Welcome to Monkey World

by Fred Russell

I have no doubt that if we saw monkeys, not to mention cows and cockroaches, acting like human beings we’d think they’d lost their minds.

Imagine:

A talking monkey sitting behind a desk and dramatically reviewing the day’s events: two monkeys dead after falling 40 feet out of a tree, a crazy monkey shooting up a monkey church, monkeys robbing banks, monkeys rioting in the nation’s capitol; and foreign news as well, with learned monkeys speculating about how the prime monkey of the United Kingdom will respond to the attack of Russian monkeys on Ukrainian monkeys. And then solemn monkey reporters who don’t understand a word of foreign monkeytalk interviewing locals in pidgin English. Then a monkey in front of a camera trying to get other monkeys to drink some acidic beverage while surrounded by female monkeys with long bare legs to create the illusion that drinking the acidic beverage will get the monkeys in the viewing audience laid. And of course a rundown of monkeyball scores and monkeys punching each other with oversized gloves, monkeys on skateboards in the Monkey Olympics, monkey pole vaulters and high jumpers kissing their medals while hordes of screaming monkeys cheer their heads off. And then ordinarily low-key and permanently constipated British monkeycasters screaming like maniacs as a pack of monkey cyclists head into the home stretch. And finally another female monkey in a mini skirt with the weather report.

Imagine also monkey sitcoms, feature films, fashion shows, reality shows. And interviews with monkey stars. “Well, Bob, she’s one helluva monkey to work with.” And then a banana break.

Monkey life would often be sentimentalized by popular monkey writers, but more serious monkeys would provide a less idealized version of things, calling a spade a spade and a monkey a monkey. Speaking of spades, there would also be friction between brown monkeys (the majority) and white or albino monkeys, the latter often not allowed into restaurants and forced to piss and shit behind a tree in a roped-off area instead of in the more inviting facilities reserved For Brown Monkeys Only despite the fact that their excrement was as brown as anyone else’s. But all that had been more or less settled in monkey courts around the country thought not the problem of monkeys belching and farting at the dinner table and talking dirty in bed and cursing the fatcat monkeys who rule their lives and sometimes put them in cages so that docile monkeys passing by could have a good laugh watching them scratch themselves and swing from monkey bars.

But more tranquil domestic scenes as well and some low-key chitchat. Mrs. Monkey telling Mr. Monkey how the shopping went, Mr. Monkey telling Mrs. Monkey how his day in the factory went, with a few not-so-kind words nonetheless reserved for the monkey boss, who smoked cigars and patted the bottoms of the lady monkeys on the assembly line. And then the kids making the usual racket and Mr. Monkey telling them to quiet down, the house wasn’t a jungle.

And then billionaire monkey nerds too digitalizing everything in sight and appearing on talk shows to explain the future to the viewing audience while monkeypreneurs, also making billions, developed social media “to bring monkeys together” and enable monkey misfits to curse each other from morning to night.

That’s your monkey world. Sounds crazy, but also familiar.