“Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” Colonel George Taylor - American Astronaut of the Icarus
“Blonde haired, good lookin' - tryin' to get me hooked. Want me to marry - settle down - get a home - write a book! Too much monkey business.” Chuck Berry
I’m making some decent headway on “Mog Fist - The Story Behind the Greatest Book Never Written, Ever”. It’s a real hellbroth of run on sentences, but it’s coming along through short bursts of writing binges. My only wish is that people will still be talking about this book long after I go gentle into that good night. I’m not going to do much raging against the dying of the light. I’m putting a lot of blood, sweat, tears and semicolons in this thing.
It’s been 150 years since Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was first published in London. I know this because CBC Radio told me. I have yet to read it, but I’ve heard good things about it. A few years ago, I did have an autographed copy of a first edition, but I sold it because the autograph turned out to be Charles Dickens. I was bummed. I’m not a huge Dickens fan. But Darwin’s a bit of a rock star. He wrote a book that people are still talking about, still fussing over, cursing, praising and in some instances, banning, openly mocking and holding up as a work of terrible fiction. Ah, people don’t write books like that anymore. Well, maybe they do, but can’t get a decent agent to get them a sweet spot on the Oprah sofa. Oprah is a monster - a terrible, terrible monster. She will not have me on her show and she will never give my book her terrible, terrible stamp of approval even if it turns out to be the Best Book Ever Written, Ever. But, that’s okay, because I’m thinking that Charles Darwin wouldn’t have been asked to appear on her show either. Had Oprah had Darwin on and not me? Well, I’d be pissed.
Yeah, so, it’s not a huge surprise to concede that we, as homosapiens have evolved from apes. Don’t believe me? Think I’m just being a silly dinkus? John Tesh told me so. He said that all Humans are bipedal primates belonging to the species Homo sapiens which is Latin for “wise man” or "knowing man" in Hominidae, which is the great ape family. After John Tesh finished telling me this, he begged me to buy nine copies of his new CD of new age spirituals co-produced by Yanni and Trent Reznor. John was being a bit of a pain in the ass about it all, so I bought six copies but on the condition that he inscribes them all: “To Kevin from Charles Darwin”. Tesh is a great sport but his hair is unreasonable. So, Tesh’s ape speech came as no surprise to me. I mean, I’ve been around the block a few times, but without getting into the nuts and bolts of evolutionary biology the notion of being related to monkeys, I find is apt. I like monkeys. I find apes to be most noble. Chimps are cool in my book, and I am proud to be related to all simians. If I found out I was related to unicorns I think I would be bummed. I’m not sure why some people would take offence to the notion of being direct descendants of apes. It makes perfect sense to me and explains my affinity for bananas, scratching my ass while waiting in lines, tipping over things, and playing my jazz xylophone out at the local cafes.
Some people are mean to monkeys. Some people take great joy in tormenting monkeys. They tease them, or raise them to shake around for television commercials wearing comical fashions, often including a straw cowboy hat, diapers or blue overalls and a wig worse than John Tesh’s. But, I have to come clean. I have to throw a little honesty into this literary mess. A few years ago, your humble columnist and narrator was part of an expedition to capture and bring back an ape so epic and colossal in size that we would have to charter a massive barge to bring in through the St Lawrence, west up the Ottawa River and to Explorer’s Point Marina in Mattawa. This was before I gave any real thought or serious consideration about monkey meanness. The expedition went pretty good. We were stopped by Somali Pirates, but they were glad to let us continue on our way after the ape ate three of them with one bite. So, after returning to Mattawa, I chained my giant ape to the bike rack in front of the office I was working out of at the time. The ape was about nine hundred meters in height, and evidently quite hated being chained to that bike rack in front of my building. People stopped to take pictures of my ape, and there was even a write up in a Canadian Travel Magazine about my big ape. Then more people came. I sold cheap badges and shitty stickers of my ape. The stickers never really stuck and would immediately peel. Then I had to come up with a name for my abducted ape, so I called him Uncle Congo Wallace The Magnificent Ape. T shirts. More stickers. Ball caps and ape banana hammocks. Yellow. Then on a Wednesday, my magnificent ape went ape. He had a bit of a simian melt down. I think it was from nicotine withdrawal as people enjoyed giving my ape cigarettes. So, Uncle Congo Wallace cast off his shackles, and went on a bit of a rampage through Mattawa’s crowded downtown core, tipping cars, smashing through rooftops and kicking the shit out of the pop machine in front of Giant Tiger. Congo Wallace crushed three police cruisers and a rented MNR mini-van. I felt terrible. People tried to shoot my ape, but the bullets just bounced. The last I saw of Congo Wallace he was stepping over the rusted train trestle on Highway 17 heading east. Poor bastard. I should have seen it coming. I ignored all the warning signs, but as John Tesh once told me over banana daiquiris, hindsight is 20/20. I often wonder what happened to him, the ape, not John Tesh. I wonder further what would have happened to him had I left him on that island in the Pacific. But in a way, it is I that is the true victim in all this as I was forced to declare moral bankruptcy after the lawsuits and serious name calling began to come in fast and heavy. Damn that ape.
Oprah - media megatron from the New World Order, recently unveiled a woman who had been savagely attacked by a chimpanzee named Travis. The details are as horrific and confusing as the sideshow atmosphere Oprah whipped up under that three ring circus she calls Harpo Productions. Travis tore into the woman. Bad chimp. Oprah capitalized. Bad Oprah. I watched the clip on Youtube. Bad me. I don’t watch Opra. We’ve grown apart over the years. We roomed together briefly, sharing all utilities equally. Then she changed. I no longer take her calls, and although she has invited me to be her friend on Facebook, I continue to respectfully decline by simple ignoring the invitation. She can’t write on my wall or poke me. Oprah is part of the New Oprah World Order that I want no part of along with the US Federal Reserve, Organized Religion, or People Against Pagans.
I might get around to reading Darwin’s On The Origin of the Species, or maybe the follow up - Monkey Business - Travis’ Revenge. I think they should publish an audio book as read by Kenny Rogers. I could listen to it on the drive to work or while shopping for bananas. Maybe I should buy the new Amazon e-reader gadget - the Kindle. I wonder what would happen if someone dropped their Kindle in the toilet. Or into the suds while scrubbing up in the bath and fumbling through the new Giller Prize. I hope this thing falls dead on the roadside. The Kindle misses the point. The words are only part of a complete package. There’s the new and old book smell, the dog ears, typos, weight and so forth. There’s the tangible difference between holding an old copy of Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species, and a stale electronic facsimile of the same title. Sterility and uniformity. After all, it was John Tesh who once said that not all books are created equal. You can kill a man by dropping the Old Testament on him. Throw an electronic e reader at someone and get laughed at. Apes would never read from an e-reader - apes are too civilized.
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