Go monkeys, go!
I see my close friends of the (captive) wild have been busy, according to this Daily Telegraph report:
A group of 15 mo
nkeys at Kyoto University’s primate research institute in Aichi Prefecture, which are the focus of a string of high-profile scientific studies, escaped from their forest
home which is encased by a 17ft high electric fence.
The monkeys made their bid for freedom byusing tree branches to fling themselves one by one over the high voltage electric fence located nearly three metres away.
However, despite the intelligence shown in their great escape, the primates appeared unsure as to what to do with their newfound freedom: the monkeys remained by the gates of the research centre and were lured back into captivity by scientists armed with peanuts.
Pelton and the Paraladies
A fiction by Kyle Jarrard (reproduced from Eclectica magazine)
I begin writing, for it feels like the beginning of the end.
I have a comfortable old trailer parked right here where they unhooked all those years ago. My job, to the tune of $100 a month, is listed as Gatekeeper 1. I control the lock that opens off the All-American and releases water south into the Coachella for distant orchards and vineyards.
I am told this position is perhaps the lowest in the federal bureaucracy, but I still consider myself lucky. And though I don’t foresee advancement, not even to Gatekeeper 2, which would pay $125 a month, earn me a new, larger trailer and more rations, I don’t care. For the time being I am simply here. It is much better than the razzle-dazzle of the big city.
I had my 50th birthday the other day, on the Ides of July. The name they gave me is Pelton Morny, and I’ve kept it all along except for a few weeks way back in late ‘74 when it was fashionable to carry your wife’s name. So, for a while, I was Pelton Rogers. Then we divorced, for various reasons, one I was a nasty drinker. (Leenda got everything. She relocated to a communal farm in Tennessee, a place that boasted of 41,000 enthusiasts.) Anyway, I made a little flour cake and ate it. But I really don’t give a damn about birthdays.
The century recently turned. I seriously did not think, or hope, that I would make it this far.
Today the gate is open. Depth marker reads 12-foot-8.
Believe it or not, an ocean skipjack occasionally breaks the surface of the All-American. It lifts your heart to see such life, brings back fond memories of drunk-fishing with Dad.
I dug on the All-American from early ‘75 to late ‘81. It stretches all the way from Diego, on the sea, across the old regions of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to the Gulf, averaging 15 feet in width and varying in depth from 10-15 feet in summer to deadly heights when it rains. In the past decade, 82 Gatekeepers have drowned. Every year we get a martyrs supplement to stick in our handbook.
Go forth and blow no more
And this was before the loss to Ghana on Saturday night. Justifiable homicide, t’would have been, in any case.
BERLIN (AP) — German police say an American
got so fed up with the constant mosquito-like droning from his
neighbors’ vuvuzela plastic horns that he threatened to kill them with an ax.
What’s that cookin’? Sausage?
It has come to my attention that the number of kids dying locked in cars is on the rise again. There are people who track these things for a living, if you can believe that, and who would make us cry with statistics. But I’m not buying it. Let’s get some perspective here! Mom used to lock us in the car ALL THE TIME. I don’t mean night and day, but systematically each and every time she went to the store. Any store, and whether to get 
dog food, cases of soda pop or an entire half cow: We had to wait in the car. This was in a southern state whose name starts with a T. These sequesterings occurred on wide, endless asphalt parking lots. The car doors had tall plunger-type locks you could simply lift in order to free yourself. But we never did. We were too frightened. We stayed in the car, under the strictest of orders not to make any moves. Baking like biscuits. For hours, or at least days. We’d stare anxiously at the front of the store, watch for the smiling, air-conditioned blonde with the full cart. But she would never come. We’d argue about who was going to be in the front, who was going to be in the back, who was going to get the last peanut-butter cracker. We gasped. We saw little stars, all colors. We smiled at the vapors rising off the tarmac. We gazed pitifully at other passing mothers, who looked in at us and smiled the aren’t-they-cute smile. We fiddled with the door handles, chewed gum and jammed the ashtrays with wrappers, broke the visors, turned the dead radio dials frantically, and searched for meaning. Well, we never found meaning. The only thing with mean in it was mom, but that’s all right, that’s the job of 
mothers: to be mean, lock kids in, give them trauma, shake them up so much that 40 years later they write about it on a blog. So, get over it, kids: There may be more of you dying out there in hot cars, but what you’re going through? what you’re suffering? It’s nothing compared to a hot day on the Gibson’s parking lot in August in Texas in a blue Ford. I can still smell the strong burned-frying smell that arose in the interior, to which mom would remark upon re-entering the tomb with us: Is that sausage? I’m hungry, are you? No, mama, it’s not sausage, we thought; it’s your chillens. But we are still alive, thank you. Now, you tell me, what’s worse? Being dead from the heat, or being fried alive like a patty of sausage until it turns charcoal black? Take your pick. R.I.P. Jimmy Dean (mmmmmmmmmmhhhhh, that’s good sausage!), we’ll miss you good buddy.
