More Than One Monkey Assassination

Let me start off by saying this: I really, really hate monkeys. Really.

No, really.

I hate monkeys so goddamn much that if I was locked in a room with a 6-shot revolver, a monkey, and Zombie Fucking Hitler, I'd fire all 6 bullets into the monkey and take my chances clubbing Hitler to death with the empty gun. Monkeys are highly intelligent, vicious, stronger and faster than us, and totally not averse to scooping handfuls of fecal matter out of their asscracks and hurling shit-missiles with near lethal precision. Fuck chimps, fuck howlers and fuck rhesus macaques.

What did these furry little creatures do to become the object of my ire, you ask? Well, let’s review a list:

Chimps have a tendency to break out of captivity and disfigure people. Some dude a couple of years ago had his face ripped off by a chimp that escaped from a New York zoo – I don’t even have a joke for that, it’s too fucked up.

Howler Monkeys, well they haven’t done anything other than have a completely horrifying name (as do spider monkeys). That and the fact that they’re goddamned motherfucking monkeys are enough to make me want to wipe them off the face of the planet. At this point I realize that I sound kind of like a bad guy, perhaps one of the antagonists in Rise of the Planet of the Apes or some shit, but in my defense, remember what happened in every other Planet of the Apes film? So, why the fuck are we rooting against the zookeeper any damn way?

Oh, by the way, FUCK RHESUS MACAQUES.

Let’s talk about the rhesus macaque, before folks start getting all worked up about my anti-monkey sentiment. The rhesus macaque is a small, highly intelligent quadripedal omnivore, suited to pretty much every climate found in Asia, which if you weren’t sure, ranges from rainforests to desert to snow-capped mountains, so pretty much all of earth. Rhesus macaques can survive anywhere, and their diet is identical to ours. Because of that reason, rhesus macaques have been steadily moving en masse out of the rain forests and into industrialized regions of China and India, increasing exponentially their raid on crops and general propensity for mayhem.

How bad is it, you ask?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7055625.stm

(Bet you didn't think you'd see a compsagnathus riding a skateboard today, did you? Well you were wrong.)


In 2007 a group of macaques invaded a condominium development in Delhi, resulting in the death of one man as he fell from his terrace fighting off the monkey horde. Now, for those of you who don’t know, the average rhesus macaque is about a foot and a half long and weighs in at 15 lbs. So this was a lot like that guy in Jurassic Park 2 who got killed by the little compsognathuses, (Compsognathi? Compsognatheese?) except that it really happened. Oh yeah, and this guy happened to be the Vice Mayor of Delhi.

This event was the nadir of what officials in India have described as a “plague of monkeys” that has been, well, plaguing major metropolitan areas in India for several decades. The phrase “plague of monkeys” is a direct quote from the BBC article, and not my own words. It also happens to be a pretty fucking God-awful group of words to see lumped together like that. The fact that the second most well-connected figure in the city was still easy prey for coordinated monkey assassins should be a fluke, a one in a million thing, right?

Nope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_of_Greece_(king)

In 1920 the King of Greece died of “complications due to multiple monkey bites”. He had been touring the National Garden of Athens when a pack of monkeys attacked his dog. King Alexander stepped in and got his hand good and mauled for his efforts, and a few days later (remember this was 1920, a good 8 years or so before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin) his wounds grew infected and he died. As horrible as this is, if you’re going to go out, defending your dogs from a marauding monkey gang is a pretty fucking honorable way to go. King Alexander, I salute thee.

Oh yeah, going back to the Delhi incident -The absolute worst thing about this whole situation is the fact that the Delhi government has deemed that the best possible solution to this is to train teams of larger, more vicious Langur Monkeys to exterminate the macaques. I can only presume that the next step in the plan involves importing baboons to get rid of the langurs, and so on and so forth until every square inch of India – from shores of the Bay of Bengal, to the borders of Bhutan and Bangladesh, are awash with a seething mixture of blood, tears and boiling monkey shit.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts
And I looked and behold, a pale monkey
And his name that sat on him was Death
And Hell followed with him

More Sources:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/22/monkey_attack/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7055625.stm

The deputy mayor of the Indian capital Delhi has died a day after being attacked by a horde of wild monkeys.
SS Bajwa suffered serious head injuries when he fell from the first-floor terrace of his home on Saturday morning trying to fight off the monkeys

The Most Terrifying Dystopia Ever Conceived

Just about every sci-fi flick that pits the Human Race against our robotic AI overlords show that humans still have a fighting chance, and that as long as there’s a few of us left it will stay that way. Certainly there isn’t a film that depicts what Earth will be like after not only every human has been liquefied, but every living creature? (We'll get back to that...)

Oh yeah, that one. Evidence points to the fact that the events in Cars are in fact, playing out on Planet Earth. They are speaking English and their Judicial System is quite similar to our own.

Perhaps more damning is the repeated mention of Dinoco, a chain of gas stations also appearing in the Toy Story films. The Dinoco Cup is the cup sought after in the racing circuit that Lightning McQueen is a part of. Their 1st race takes place in an ambiguous raceway somewhere in the south. You see sentient cars racing against each other, while being tended to by smaller sentient vehicles in a fully automated pit-crew. Cheering the race on is an audience made up entirely of sentient cars. You get the picture.

Only if you look really closely, somewhere about 5 minutes into the movie, as the cameras pan about the 'Speedway of the South,' you see two rest rooms, clearly marked "Men" and "Women."

Do these cars need to go relieve themselves every once in a while? More likely than, this is a relic of the times before the machines grew self-aware and wiped out every trace of mankind.

Because once the 1st race is over, all ambiguity over what planet this is taking place on is wiped away as the location for the next race is revealed: The Los Angeles International Speedway, which they make quite clear is in that
Los Angeles, California. We see several location shots to further cement this home, of famous LA landmarks like the Hollywood sign, and Mann's Chinese Theatre.

Evidence that they've wiped out all animal life is hinted at by McQueen and Mater's "tractor-tipping" escapade, where they sneak into a field to spook the farm equipment that keeps the grass from growing too tall, now that all the cows have been exterminated as well. The tractors moo like cows, and later in the movie, stampede into town, only to be rounded up with relative ease by the more intelligent machines, proving that their system is more manageable than the sometimes messy dynamic between us humans and our bovine counterparts.

However, the true pinnacle of horror occurs as Sally takes Lightning to the Wheel Well Ruins, and he sees an old pair of gas pumps, replete with a small cloud of buzzing flies. Take a real close look at those insects boys and girls... They aren't flies - those are tiny winged cars

So, either sometime after becoming self-aware, every automobile in good working order decided to wipe out any trace of animal life on earth, or we have a Richard Feynman-style alternate universe thingie going on – which basically presents us with the debate of whether it’s better to have existed only to be extinguished, or to never have existed at all.

Meanwhile, back at the Bat Cave... (Plus, Felonious Meese!)

Holy crap! (I never could get the hang of coming up with something better than that, the way Burt Ward always seemed to.) August is almost over and I haven't posted single goddamn thing here. To the literally dozen of people who come check this place out from time to time, I'm sorry. In my defense, my 1st book is supposed to come out at the end of this month, and so I've been a little nutty.

Actually I've been straying dangerously close to shit-house rat crazy territory, staying up for days at a time and popping Klonopins and Xanax like tic-tacs just to get the fear flutters from bursting into flight like a colony of rabid bats. Not everyday, mind you, but that's happened once or twice this month. I'm pretty sure if Poe were alive today, he'd have a pretty bitchin' time with Xanax. (Don't mix that shit with booze, boys and girls - that's how rock stars die.)

So what else is new, you ask? Well for one thing, the wonderful people over at Cracked.com posted an article I co-wrote with a really funny and talented guy named Gabriel Oliver. Here's a link to said article, in case you want to check it out:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19934_6-people-who-defied-gravity-and-then-kicked-it-in-nuts.html

I still haven't figured out how to properly link stuff on this blog. Maybe someday. Anyway, here's some dark stuff about our moose brethren that you may not know about.


Felonious Meese

According to the Finnish tome The Kalevala, Lempo was the equivalent of Loki, with several notable exceptions. One of them is that Loki was considered more of a prankster, while Lempo was more of the bloodthirsty psychotic Lord of the Underworld types. Lempo’s idea of a good joke was to find a warrior in the middle of battle, and send one of his demon minions in to possess the warrior’s sword so that he might cut himself to pieces in front of his men. Hilarious, right?

Oh yeah, Lempo also had a legion of moose. Fire-breathing moose.
http://www.godchecker.com/pantheon/finnish-mythology.php?deity=LEMPO

We probably should have known then that there was something wrong with those creatures, but between the PR department over at Whatsamatta U, and their constant presence on the label of many excellent beers, we’ve gone and dismissed the Moose (or European Elk, if you prefer) to be a gentle giant of sorts. A somewhat quirky, fey beast that aside from being a nuisance if you happen to live in Cicely, but otherwise no harm, no foul.

The truth is a little more sinister. Turns out that these enormous, steam chuffing, razor antlered beasts can be more than just quirky. They have a taste for alcohol, a penchant for violence, and about as much respect for human weaponry as Godzilla had for Japanese tanks.

The Misdemeanors: (Yeah, I could have called them "moosedemeanors" but when it comes right down to it, puns suck.)

1 - Drunk and disorderly

We’ve all been there at one time or another, you’ve had a few too many, and find yourself stuck in a tree, waiting for the fire department to get you down. On a dark and windy night (is there any other kind in Sweden?) farmer Par Johansson (I’m pretty sure that if you live in Sweden, your surname is either going to Johansson, Johansen or uhh…Chef) heard what he described as something “screaming with a very dark voice”. Naturally he went to check it out, because when farmers (read: real men) hear unearthly howls undulating from their creepy-ass orchards they don’t piss themselves and run screaming for the nearest safe-room, they investigate, damn it. And what did Farmer Johansson find for his troubles? A 1200 lb bull moose had decided to tell both Mother Nature and most of the laws of Newtonian Physics to go take a flying leap, and then it climbed into a fucking tree. Apparently, the moose had figured out that by eating fermented apples it could catch a pretty good buzz, and perhaps grew maudlin after listening to too many Opeth albums. No one knows how much time Per Johansson spent denying the existence of a beneficent and loving God once he laid eyes on the unholy sight of a drunken, gimlet-eyed, half-crucified moose screaming its lungs out while dangling from an apple tree, but at some point he did manage to come to his senses long enough to contact Swedish Emergency Moose Services – or whomever one might have to call in such a situation.

(Source)

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-08/world/sweden.drunken.moose_1_moose-apple-tree-johansson?_s=PM:WORLD

(Quote:"It was raining really bad. In the wind I heard something screaming with a very dark voice," Johansson told CNN. "At first I wondered if it was the crazy neighbors, but then I heard it again and went and checked. I saw something really big up in a tree in my neighbors' yard and it was a moose. It must have been drunk after eating fermented apples and as it was reaching out for more fruit it must have slipped and fallen into the tree.")

2 – Inciting a Riot

It’s not always easy to meet that special someone. The single life is difficult enough, and now that women have figured out that they can make a pretty fast buck simply by meeting desperate men, drugging them and then harvesting their organs on craigslist, dating has only gotten more complicated. At least in the wild, animals have it easy, and can pretty much mate with whomever they want, right? Well, if you’re a moose, then the answer is a resounding “Hell no, sucker!”
Much like the African Lion, moose are polygynous, which means that dominant males collect their own harem of females, who once pinned, are their bitches fo’ life. Sounds pretty good, except for the smaller males, who not only don’t get a chance to find a mate, but also get the added humiliation of having the females cry out “protest moans”. A protest moan is the moose equivalent of a rape-whistle, crossed with a snotty girl in a nightclub doing a massive eye-roll at the poor dweeb that just tried to pick her up. This mechanism impels the larger males to come on over and stomp the living shit out of the wimpier would-be suitors. Which is understandable in a certain light, given the evolutionary imperative is to find the most suitable (in mooseland, that means the biggest and strongest) mate. However, it turns out that the females are employing a Delilah-like cunning in some cases, and using their feminine charms to incite several males to engage in spectacular, bloody brawls. Winner gets the lady, loser goes home.

(Source)

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-wide-web/science-loose-moose-mating-habits-female-moans
http://www.aninews.in/newsdetail9/story6229/female-moose-provoke-fights-between-male-competitors-by-moaning.html

(Quote:While it was already known that female moose make “protest moans” in response to courtship attempts, scientists now believe that females moan more when approached by smaller males in order to trigger aggression in larger male moose suitors and start fights, the BBC reports.)
No big deal for us human-folk, only that sometimes when a bull-moose decides to take up a life of crime, it can lead to some pretty ugly behavior, like…


The Felonies

3 – Home Invasion

Living in Northern Europe is bad enough. Half the year, you’re depressed and starved for vitamin D, and in some places during the summer you can fester in a state of near-schizophrenia as a result of the sun sometimes setting for less than an hour each day, and sometimes not at all. Oh yeah, and then there’s the danger of moose attacks. Yep, you read that right, apparently it’s a real thing there. Several years ago a man in Loftahammer Sweden was accused by murdering his wife, only to be cleared some time later when DNA evidence lifted from trace amounts of saliva on the woman’s body revealed that the attacker was indeed European Elk, AKA Moose DNA.
Side note: careful linguistic studies have shown the name Loftahammer to be the most bitchin’ name for a town, ever.
But that’s okay, you say, the woman was out in the forest when she was murdered. As long as you stay inside, you’re safe from moose attacks, right?
Only, you already know the answer to that, don’t you… It’s that icy feeling in your gut, the hairs that are prickling on the back of your neck.
Turns out that moose have nothing against wandering into town, or even raiding your house.

(Source)

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&dat=1989
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19890526&id=1t0eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=09QEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4982,34597700523&id=2mcsAAAAIBAJ&sjid=lM4EAAAAIBAJ&pg=4261,3524789
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8384143.stm
HELSINKI, Finland – A 450lb moose wandered into a Helsinki suburb Thursday and destroyed a ground floor apartment after crashing through the bedroom window. Police shot and killed the yearling, which was bleeding to death from its cuts from jumping through the window of a three-bedroom apartment in the suburb of Pukinmaki, about 5 miles from the city center, newspapers said)
Now, on the bright side, this was a ground floor apartment so if you stay up high, you should be safe from the great thundering beasts, I mean it’s not like they can climb trees – oh, wait a minute… Damn.

4 - Looting

And it only seems to be getting worse. The animal kingdom seems to be growing less and less respectful of mankind’s lofty position on top of the food chain. While the bull moose (aside from the one troublesome little murder in Loftahammer) hasn’t exhibited a taste for human flesh per se, they have acquired a thirst for our delicious, delicious beer. This time, the break-in occurred in the Norwegian city of Kongsvinger, where a moose tore into the local market, destroying floral exhibits and sampling the baker’s goods before hearing the siren song of the liquor section, apparently no longer satisfied with chewing up fermented apples. Unlike the home invasion some 20 years ago in Pukinmaki, the aborted beer run took place in a crowded store in broad daylight.

(Source)

http://www.newsinenglish.no/2010/07/13/m
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/15/moose-on-the-loose-in-nor_n_648309.htmloose-mayhem-at-the-market/
(Customers at a grocery store in the southeastern Norwegian city of Kongsvinger got quite a surprise on Tuesday, when a moose calf marched into the market and made quite a mess.
The moose first made its way into the local shopping center called Sundehjørnet, making a stop at the flower shop and the bakery before barging into the Kiwi grocery store.
Moose are not an uncommon site in the area, but the young male ox’s shopping trip was entirely unexpected.
“I was very shaken when it was all over,” Inger Lise Moss of the flower shop told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK).)