Friday, May 30, 2008
The net neutrality nymph
(i) can prove he upholds net neutrality;
(ii) is a virgin.
The casual reader might wonder what virginity has to do with it. Nothing at all, it seems. It’s just Miss Derveaux’s way of limiting those queuing up to bonk her to a manageable number. Be that as it may, thousands of eager teenagers have already signed up for the Tania experience, while countless others are no doubt asking their doctors whether male virginity can be surgically restored. The latter group are certainly barking up the wrong trouser-leg. The manager of the safari camp assures me that a man regains 90% of his virginity if he goes without sex for a year. Presumably the remaining 10% can be recovered by washing the genitals in strawberry milkshake.
Miss Derveaux will have to watch out for crafty rogues who profess to be virgins just to get into her pants. Is it possible for a man to fake virginity? My sources tell me it’s as easy as fried green tomatoes. You just walk up to a woman with a sheepish expression on your face and follow her instructions when she takes you to bed. To reinforce the deception, you might annotate the sexual frolics with remarks such as “This isn’t in the manual!” and “So that’s where it is!”. But it’s important not to overplay your hand by saying unbelievable things like “Mmm, it tastes much better than I thought it would!”.
The bogus-virgin problem hints at a deeper dilemma with Tania’s offer. Call me a pious ape, but the whole idea of providing sexual favours to promote a worthy cause looks suspect to me. The man who must be bribed to do good deeds is a fair-weather convert of the shallowest sort - the calibre of fellow, I would say, who will renege on his commitments as soon as a woman with a nicer pair of boobs comes along. Speaking as a male gorilla, I never accept sexual favours from my females in return for bringing them food or protecting them from marauders. “Virtue is its own reward,” I tell them, “come back in an hour when your hearts are filled with benevolence rather than gratitude.” (An hour is usually long enough for a refreshing snooze to recharge the batteries).
I’m not suggesting that any virgin should actually say ‘No’ to Miss Derveaux. That would be a scandalous waste of an attractive woman. The important thing is to insist that no amount of hanky panky can dictate one’s position on internet freedom. Before unbuckling his trouser belt, the honourable male virgin would make the following statement:
“I hear what you say about net neutrality, Tania. It sounds like a sensible policy and I’ll certainly look into it after you’ve had your way with me. But a quid pro quo is out of the question. Take me for my own sake and I will reflect on your persuasive arguments. Now let’s get naked.”
The world would be a much happier place if men made clear-headed declarations before jumping into bed with the first available woman.
Labels: Net neutrality, Tania Derveaux, virginity
Monday, May 26, 2008
Troubled souls
The zoo director wanted me to fly over and talk to the ginger-haired upstart, soothing his anxieties with a few carefully chosen grunts. I said I had too many commitments at home, what with the baboon-chasing season starting next week. I did mention that part of the problem might be calling him ‘Bruno’, which is the perfect name for big shaggy dog. Any primate lumbered with it has a valid excuse for feeling a bit tetchy. I offered to send them an audiotape which they could play to the orang-utan while he was resting. Few can withstand the suggestive power of the deep Bananas voice.
You’re probably wondering how they knew to contact me. Well, the fact is I acquired quite a reputation for counselling in my circus days. It was my handling of the suicide attempt of a clown that won me international acclaim. His gay lover had eloped with a Latin dance instructor and sent him a letter of renunciation. Distraught at being so callously dumped, he climbed the trapeze rigging and positioned himself for what we circus types call “a free-fall spectacle”. In the conspicuous absence of other volunteers, I went up after him.
“Don’t come nearer GB or I’ll jump!” he bleated tearfully.
“For God’s sake Horace, you’re not high enough to kill yourself!” I exclaimed. “You’ll break your bones and end up in hospital. The ringmaster will visit you every week just to call you a prick!”
“I’ll dive headfirst,” he replied, gazing giddily at the ground.
“It still looks iffy,” I advised. “Look Horace, no one can stop you killing yourself if you’ve set your heart on it. All I’m saying is don’t rush into a decision you might later regret.”
“What have I got to live for?” he wailed.
“Well, for one thing Falcon Crest is on this evening.”
I knew I had him there. It was his favourite TV show, and like most gay men he idolised Jane Wyman while having major hots for Lorenzo Lamas. Seeing doubts creep into his face, I decided to make a tactical withdrawal.
“I’m going down now, Horace.” I said. “Why not watch tonight’s episode and sleep on the suicide thing? There’ll be plenty of opportunities to do it right later. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you to plan your death properly.”
Later that evening, I joined the circus staff watching Falcon Crest on a communal TV set. Horace was there and I sat next to him, taking care not to show exaggerated concern for his emotional state. I chuckled at Jane Wyman’s lines to remind him of what he would have missed if he’d pinged himself. I didn’t wolf-whistle at Lorenzo Lamas though – one has one’s limits. He later agreed it would be silly to commit suicide before the current series ended, by which time, of course, he’d found himself a new beau.
This successful course of therapy led me to formulate the Bananas prescription for mental health: live in the present and savour your favourite TV show. As a famous economist once said, in the long run we’re all fucked.
Labels: Falcon Crest, Jane Wyman, mental health
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
The hunt for bin Laden
A fellow called Morgan Spurlock has made a documentary about the on-going manhunt for bin Laden. The mood of the film can be summed up as follows:
They seek him here, they seek him there,
Those missiles seek him everywhere.
Is he indoors, or in someone’s garden?
That damned elusive Osama bin Laden.
I give the man full marks for enthusiasm, but he’s clearly out of his depth. To catch a slippery fish like bin Laden you’ve got to be an experienced bounty hunter, equipped with the latest gadgets and mingling with the shadiest characters. Spurlock’s credentials are weak to the point of non-existent. It’s the old story of antiquated kit and piss-poor intelligence leading to a futile wild-goose chase.
A lot of humans seem to have their own pet schemes for liquidating the goatish fugitive. Last Easter, at Dr Whipsnade’s dinner table, I heard an English country gent explaining how he would go about it.
“Give my hounds a scent of his briefs and let them loose in North Waziristan at daybreak,” declared Hubert ‘Sniffer’ Gusset. “They’ll be biting chunks off the blighter before sundown!”
I couldn’t avoid sucking my teeth in disbelief, even though it’s not the best table manners. Bin Laden may be a crafty fiend, but fox he is not. Nor does he wear underpants beneath those demure ankle-length frocks he models for Al Jazeera. How do I know about these sartorial details? Because I have a reliable informant who’s seen Osama from inside the llama’s lair. I bullshit ye not, ladies and gentlemen, I actually know a woman who was bin Laden’s concubine in the flower of her nubility.
Ever since I wrote an essay about her in September 2006, Ms Kola Boof has been a regular correspondent. (I have since deleted the post for reasons that are none of your business, but my longstanding readers may remember it). This proud Nubian damsel was abducted by the Yemeni Yeti in the 1990s and forced into a grim existence as his sex slave. She eventually managed to give him the slip, and went on to found an authentic African religion involving Earth-mother, bare-titty themes. She currently lives in California and has published a number of poems and short stories.
Incidentally, just because a man is wanted for terrible crimes it doesn’t mean his lesser ones should be ignored or forgiven. As I mentioned above, Ms Boof was far from being a willing adornment to bin Laden’s camel-hair rug. Back in my circus days, I remember hearing about the trial of a notorious con-man who’d swindled pensioners out of their life savings. When his picture appeared in the newspapers, one of our female acrobats recognised him as the flasher who’d ruined her breakfast at a café in Littlehampton. I applauded her civic spirit when she resolved to appear as a character witness for the prosecution, although it turned out her testimony was inadmissible. I don’t understand these legal technicalities. A man who indecently exposes himself at a woman with her mouth full is surely capable of anything.
Returning to the bin Laden case, Ms Boof has supplied me with inside information about the scoundrel’s biggest weakness. In a word, it’s poontang. According to Kola, he became deranged with lust for Whitney Houston when he saw her on TV, dreaming up the craziest plots to kidnap the chanteuse and ravish her inside his tent. Hence the best way of bringing about his downfall might be to persuade a Whitney look-alike to prostitute herself in a noble cause (the real Miss Houston being too far gone for such work).
If our intrepid Mata Hari were to go round the karaoke bars of Peshawar singing ‘I will always love you’, bin Laden would soon get to hear of it, and no doubt think she was singing about him, the conceited ass. Little would he know about the high-voltage device implanted in her vagina, capable of killing a man with a single lethal jolt, or rendering him incontinent at the very least. I don’t see him making any more boastful videos after an experience like that. Better implant one in her rectum as well to be on the safe side.
Labels: bin Laden, Kola Boof, Morgan Spurlock
Friday, May 16, 2008
Eggs, honey and sperm
There is an awkward silence at the safari guesthouse when a young lady from Texas asks whether “ennia yew boys” have made a deposit at a sperm bank. I imagine such questions are no big deal in the domain of the longhorn bull, but it’s not what you expect to hear over cocktails in an exclusive resort. As bartender, I attempt to relieve the embarrassment by interjecting a flippant remark.
“Miss Eunice,” I say (for that is her name). “I have banked my sperm in a number of hairy safe-deposit boxes!”
“Ah just bet you did, big fella!” she replies with a saucy wink. “But some of yo’ hoomanoidal cousins tug the slug so they can sell their spooge for cash!”
I react to this allegation by slapping my forehead in feigned surprise before making the following response:
“In that case, Miss Eunice, I fear that your enquiries will be fruitless. A gentleman does not discuss his financial affairs with women or children.”
This prompts the southern belle to opine vociferously on what men claiming to be gentlemen are capable of doing and have in fact done. It does, nevertheless, deflect her interrogation from its original purpose.
Discerning readers will have realised, of course, that Miss Eunice was teaching her grandmother how to fertilise eggs. Having spent my youth in a travelling circus, I could have given her a 10-lecture course on artificial insemination with a couple of lab tutorials thrown in for free. Most of our four-legged employees bred in that fashion, although one case I remember involved a girl in the costumes section. She impregnated herself with the sperm of a nameless performer, co-opted for this purpose by her lesbian lover in the trapeze team. All the nosey humans naturally tried to guess who the donor was, but I was more interested in the mechanics of the operation. The happy couple were pleased to satisfy my curiosity by describing the following four-step procedure:
(i) Empty fresh jism into beaker and mix with two tablespoons of Highland Spring mineral water (to give sperm space to swim about and get in shape for big event).
(ii) Add one teaspoon of honey for flavouring and nourishment (human sperm have a notoriously sweet tooth).
(iii) Suck mixture into teat pipette from children’s chemistry set.
(iv) Make gentle love to pipette, squirting fluid into cha-cha while imagining scene from Cadbury’s flake commercial.
It does have a certain panache, as far as recipes go, but not quite the vitality befitting an event as significant as the creation of new life. Dress it up how you want, no child wants to be fathered by a device used to make unstable liquids in a test tube go poof.
For much the same reason, I always feel twinge of sadness to read of middle-aged ladies having the best sex of their lives when their children are well past puberty. How would the young ones feel on discovering that the mother who merely went through the motions when they were conceived is currently experiencing toe-curling bedroom delights? Human couples trying to reproduce owe it to their future offspring to make it a night to remember. As we gorillas say, “Start life with a bang, end it with a whimper.”
Labels: Artificial insemination, jism, longhorn bull
Monday, May 12, 2008
Indian heatwave
I hear that the teaming masses of India are rioting because of the hot weather. Someone should tell them that rioting only makes you hotter. Far better to relax beneath the shade of a leafy tree while being fanned by your personal attendant. Who could ever forget those leg-stretching lyrics sung by the sultry Ursula Andress?
Underneath the mango tree
Me honey and me
Dah dah dah dah doo
Female gorillas are not cut out to be fanners, so I usually hire a chimpanzee to pull the punkah. One must do one’s bit to create jobs and discourage idle hands from mischievous deeds. How do I occupy myself while being fanned? If I’m in the mood, I toot out melodies on my recorder while shaking a pair of maracas with my feet. We gorillas are well-equipped to be solo artists.
It seems that the Indians are furious about being subjected to lengthy power cuts. There simply isn’t enough wattage to keep the burgeoning number of electric fans whirring for 24 hours a day. That’s what happens in a booming emerging economy – people who once made do with the odd gust of breeze now expect to have non-stop ventilation. Enraged householders have stripped to their underwear and taken to the streets, abusing and harassing local officials. It’s a tactic that’s causing much commotion, given that the sight of Indian men in their chuddies has been known to spook elephants. One gets the impression that very few of the protesters are women in bra and panties.
I learned in my circus days how humans can lash out unpredictably when the temperature gets too high. I remember a blazing afternoon in Mexico City before an evening show. It was hotter than the Devil’s kitchen. I saw a dog pass water on the hubcap of a motor car, only to scamper away in panic when its piss sizzled and gave off steam. While the other performers rehearsed inside the big tent, I sat in a deckchair outside, wearing a sombrero and reading back issues of Josie and the Pussycats.
Presently, the ringmaster stormed out of the tent and addressed me angrily.
“Where’s my haemorrhoid cream?” he thundered.
“Your what?” I replied, barely suppressing a grin.
“Don’t play dumb with me, you big hairy ape! I checked the seat of your bicycle and it was greasy!”
“My dear Ringmaster, that’s just palm oil to prevent the hot plastic sticking to my bum. I assure you I have no need of your unguents.”
“I want to search your trailer!”
“Be my guest, Ringmaster. After you have done so, I suggest you make enquiries with the clowns. I saw them applying an odd-looking lotion to their chapped lips. You must take more care where you leave your medications.”
He stomped off muttering and harumping. “There goes an angry, red-faced man,” I thought.
Let us pray that India boosts her output to meet the growing demand. It will take a while for new facilities to be put in place, so interim measures are urgently required. Here are my suggestions:
(i) organise free bus tours to the Himalayan foothills for the ringleaders, to cool them down and make them giddy in the thin atmosphere;
(ii) use crop-spraying aircraft to deposit a fine mist of opiates over the rioters, so their wrath gives way to drowsy contentment;
(iii) instruct officials connected with the power industry to wear false noses and wigs, to make them a focus of ridicule rather than rage.
Sound social policy is the only remedy for civil disorder.
Labels: Chuddies, India, Punkah, Ursula Andress
Wednesday, May 07, 2008
Jock and the Beanstalk
I had a chat with the guests at the safari camp the other day, as they waited for their bus to arrive. A shy young woman called Miss Lillywhite told me that she worked for a large publishing house. She said that one of her current projects was re-writing a book of much-loved fairy tales in non-sexist, non-racist language.
“I had no idea that fairy stories were such a repository of political incorrectness,” I remarked. “Can you give me an example?”
“Do you remember when the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk says ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’?”
“Yes, how funny that was!” I exclaimed. “In a dark and macabre way, of course,” I added gravely.
“Well we’re changing that to ‘Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of a farmer’s son’.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “I see your point. It was obviously bad form for the giant to single out a particular race of humans for his main course. And I don’t believe for one minute that an Englishman’s blood has a distinctive odour. Had he said ‘I smell the armpits of an Englishman’ he might have had a point, but…”
One of the advantages of being a 500-pound gorilla is that you don’t often get interrupted in mid-sentence, but this proved to be one of the rare instances to the contrary. As I faced the young lady, the crisp voice of a sardonic Scotsman passed by my shoulder:
“It’s just as well the giant didne eat him cuz he’d a bin constipated for a week!”
I turned round to see a tall, sturdy man of middle age, with a mischievous twinkle in his grey eyes.
“What ever do you mean, Sir?” I asked. “Does the flesh of the English lack roughage? No more so than the flesh of the Scotch, Irish or Welsh, I’ll be bound. The giant would surely have taken vegetables with his meat, to say nothing of bran flakes for breakfast!”
“I mean the English are so full of shite it would have clogged up his gut!” explained the man with a smirk.
I smiled knowingly. I had met enough Scottish humans in my circus days to know that rubbishing the “auld enemy” was a favourite pastime of theirs.
“How very ironic that you should make such a remark in present company,” I said, “for it is precisely the kind of ignoble sentiment that Miss Lillywhite is excising from the new version of the fable she is drafting.”
“O aye?” replied the Scotsman, looking at our female companion in wry amusement. “So you’re working on a clean version of Jack and the Beanstalk, are yer?
Miss Lillywhite nodded.
“Well yer may have your work cut out. Ah’ve always thought it was a parable warning against the dangers of masturbation. It’s pretty obvious what that sprouting beanstalk represents, don’t yer think?”
I chuckled at the man’s tarradiddle, and was about to make a sceptical yet civil remark, when I noticed with dismay that Miss Lillywhite was blushing furiously. It pained me to see her in such a condition, so I decided to make a loud and preposterous statement in the hope that it would draw attention to myself and ease her discomfort.
“What the devil are you blathering about man!” I cried. “The beanstalk was obviously a giant stick of celery, or perhaps a stick of giant broccoli - a triffid-like harbinger of doom for humans and ogres alike! Man, in his vainglorious pride, dabbles with bewitched beans in defiance of his sacred texts, creating a monstrosity that will smite him hip and thigh!”
As I had hoped, my outburst attracted the attention of the rest of the tour party, several of whom quickly gathered round to participate in the persiflage. The debate quickly developed into a series of rapid-fire exchanges between the Scotsman (whose name was McTavish) and the newcomers (who were English). The former, I might add, was more than equal to the challenge, for these Caledonian folk assuredly have the gift of repartee. Miss Lillywhite, meanwhile, drifted away, and I noted with satisfaction that her cheeks had been restored to their customary pale complexion.
Presently, the safari bus arrived and the guests began to take their seats. The last to board was one of the men who had been bantering with the loquacious Scotsman. Before entering the vehicle, he uttered these words to me in a low voice:
“I’ve got a good one for McTavish: ‘Why do Scotsmen have long, thin dicks? Because they’re a bunch of tight-fisted wankers!’ Wish me luck!”
My only response to this quip was to place my hand over my mouth and shake my head in disapproval. After the bus had driven away, I fell to the ground and howled like hyena.
Labels: English armpits, Fee-fi-fo-fum, Scotsman
