Friday, March 27, 2009
Romanian Book of the Undead
A 73-year-old Romanian man has held a dress rehearsal for his funeral, with grieving mourners and a sermon from the village priest. He even tried out his grave for size and found it comfortable. Had he worked in a circus he'd know that a flawless rehearsal is no guarantee of anything. When the fateful day arrives, his bored kinsfolk will probably be picking their noses during his eulogy. As for the priest, he’ll surely want revenge on the silly old git for wasting his time. Fluffing his lines would be too obvious, so maybe he'll sneak a fart into the coffin just before the lid goes on. I bet the slaves who were buried alive with the Pharaohs guffed into the sarcophagus until their gas supply ran out.
Such morbid events do little for the image of Romania, which has been tarnished enough by the vampire legends. It’s about time our friend Gadjo Dilo got off his Balkan backside and did something for his country’s reputation. Having had the good fortune to grow up among the Thames Valley elite, he has a pastoral obligation to the simple folk of his native land. Although he’s too modest to admit it, he’s obviously become something of a local Bwana since his return. I’m sure the Romanian Tourist Board would make him their Czar if he offered to help.
The first thing for Gadjo to sort out would be the behaviour of the peasantry. Garlic and crucifixes would be out, gay dances and motley costumes would be in. The men would be ordered to trim their bushy eyebrows and the women would be asked to remove their facial hair. As a reward for compliance, they’d be given permission to carve wooden hobgoblins and sell them to the tourists at inflated prices.
Work should then begin on a Dracula theme park in Bucharest, emphasising the positive aspects of the Bram Stoker legend. Visiting matrons could re-live their maidenhood by donning virgin costumes and being chased by saturnine gigolos intent on giving them a hickey. The men could take part in an archery tournament involving the firing of wooden stakes into an effigy of Van Helsing (thereby giving the sadistic twerp a belated taste of his own medicine). A special blood-red cherry cola would be served to the kiddies after a ride in the Flying Vampire Bat. The whole experience would put Disneyworld to shame.
The last thing Gadjo should do is make a promotional TV commercial for the tourist market. The tried-and-tested formula is to show a local celebrity enjoying himself in the company of big-breasted models. The obvious star to hire would be Ilie Năstase, the former tennis champion, who bedded the entire ladies’ quarter-final draw of the 1972 French Open. The sight of “Nasty” munching Moldavian meatballs while ogling Transylvanian titties would have the European masses rushing to their travel agents.
The big growth market for the future is archaeology-tourism. In Africa, guests interested in the origins of homo sapiens will pay a substantial fee to dig up bones and artefacts under the supervision of the Big White Professor (honkus americanus). I’m hoping to persuade some of these earnest humans to dig up insects and roots instead, under the supervision of the Big Hairy Gorilla (gorilla gorilla). An imaginative fellow like Gadjo might offer similar activities to people visiting his own country. Provided, of course, there is anything worth digging up in Romania.
Labels: archeology, Ilie Nastase, Romania, tourism
Monday, March 23, 2009
Pregnant women
I got a boastful e-mail from Danny Craig the other day. International stardom has not cured him of the need to toot his own horn. It seems that a pregnant woman got so excited watching him jump about in Quantum of Solace that she went into premature labour. I was careful not to puncture Danny’s fragile ego. “Your ability to induce labour is just the tip of the iceberg,” I wrote in reply. “Many women have actually conceived after watching you pull out your revolver.” That should get him in the right frame of mind for the next Bond flick.
Impregnating a woman is quite tricky in reality. When a female ape is in season she’s a dead cert to conceive, even if she gets mounted by a goat. But many human females have problems with blocked tubes, fickle ovaries, or men who fire blanks. It can be incredibly frustrating for them. A 40-year-old woman from northern England recently bit her boyfriend’s tongue off in a drunken rage when she found out she wasn’t with child. Such desperate acts are all too common when a woman’s biological clock is ticking. One has to feel sorry for the man, even though he was as reckless as a baboon to let it happen. French-kissing an intoxicated woman is something you do at your own peril.
The tongue-munching madam will go to gaol for her offence, which is harsh in a way, although judging from her appearance she’ll probably enjoy herself in a women’s prison. My jungle instincts tell me that she suffered from “premature ovulation”, a reproductive dysfunction peculiar to butch ladies. In her eagerness to conceive, her eggs must have been popping out long before her hapless boyfriend brought his laborious huffing and puffing to a sticky consummation. Timing is everything in successful fertilisation. If the egg has gone off when the sperm arrive, they swim in the opposite direction holding their noses.
The biggest pregnancy-related news story seems to be about the woman in America who had octuplets. A lot of people are very annoyed with her for reasons I can’t quite fathom. My only complaint is her obviously false claim that she did it because she loves children. I love a good fruit pie, but I don’t eat them in quantities that make me shit out gooseberries. It’s pretty obvious that the woman has a “bitch-and-puppies” fetish – an uncontrollable urge to feel a litter squirming inside her and later sucking on her udders. She’s three pairs of tits short for final part of the fantasy, but the power of imagination often trumps such anatomical details.
My favourite pregnant women of the moment are the two luscious blondes who posed naked outside the bistro of Little Jimmy Oliver, the cockney chef. The were protesting against Jimmy’s wanton slaughter of pigs to fatten up his greedy punters with heaps of non-kosher food. His spokesman claimed that the pork served at the restaurant comes from “the happiest pigs you can get”. I bet they were a lot happier before Jimmy’s knife-wielding assassins cut their throats.
Meat-eaters have condemned the protest as “tasteless”. I don’t agree. It is a feast for the eyes to watch naked pregnant women, their boobies brimming with fresh milk, imitate dairy cows before their daily pumping. They certainly look much tastier than Jimmy’s pork chops. I only wish I’d been there to offer them encouragement and strike up a friendly conversation about the role of insects in the ethical diet of tomorrow.
Labels: Danny Craig, Jimmy Oliver, octuplets, PETA
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The boy, his girls and Dicky Dawkins
A British teenager is desperately seeking an ugly girlfriend. Apparently he developed this peculiar yearning while watching a TV show called Ugly Betty. This gave him the idea that bespectacled girls with big teeth are good-hearted, faithful, intelligent and not that bad in the sack with the lights turned out. Unable to find a sufficiently plain Jane in the UK, he is now searching America for a facially-challenged female who will capture his heart and scare off the gophers. Amazingly enough, thousands of girls are applying for the position. I bet they all have wonderful personalities.
The boy seems amiable enough (in a goofy sort of way) and I wish him well in his quest. His behaviour is only newsworthy, of course, because it is so atypical - teenage boys generally prefer pretty girlfriends if they are in a position to choose. The importance of looks in human mate selection is quite puzzling to a gorilla, and prompts me to ask a question about the theory of evolution. If certain facial features make women more appealing, why haven’t they spread throughout the population? In search of an answer, I fired off the following e-mail to my friend Professor Dawkins:
Dear Dicky,
How’s tricks, you old pontificator! I’ve got another conundrum for you. Everyone knows that women with attractive faces get to mate with the alpha males. Look at your own wife, Lalla – being an absolute cracker enabled her to snare the most famous egghead in England. (I bet you weren’t thinking about her foraging skills when you asked her out, you sly dog!) So the question is: If being a babe is such an advantage in obtaining a good mate, why hasn’t natural selection made all girls pretty?
Your hairy jungle buddy
Gorilla Bananas
P. S. God sucks!!
The reply from Dicky was almost instantaneous:
Dear G.B.
Before I answer your question, I have one for you. Must you always be so outrageously cheeky when corresponding with me? I will always be grateful to you for saving my life in the Congo, but to presume on my gratitude by making disrespectful comments about my private life is not the behaviour of a friend. I assure you that Lalla and I have many common interests. Had I treated her as the trophy wife you imply she is, we would not still be together.
Turning to your query, which is an interesting one, I would make the following observation. Being fought over by powerful men may appeal to a woman’s vanity, but it does not necessarily translate into a successful breeding strategy. Perhaps we might discuss this further the next time you visit England?
With very best wishes
Richard Dawkins
I was about to send Dicky a reply telling him to get off his high horse and stop behaving like a sourpuss, when something in his message caught my eye. The phrase “being fought over by powerful men” was entirely of his own making – I never mentioned any such thing in my own missive. Reading between the lines, I deduced that Dicky must have jousted with a rival for Lalla’s fair hand. This “powerful man” was surely none other than Tom “Crazy Eyes” Baker, who co-starred with Lalla in a British science-fiction drama. I bet that lumbering beanpole got in a few low blows, which would explain why Lalla and Dicky haven’t had any children. His remark about “not translating into a successful breeding strategy” is another obvious clue.
I think the right thing to do, in the circumstances, is not to press Dicky for further elucidation. Better to draw a veil over these painful memories and send him a gift instead. I’ll ask the local witch doctor to prepare an invigorating balm for his reproductive organs. An injury to a man’s gonads often has a lingering psychological effect after the physical scars have healed. Let us pray that Dicky will be restored to full potency once his nuts and bolts have been properly oiled.
Labels: Lalla Ward, Richard Dawkins, Tom Baker, Ugly Betty
Friday, March 13, 2009
Wild parrot chase
A British charity has given an amateur birdwatcher five thousand pounds sterling to hunt for an Australian parrot that is probably extinct. It’s money well spent in my view. The problem with parrots is knowing for sure whether they're really extinct or just lying low. A month ago one of my females said:
“Yo, Bananas, do you think the purple-crested peckerhead has died out? We haven't been woken up by that motherfucker for ages.”
“By golly, you could be right!” I exclaimed. “No wonder I've been sleeping like a lark. God willing, the curse of the midnight squawker has been lifted!”
And then, of course, on that very night, it was caw-bloody-caw as I slumbered in my hammock, interrupting a dream about my favourite episode of Little House on the Prairie. Thankfully, a resourceful monkey silenced the featherbrained fowl with a well-aimed plum stone, causing it to parachute to the ground in a daze. I marched to its landing spot and warned the parrot that the next time it disturbed our sleep its beak would be embedded in toffee.
Now I don’t know anything about this Australian bird, but it’s obviously high time someone got on its case. Its haunts should be monitored and its intentions should be exposed. If you let a parrot play dead in the Great Australian Bush, it’s only a matter of time before it emerges from its hiding place to carry out a sneak attack on some innocent wombat. I just hope they’ve given the birdwatcher enough money to do a thorough job. These expeditions have many expenses – a room at the inn, the cost of equipment, hiring Aboriginal porters, buying drinks for the local Sheilas, etc, etc. They should wire him some more if he runs out of cash before getting a good sighting.
It is possible, of course, that the parrot really is extinct, making everyone connected with the mission feel like a great big ninny. I hope they’ll quickly get over the disappointment. Extinctions are Mother Nature’s way of cleaning house, replacing uppity guests who’ve overstayed their welcome with promising newcomers. Dinosaurs, dodos and unicorns once thrived in pastures green, only to yield their respective positions to the warm-blooded, the airborne and the hornless. If the parrot is truly gone, it surely made the most of its precious time on Earth by screeching its head off at dozing marsupials.
Many humans don’t realise that their species was once close to extinction. Aeons ago, on the African plains, it was your relative Homo Erectus that stood proud, while the newly-evolved Sapiens breed teetered on the brink. We gorillas thought you were done for and collected your artefacts as remnants of a doomed culture. Then came the great Wanga-weed infestation. Your hominid relatives smoked the herb addictively and got so high that they lost interest in procreating. The men of Erectus lost their erections and the species quickly died out, allowing humans to move into their tastefully decorated caves.
And so, my hairless primate cousins, the path of Life on Earth is crooked, contorted and capricious. A lucky break can rescue a species from the gaping abyss of doom, and propel it onto the pouting pinnacle of prosperity, before it is finally sucked into the swirling vortex of oblivion. Enjoy the ride.
Labels: extinctions, Homo Erectus, parrots
Monday, March 09, 2009
Our six-legged friends
Richard Gere feels guilty about slaughtering thousands of cockroaches in New York City. As a practising Buddhist, he is ashamed that he failed to “respect the life of an insect”, as the Dalai Lama has decreed. Perhaps his conscience would be lighter if he’d eaten the bugs rather than leaving their squashed carcasses for the crows to peck. Insects, of course, must be devoured. In their heart of hearts they know this themselves. Unable to practice birth control, they would otherwise multiply into gigantic swarms before feeding on each other. The kindest thing one can do is give them a merciful death by biting their heads off.
As a gorilla, I have eaten tens of thousands of insects. Does that make me a “bad Buddhist”, as Mr Gere seems to think? My hairy arse it does. I have never felt the slightest animosity towards any of the bugs I’ve snacked on. As they were valiant, I honour them; but as they were nutritious, I slew them. For every thousand I consumed, another million were hatched from their eggs. Mr Gere has confused respecting a life form with allowing it to procreate into a plague of biblical proportions. He should study the scriptures more carefully before advancing his pious opinions. I’m not going to take lessons in Karma from the man who exposed his todger in American Gigolo.
Bill Gates is an altogether more enlightened man. He has none of Mr Gere's mawkish concern for insects, having devoted a considerable portion of his fortune to the eradication of the mosquito. Rachel Noy, the brainy Essex girl, has been following the tycoon’s philanthropic work with interest. Apparently, he released a bottle of the little buzzers at a conference to make a point. It was a brilliantly conceived stunt. People understand the importance of pest control much better when their bodies are covered with itchy spots. Is it any wonder that red-hot chicks like Rachel find the activities of Mr Gates infinitely more compelling than the sentimental musings of a narcissistic actor?
Let the record show that Gorillas Bananas is no wanton destroyer of creepy crawlies. Only last week, I humanely disposed of a spider at the safari guesthouse. I was about to retire for the night after my shift at the bar, when a woman in a dressing gown emerged from her room.
“Hey, Mr Bananas, there’s a spider in my bathroom!” she cried. “The horrible thing is making a web on the ceiling. Get rid of it for me, will ya!”
She was a middle-aged American lady with a similar voice to the actress Elaine Stritch.
“Can’t it wait until morning?” I said yawning. “If you close the bathroom door I promise it won’t sneak into your bedroom.”
“No it can’t wait!” she cried. “I want to have a shower before I go to bed and I’m not getting naked in front of that big hairy thing!”
“You're afraid it might get ideas and try to mate with your big toe?” I asked wryly.
“Hey smartass, I’m a guest here!” she barked. “You’re supposed to be helpful!”
“Lead me to the unwanted intruder,” I said with a sigh. There was no point reasoning with a woman in that sort of mood.
When we entered the bathroom, I observed that her statement regarding the spider’s position had been accurate. However, the long arms and quick hands of a gorilla possessed full spectrum dominance in this enclosed battle-space. I scooped the miniature monster into a nearby bucket, which I then continuously jiggled to stop it from scaling the pail. With the woman’s fulsome praise ringing in my ears, I emptied the contents of the bucket out of the bathroom window. Defenestration does not injure arthropods, and I assume it wandered away into the African night.
“I thought you’d just stomp on it,” said the grateful guest. “Isn’t that what you gorillas do?”
“Madam, you misjudge us,” I replied. “Stomping on arachnids is not in our nature, even inasmuch as the evildoers in their ranks would deserve such an ignoble fate.”
I bowed and left for my room.
So you see, the gorilla philosophy is live and let live: we are merciful in bathroom warfare and kill not except in judgment. And hunger, obviously.
I apologise to my lady readers for this picture, but some horrors
must be shared rather than kept to oneself.
must be shared rather than kept to oneself.
Labels: Bill Gates, Dalai Lama, Richard Gere, Spiders
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
When I spoke to Hugh Hefner
I hear that Hugh Hefner is stalking Kate Winslet like a prairie wolf in the hope of persuading her to pose nude in Playboy. “She will never agree!” I hear you cry. Yet many female celebrities thought they could resist the old lecher's advances, only to relent when he fixed them with his snake eyes and reached for his cheque book. Part of me, of course, hopes that Hef will get his way. It is beyond dispute that Kate’s body is one of the most beautiful objects on Planet Earth. The manager of the safari camp was so impressed by her nude peeing scene in Holy Smoke that he was inspired to write these lines of verse:
More fertile than the Nile Delta
More luscious than the Melons of Malta
More curvaceous than the Hills of Beverly
More inviting than the Hot Springs of Wherever
I told him the last line needed work.
However delightful another glimpse of Kate’s gorgeous body would be, one must concede that there are sound reasons for her to refuse. It pains me to say that Playboy is no longer the respected periodical it once was. Gone are the in-depth analysis and wry commentary that its sophisticated readers used to appreciate. Even the crossword puzzle lacks the brain-teasing bite of old. It’s a sorry example of dumbing down to compete with the internet.
I once spoke to Hef on the phone to give him some ideas for improving his organ. If you think I just dialled his number and said “hello” you are sadly mistaken. My people spent weeks negotiating with his people before Larry Flynt’s people were brought in to mediate. An agreement was finally hammered out, and I won’t bore you with the details of that document. Suffice it to say that I promised to refrain from mentioning anything that might embarrass Hef or make him feel like a doofus. So I rang at the pre-arranged time, coinciding with the end of his afternoon nap. From memory, the conversation went something like this:
GB: Mr Hefner, is that you? This is Gorilla Bananas speaking.
HH: Call me Hef, GB. I hear you’ve got some ideas for my magazine.
GB: You bet Hef! You should hire a big name to write for you. People say you only like blue-eyed blondes, so I suggest you approach Oprah Winfrey.
HH: Playboy has had many African-American models, GB, but Miss Winfrey is not the finest specimen of her race. If you’d said Whitney Houston I would have understood where you were shooting from, but...
GB: Excuse me for interrupting, Hef, but I’m not suggesting you publish naked pictures of her! It is her writing ability that you need. Ask her to describe in detail all the hoochie-mama loving she’s done. I guarantee that your circulation will double if she writes a story with the headline: “MICHAEL JACKSON ATE MY PUSSY!”.
HH: You know for a fact that happened?
GB: Who’s going to deny it, Hef? It makes Oprah look good, and a wuss like Michael Jackson isn't going to say anything in public about going down on a woman, even if he didn't do it. I’m not actually certain he knows what it means.
HH: I like the way you think, jungle fella! Leave it with me and I’ll float it around. Been a pleasure to talk with you, GB.
GB: And for me, Hef! Give my regards to the playmates!
The months passed and I heard nothing from Hef. Then a Playboy insider revealed that negotiations with Oprah had reached an advanced stage, only to flounder on the issue of money. When Hef heard the fee she was demanding he reputedly said:
“That overfed crow can kiss my ass if she thinks I’m paying her more than the cost of running the mansion.”
It tells you a lot about his priorities, doesn’t it? Surrounding himself with dolly birds is more important than making his magazine admired for its prose as well as its pictures. I hope his mangy dick falls off.
Labels: Hugh Hefner, Kate Winslet, Michael Jackson, Oprah Winfrey
