Monday, August 29, 2011
Sleeping arrangements
Apparently, a lot of British people find that listening to jungle noises puts them to sleep. I suppose the chattering of monkeys reminds them of childhood visits to the zoo, rather than annoying creatures who might piss on their heads. When I want to fall asleep quickly, I listen to an audiotape of a woman nagging her husband. It takes me back to my carefree circus days, when I sniggered at humans queuing for tickets in the hot sun.
Sadly, Britain no longer produces women like Mary Poppins, who could coax people to Noddyland by a singing a soothing lullaby. Cut-glass English accents are out of fashion in the UK, where the current crop of nannies are burly young women with hoarse voices from places like Woking and Slough. Listening to them warble is not conducive to a restful night of slumber.
Now, the crucial point about sleep is that quality is more important than quantity. The best bit of the nightly snooze is the first part, when the brain is switched off and the spirit resides in a peaceful void on the dark side of the Moon. Things go downhill when the brain wakes up and finds that nothing is happening. In its boredom, it manufactures the mental poo we call “dreams”.
There are people who claim to have wonderful dreams in which they fly above the Earth like an eagle, laying eggs on top of the Eiffel Tower and getting their feathers stroked by Carla Bruni. You only have dreams like that if your subconscious mind is trying to lift your spirits because your wakeful existence is incredibly shitty. In other circumstances, dreams are weird little pantomimes that signify nothing and foretell less. This doesn’t stop humans from assuming I’m a hairy soothsayer who can interpret their dreams. Last week, a fresh-faced girl on safari took me into her confidence:
“I keep on having this horrible nightmare!” she mewed. “A giant python wraps his coils around my body and starts squeezing me ever more tightly. And while he’s squeezing me, he lifts his horrible head and looks right into my eyes:
‘I’ll stop squeezing if you’ll kiss me on the mouth,’ he says.
‘A French kiss?’ I ask.
‘Is there any other kind?’ he replies, making his tongue dart in and out.
‘I won’t do it, you beastly serpent!’ I cry. ‘I’d rather be squeezed like a lemon than kiss you!’
But in my heart, I know the real reason I won’t kiss him is because I want him to carry on squeezing me! Oh what does it mean, GB?!”
The dream was total nonsense, of course. No self-respecting python would give up its supper for a bit of tongue action with a human female. Yet I sensed it would be unkind to denigrate something which she clearly believed was a highly significant piece of theatre.
“It means you are a virtuous young lady who will not kiss a snake however good it makes her feel.” I declared.
She thanked me profusely and skipped away contentedly. I just hope my interpretation doesn’t end up ruining someone’s life.
Labels: Dreams, nannies, sleep, snakes
Friday, August 05, 2011
Dreaming of Obama
A correspondent has sent me a blog post written by a strange young man who dreamt he had been raped by President Obama. If you read the post, you'll discover that the Obama of his dreams drugged his drink, raped him violently and then pinched his cheeks for good measure. What I find odd is that the fellow seems to think his dream is something to be proud of, and his readers, judging by their comments, appear to concur. Anyone would think that he’d been invited to the White House for a game of checkers and a hot dog.
My own view is that dreaming you've been raped by the President of the United States is nothing to boast about. Men have suffered greater calamities in their sleep, and in their waking hours too. I should imagine that most people could easily replicate the dream by gazing at pictures of Obama during the day and inserting a butt plug before turning in for the night. I'm not suggesting anyone should do that, of course. Any US citizen who intentionally generates a nightmare of being buggered by the president is arguably guilty of sedition. I believe there's a legal precedent involving President Ulysses Grant and the owner of the Fancy Britches Saloon in Tennessee.
I dare say this fellow's confession is the tip of the iceberg - millions of men all over the world are probably having similar rape fantasies. If Village People were re-forming today, one of the band members would certainly be an Obama lookalike. When a good-looking black man gets his finger on the nuclear button, men of ambiguous tendencies discover their inner catamite.
Anyway, I mentioned this blog post to an American man staying at the safari guesthouse in the hope of making light conversation during the rainy season. His eyebrows didn't move a millimetre.
“There's a guy in Washington DC who claims Obama raped him in real life,” he said. “He sits under a sign with the words “OBAMA RAPED ME” on it, and below the headline is a story about how Obama drugged his drink and crept into his bed on a dark and stormy night. He says he told Obama's bodyguards what happened, but they didn’t do anything.”
“What a fool!” I exclaimed. “As if it’s the job of Obama's bodyguards to console his rape victims. Alleged rape victims, I should say. He sounds like another bi-curious white boy, fantasizing about being ravished by the black commander-in-chief.”
“Actually, the man was black,” corrected the guest.
“Was he indeed?” I remarked. “The plot thickens.”
Whatever the colour of his complexion, the behaviour of this fellow annoys me. America may be the land of free speech, but you shouldn’t be allowed to accuse the president of rape without substantiating the accusation. Where is the proctologist's report? Where are the cotton swabs?
If you happen to encounter this lamentable guttersnipe on a visit to Washington DC, please pass on the following message:
Gorilla Bananas says “Put up or shut up!”
Labels: Barack Obama, Buggery, Dreams, Village People
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
Colonel Kooky
An American woman at the safari guesthouse asks me whether Colonel Gaddafi dyes his hair.
“I am not familiar with the contents of his bathroom cabinet, ma’am,” I reply, “but my guess would be that he doesn’t. Mr Gaddafi sleeps in a tent, and humans who favour the camping lifestyle tend to view hair-dying as a decadent affectation.”
“Yeah, it looks like his natural colour,” she agrees. “I always thought he was cute in a kooky kind of way. Back in college I used to have dreams about him.”
“Really? I hope his conduct was gentlemanly.”
“I guess so. I’m like dying of thirst in the desert and Gaddafi drives up in his jeep. He gets out and stares at me while I’m gasping on the ground. Then he puts a bottle of Evian to my lips and says “drink, baby, drink” in this soothing Arab voice. I gulp it down in one go.”
“How very thoughtful of him. Did he do anything else?”
“No, after drinking the water I always wake up and go to the bathroom.
“A wise precaution in the circumstances,” I remark.
She wouldn’t be the first woman to have fallen for Gaddafi’s diabolical charm. His all-female bodyguard detail reputedly adore him. Many have wondered whether those fierce little houris ever visit his tent for a puff on the presidential hookah. My own view is that Gaddafi’s preference for female bodyguards is entirely pragmatic. He doesn’t want some burly fellow throwing him to the ground and shielding his body from would-be assassins. If anyone took a suggestive photo of such an incident, it would be curtains for his political career. The one thing a dictator can never do is get a reputation for taking it up the butt. All the Roman emperors who were exposed as sodomites came to a sticky end soon afterwards.
The turning point in the Libya’s foreign policy came in 1991, when a cabal of old-school Bolsheviks put Gorbachev under house arrest. Unable to contain his glee, Gaddafi sent a congratulatory telegram to the new Soviet junta, lavishing praise on the size of their testicles. He was the only national leader to do so, for a couple of days later the coup plotters were behind bars. This left Gaddafi looking like the biggest chump since Elmer Fudd said “I hate that wabbit!”. Chastened by the experience, he vowed never again to suck up to the fickle Russians, and sucked up to the fickless West instead. To President Clinton, in fact, who was known to appreciate a bit of sucking up.
Almost two decades later, who can deny that Gaddafi has matured with age? Having renounced his military uniform, which made him look like a tin pot dictator, he now wears the more statesmanlike Ali Bongo costume (available at Hamleys Toyshop for 49 pounds sterling). Should I invite him to the jungle for a complimentary safari holiday? I think not. Gaddafi is a nervous, fidgety character who wouldn’t be comfortable near wild animals. The baboons would smell his fear and initiate stalking manoeuvres. It might end in an ugly incident.
Labels: Dreams, Elmer Fudd, Gaddafi, Houris
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The meaning of dreams
You know what the great thing about being a gorilla is? Humans who’ve known me for less than a day will tell me personal stuff they’d normally reserve for their shrink. Last week it was the turn of a posh English girl to unburden her soul to the hairy bartender of the safari guesthouse.
“I’ve been having this dream about an ex-boyfriend,” she said. “It starts when I’m in the kitchen in my underwear making an omelette.”
“No apron?” I interjected, wishing to picture the scene accurately.
“No apron,” she confirmed. “So my ex walks up behind me, pulls down my knickers and start shagging me from behind.”
“The lecherous swine! How did you know it was him incidentally?”
“He’s talking to me the whole time.”
“Monstrous! Being violated is bad enough, but being forced to listen to the brigand’s running commentary, no doubt delivered in coarse and boastful language, would have crushed the spirit of Joan of Arc!”
“Oh the sex is actually great. Much better than it was in real life. The weird part is that he tells me to carry on making the omelette and gives me instructions while looking over my shoulder. But I can’t concentrate on the cooking and the eggs begin to scramble.”
“Who could blame you? I’m sure even Fanny Cradock would have scrambled the eggs if Johnny had snuck up on her from behind.”
“Well exactly! But after we’ve finished he tells me that I’m a dreadful cook who should never be allowed in a kitchen! Then I wake up feeling terribly humiliated. What do you think it means?”
I scratched my chin pensively.
“The dream seems to be saying that your former paramour took sadistic pleasure in disparaging your cooking. Consider yourself fortunate to be freed from the clutches of that backseat chef!”
“So that’s what it means!” she exclaimed. “Well I hope the dream stops bothering me now that I’ve got the point. Many thanks, GB.”
I was glad to have been of service, but in all honesty I have no idea whether my interpretation was correct. For all I know, the dream might have been telling her to brush up on her cooking skills before letting a man get in her pants.
Be that as it may, I was inspired to do a little research on the subject of dreams. It seems that in the classical world they dealt with far weightier topics than maintaining one’s culinary composure while being bonked from behind. In ancient Rome, the purpose of a dream was to alert the sleeper to some imminent disaster involving pestilence, war, famine or an outbreak of toga rash. Occasionally a goddess might make an appearance, but she always had a fairly important matter to discuss before letting you nuzzle her boobies. It wasn’t until Dr Sigmund Freud said that dreams were expressions of sexual desire that everyone started fornicating in their sleep. The power of pompous bearded men over the collective human psyche should never be underestimated.
I sense that you are dying to hear about my own dreams. What hairy hanky-panky is Old Bananas up to when his eyelids start a-twitching in the dead of night? Well I do have a recurring dream about eating a tub of ice-cream. After scooping most of the contents into my mouth with a silver spoon, the remaining dollops of delight are caressed from the carton with leisurely licks from my primate tongue. I’m sorry to disappoint you if you were hoping for something more titillating. Sex is something you do with your eyes wide open in the jungle.
Labels: Dreams, Fanny Cradock, hanky-panky, Omelettes, Sigmund Freud
