided contest, they were only down 5 when Rex Grossman tossed the beachball down the sidelines that got picked off. Yeah, they got manhandled by the Colts, but the score was still close, and the defense still did OK in the Red Zone in spite of their seeming eagerness to get there.

So, without a doubt, they screwed a pooch they didn’t have to. And wait til next year? Sure, fine, whatever. It ain’t gonna happen. Between trades, injuries and other NFC teams likely to improve, the Bears can’t assume anything for the near future.

* Sure liked Prince and his Hattie-McDaniel-meets-Dick-Tracy-Gangster get up. Did he have a band or were those just stagehands back there? Like those Japanese stagehands that dress all in black so you are supposed to ignore them. And boy, didn’t his equipment look a lot bigger when that back-lit sheet went up?

* Thanks to the loss, I owe a friend of mine in Naptown a pizza. AND, I have to go down there to serve it. There must be a Godfather’s down there somewhere, right?

* My favorite crowd pic: David Spade in a baggy in the rain. If someone set that bag on an old man’s doorstep, lit it and rang the doorbell, it’d be Halloween again.

* Memo to CareerBuilder.com: the new commercials suck. Bring back the monkeys.

* Memo to Budweiser: Your best commercial last night was the one with the gorillas. By far. CareerBuilder, take note.

* In the past two postseasons, I’ve been lucky enough to watch my favorite teams exceed expectations. The White Sox won, the Bears lost, and the Tigers never bothered to show up.

* And now it’s only eight days until pitchers and catchers report to spring training. To get in the spirit, go here and join our Barry Bonds limerick contest. Winner gets the cream and the clear, but I won’t tell you where.

Posted on

Say It Ain’t So, Jo-Jo

In a move that most monkey observers find appalling, CareerBuilder.com has announced that, after two years of faithful service, they will be axing their commercials of the chimps in the office. This is the thanks the animals get, for lifting CareerBuilder past Monster.com as the preeminent job-hunting website, and bringing in $500 million in revenues in the first nine months of 2006. Besides jealousy, why do the humans in charge feel the need to get rid of the chimps?

“Obviously, we’ve created an amazing fan base,” said Cynthia McIntyre, senior director of advertising for CareerBuilder. “We’ve had great success with them, but if you think about the game of branding, advertising and buzz, it’s a popularity contest. It’s [been] the same joke, the same punch line. The name of the game is to be talk-worthy, buzz-worthy.”

Don’t you just want to fling some poop at this idiot? Aside from the fact that she’s in advertising, she actually coined the phrase “talk-worthy” in a sentence.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune, which owns CareerBuilder, put up a click poll to see if people will miss the monkeys. As of this writing, eighty-four percent said they will miss them. You hear that, Trib? Eighty-four percent! No wonder no one wants to bid on you.

For one last fond look at our office (pri)mates, go to the Trib website and check out the video. Not suitable for work, because you’ll probably start crying in the middle of it.

Posted on

Monkey Day Scrooge

Feh.“Personally, I never celebrate National Monkey Day. It’s so overly commercial now. It used to be a time to get together and pick lice off family and friends, but now….it’s like if you don’t spend your life savings on new poop for all the nieces and nephews, you’re some kind of mandrill. And the stores, with their politically correct “happy holidays” really get my goat. As if I’d be offended by the word “monkey”! Why do we celebrate this anyway? Monkeys are the reason for the season. If you’re not a simian, don’t celebrate National Monkey Day. It’s our holiday, dammit! Ours! *screech screech* (throws poop)

“Ahem. Yes, I plan to celebrate it on my own, in my own quiet way. And that’s not because I have no friends. I have plenty. You just don’t know them. ”

(Photo copyright by Jill Greenberg, whose portraits of monkeys and apes are represented by the Paul Kopeikin Gallery of Los Angeles.)

Posted on

Only 7 Shopping Days til Monkey Day

Here’s a gift item that is both functional and authentically monkey-oriented. The Brass Monkey Freeze Indicator.

Our Brass Monkey Freeze Indicator is more than an attractive desk ornament and paperweight. When exposed overnight to below freezing temperatures, an amazing phenomenon occurs. Part of his anatomy falls off!

Anyone who woke up in Chicago this morning will want one of these. Order here.

Posted on

Is That All There Is?

As sure as one bus follows another after a 40-minute bus-free interlude, depression follows our annual Monkey Day frolics. Ho-hum. No more banana daiquiris, no more poop-flinging contests, no more lice-grooming with friends and family, no more heartwarming sing-alongs of the theme from “Lancelot Link.” Just three more months of dreary winter.

Well, maybe it’s not all bad. I hear there’s some surreptitious holiday called Christmas coming up. But it’s under siege by EVERYBODY except a small group of resistance fighters who number, oh, about 245 million people. So, keep it under your hat. Fight on, o valiant fighters! You are the brave descendents of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, er, probably not.

For a jolly laugh, check out these pictures of happy, happy children cuddling up to Old Santa Claus.