FIRST ON FOX!

IT IS SOOOOOOO BACK ON, ALL FOUR OF YOU!!!
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Over the past couple of months the monkey sightings have not slowed one bit, but my motivation certainly has. Tonight, however, a special opportunity on the Ten O Clock news was JUST TOO PERFECT TO PASS UP!!!
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The Talkin' Head began to read the story: At a coin-op catch-your-own-prize-with-a-little-funky-crane-machine in probably Gresham or Crack-O-My-Ass, some unfortunate tot pulled out a plush toy with a HYPODERMIC NEEDLE inside of it. As the head read, I got my camera phone ready, because I really just absolutely KNEW the plush would be a monkey.
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Not just any monkey: Curious George! Oh my.

just a few minutes later...

via cursory myspace check. whew.

mea culpa

i am sorry all three of you. i just have not had the motivation to keep up with the monkeys this week. it's not that I haven't seen them, including twice today, once in a subway commercial, and once in something else I forgot, but it was about 10 minutes earlier. it's just that i'm overwhelmed by life right now.

on the mend

to make up for the past few days...

First, my friend on her facebook page,



Then, a song I heard on my favorite internet radio http://eastvillageradio.com/index.php. I wouldn't have noticed it by looking at the playlist, but the dj just announced the songs he was playing, and what albums they were from, so, take that tuesday and wednesday!!

what the?

It has been such a slow week! I am wondering if this grand experiment might be doomed to failure?!

NOT!

This morning on KPOJ, Thom Hartmann was on a rant about mood-altering drugs, prozac and wellbutrin-type stuff, and he went off on a tangent starting with "...and don't forget the monkey
study the Swiss did" or something like that. Apparently, in this study, the scientists removed some monkeys from a group that were perceived to be depressed due to their demeanor and eating habits. Eventually the rest of the group was wiped out because, as it turns out, these particular monkeys were hanging out on the perimeter of the group and apparently though they were "sad" or something, they also were the ones to give first warning of approaching predators-- like cheetahs! Since these monkeys were removed, or medicated I think with drugs like prozac, they were unable to warn the others in the group of the impending danger, and so they ALL got eaten. Hartmann drew an analogy between these monkeys and what we may be missing about our current society, that so-called "depressed" people or sad people are just more acutely aware of how fucked up things are, of the Impending Danger that exists because all of capitalist western society is headed for the dang cliff!

Now, go have a nice day y'all.

ketchup.

I SO did not plan for the days to get away from me, because I HAVE been writing down all my "sightings" and even taking some pictures, but I have been busting ass making art all weekend! and so, I am behind. Today had this, at the very least:


These are from the tee-vee on saturday, which I had on while working: "...you're livin' every guy's DREAM! ...it's not my dream. My dream is always the same...A monkey gives me the finger, and then flaps his lips at me..."--Kelso on That 70's Show "I dropped out of high school, so now I gotta dance in front 'a you guys like a monkey!"--Duane Johnson aka The Rock in a skit on SNL.
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and this is from last night, I think, Sunday on PBS, a show about captive research monkeys being released into sanctuaries, where some of them get to go OUTSIDE and CLIMB TREES for the FIRST TIME IN THEIR LIVES, AND SOME OF THEM ARE OVER 30 YEARS OLD. I cried.

blame it on the rain

I spent the evening at Carissa's last nite, she fed me cheese and bread and noodles and wine, and for that I am grateful! Then we watched 30 Rock, for which I am also grateful. One of the storylines involved Jack Donaghee watching Harry and the Hendersons, referring back to Harry several times as the "woodland ape." Alas I'd spaced it by the time I got home and didn't post yesterday.
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For Today however, we have this sad news about Peter Tork, the cutest of all the Monkees, IMHO.

yummy

This is the beer that Dana ordered tonight at the Morrison Hotel, where we also had delicious hamburgers. and good times!

breakfast, lunch, dinner

Well, really it should be: Lunch, Dinner, Midnite Snack.


Lunch: dropped by Paul's this afternoon and this lighter was on the bar. he has a bar. but the monkey lighter is posing on top of the record player cabinet.


Dinner: plopped on the couch (there's that word again) to vegitate while having some delicious noodles. This was on one of the craptacular Entertainment-Magazine-Type Shows, apparently a tangent off of the freaky chimp freak-out story. This guy seems harmless though right? I mean, apparently he likes to go for walks in the snow wearing a trendy puffer jacket in a nice, bright electric-banana-yellow. He's been in snow before, right? It wouldn't freak him out or anything, would it? Um...


Midnite snack: I've been listening to an archive of an excellent show from my favorite online radio station: http://eastvillageradio.com/index.php. The show was Peer Pressure from 2/18/09, it was the shit, so many great songs, including one by the dj's band towards the end of the show. And I linked to the band's myspace page because the song was really fucking good, and tah-dah, there were images of their flyers in the pics. http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=14739445. The song was Pasting Leaves. Yay!

Tie ie ee eim/is on my knee/yes it is

In the lobby of the temp agency I went to today,
Time Magazine on the magazine table,
Kate Winslet on the cover,
flippin thru, camera in bag, there you have it.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

"...that's why you never fight a lady monkey."

--words uttered by Dale Gribble on King of the Hill, which is on the TV behind me, which is still on after the Simpsons and before Family Guy. Then I'm turning in early (with the crossword, of course) because I actually have an interview tomorrow at a fancy temp agency. hooray!

Note: it was the plan all along to use an image of Dale Gribble, but I google-imaged "lady monkey," you know, for kicks! And, well, despite there being some interesting, though less-relevant-than-I'd-hoped images (including a link to some adorable cats on flickr):

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/134/364952659_be37bb9424.jpg&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/estudiante/364952659/&usg=___sdbZtJPlF7U_ROT2TWSmHLORcw=&h=333&w=500&sz=106&hl=en&start=8&um=1&tbnid=BujYlko3x6NS6M:&tbnh=87&tbnw=130&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlady%2Bmonkey%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN, (scroll forward to "balance")

the very first one in line on the results page was so shocking that all I can bring myself to do is make YOU do it: http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=lady%20monkey&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi !

A hoodie with an ape screenprinted on the side of the hood!I want one of these RIGHT NOW! Actually I think I'd want the Obama one, but the ape one is pretty fantastic!

http://www.headhoods.com/home.html

it's better than being an aardvark's aunt

Today while working on some art with my friend Paul in his basement, he uttered the words "well I'll be a monkey's uncle." At least that's what I'm hoping he said. He very clearly mentioned a monkey in that way, in context yet utterly old-fashioned-sounding, and though I told him out loud that I was going to put it in this blog, I didn't write it down. I just figured I'd remember it for later. Well, I didn't remember until just now, and when I did a google image search for a maybe, possibly relevant image, this came up, so I'm just sticking with the Monkey's Uncle thing due to the sheer awesome weirdness of this album cover.

awwwwwwwwwww! howcuuuuuuuuuuuuuuute!

I really kind of actually mean that. These are some hand-painted nesting dolls listed on etsy, I saw this image when I clicked on a link to see newly up-loaded items. I may as well give this shop a shout-out since I'm using her picture, though I have some reservations about it because some of her items definitley don't look hand-made. OH WELL, it's todays monkey nonetheless...

foot pop?

After the last post I went downstairs to fetch the NYT crossword from the Oregonian. While I dug around for it I saw this here dorky article about KISSING on the front of the Living section.

I saw the opposite ends of a spectrum today.

Oh my word it's been a doozie.

I had an appointment at 9am today to follow up on some lingering, festering, debilitating tax crap downtown. And it was all downhill from there.

Traffic was awful, I was running late, and the security people hassled me fiercely about the mini-utility knife on my keychain (that miraculously didn't set off any alarms when my keys were in my pocket last week!?). What was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill groaner of a morning turned into an almost total disaster, and I don't want to go into it other than to say I had a badged and armed federal security dude get up in my face and threaten to arrest me: but it ended up being OK because, FOR REAL: the man who helped me take care of my taxes today was totally and completely cool.

I came in to his cubicle/office so frazzled by the security situation, which, in the interest of full disclosure was exacerbated by the fact that I was exacerbated by traffic, my life in general, and by the exacerbating security people. Two of them were actually quite patient and understanding (i think? they may have been putting me on) but two others were straight out of Central Casting, all super-aggro and entirely over-the-top caricatures of themselves, giving me more shit for nothing at all than I or anyone ever deserved...and i reacted. ANYWAY, when I sat down at the nice man's desk, in tears and clearly ready to break down, he immediately handed me chocolates and some tissues.

HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!?!?

Then, one of the first things out of his mouth was that he was going to "Help me get the monkey off my back." So, of course I had to mention this here lil' blog, and then the next thing he said was "you know what the best monkey ever is, don't you?" and while I tried to muster up some guesses, he said that the best monkey ever was the Trunk Monkey. And, well, I had to disagree with him there, because the people who put out that ad are the same people who fired me this month and so I think he and you, dear reader, can understand. I can't even dignify the mention with a picture, though there are plenty floating around on the web. Those commercials were--and are still--real darn funny, but one can understand why I have hard feelings...

After that we got down to business, got my taxes filed, made a plan for takin' care of bizness, and then I was on my way. And I did NOT look at the security guys as I left. I'm afraid I would've stuck my tongue out or given them a single-finger salute if I even for a millisecond caught their eye. But, I did NOT look. I did the RIGHT thing, and SUCKED IT UP, and left quietly and peacefully without incident. And as I walked past the trash container in which I had to throw away my little knife, I did not even cringe. I sent Dana a text message about yesterday instead. so there.

Anyway, Thank you so much Mr. Very Nice Tax Man! If you are reading this I want you to know that it meant a WHOLE lot to me as a person that you showed me such kindness, patience and understanding today when I really truly needed it! 100%.

I heart wikipedia!

This book was just sitting there on Dana's bookshelf waiting for me to see it I'M SURE! And after reading the wikipedia entry about it just now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundredth_Monkey I think I might ask her if I can borrow it. Even though the so-called phenomenon has been debunked, it still sounds interesting to hear Ken Kesey's take on it. And now, officially, the mix-up in my head that's had the "Hundredth Monkey" and "12 Monkeys" and "if you give a monkey a typewriter, etc" all confused and confabulated with each other is now untangeled! And also I want to rent 12 Monkeys again because it was really really good!

we can be heroes, just for one day

So much of this blog involves me plopping on the couch for the fewest of minutes to have something to occupy my eyeballs with while I'm having a snack. Today my "sighting" came courtesy of a kids show on PBS in which Word Girl and her monkey sidekick named Captian Huggy Face (really) go around fighting villains and explaining vocabulary words. I swear I only sat down for just a few minutes, and it was because I'd already read the paper over breakfast... I fumbled for my phone to take a picture of the screen, but it was over before I was able. These screen captures from the website work just fiiiiine though... On a side note, a far-away friend has commissioned me to make a super-hero cape, of sorts, for a performance/art thing he is doing next month. Yay!

I am unashamedly going to watch every milisecond of Oscar night shit, so thank goodness I saw me a monkey already today.

I ran across this image while checking out photographer Corey Arnold's blog. Here is his website, http://www.coreyfishes.com/ therein you will find a link to the blog. I'm pretty sure this image is not his, based on what is shown on his site. His work is beautiful, poetic, sometimes funny, and he also took my most favorite cat picture I have ever seen in my entire life:

I hope he does not mind me posting it here.

one of the best songs ever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-Uz-dPANDY
I still have this CASSETTE TAPE. From HIGH SCHOOL.

Very often I listen to East Village Radio: http://eastvillageradio.com/index.php. On Saturdays there is a particular show in which half the songs are straight out of my high school record (and TAPE) collection. Today one of the songs was this most amazing Terence Trent D'arby song (whatever happened to that guy) followed by a rad Japanesey re-make of I Cant go For That. I highly recommend checking out this particular dj's show, Sandy Acres Sound Lab with Colleen Crumbcake: http://eastvillageradio.com/modules.php?name=evrshow&showid=76

Here are the extra-special lyrics:

do monkeys dream of electric cats?

I had a sort-of, kind-of monkey sighting yesterday, but I went out dancing last nite and didn't get a chance to post it. I had gone to visit my friend at his gallery office, and he was watching a dvd on his computer of some animation. He froze the screen on this, an ape-like creature being pounced on ? by a dinosaur. He said it was about evolution.

After I got home from dancing, which was bery bery late, I floated off into a weirdo dream in which I hadn't gone to bed but had actually plopped on the couch to watch a music video. It was very lifelike. The video was the song "In God's Country" by U2 which I had heard earlier in the day on the radio. While I was watching it, my housemate, who usually stays out way later than me, came stumbling in himself from a night of revelry, and there were people with him including my friend from earlier in the day. We all began hanging out, and in the background this dreamy video was still on. I remarked on it and my housemate said "oh yeah, that's the 18-minute extended version." Then the video showed dirty children on a stubbly hillside playing with ages-old-looking sock monkeys who then began to dance around by themselves. I scrambled to try and take a picture but ended up watering a plant on top of the television and that is all I remember.

Here is an awesomely huge, very affectionate cat that was hanging out outside the bar my friends and I went to before dancing. His name is Dekum. His ear is torn. It was hard to take his picture because when I squatted down he kept mashing his head into my knee.

taxman wipeth me out.

I spent three hours downtown, ended up paying FIFTEEN DOLLARS to park, and hadn't eaten ALL day, so I came home and plopped down on the couch with some home-made beans topped with chips, salsa, avocado and sour cream. Yum. And this was on the nightly news.

taxman cometh.

On my way to the IRS to take care of some tax crap, I snapped this picture of a sticker on the car in front of me at a RED LIGHT, don't worry, I wasn't a terror on the road. It's really not a great shot, I wish the resolution was better on my camera, but you can definitely see it's a weird freaky ape-like creature.

Evolution 2

sometimes, too often probably, I listen to some talk radio. It's the progressive station KPOJ, and this morning, around 10am, Thom Hartmann went off on a riff about both pigeons and babboons having cognitive abilites similar to that of humans, and how we are more connected to the animal kingdom than we think. I tend to agree.

monkeys workin' overtime

There's NO way I was going to make it through this day without GOBS of monkeys: my friend Dana and I made a trip to the Bins and to the Teen Challenge Thrift Shop on Sandy. The Bins, for those of my many readers beyond Portland*, is the Goodwill dumping ground where crap is sold for $1.39/pound (it used to be less than a dollar per pound). The Teen Challenge is where disadvantaged Christian youth and some really funky old-timers get to earn some money by working at the thrift shop. I got a record of as many monkeys as I could:
That last one's not a meerkat, I swear. It's the "speak no evil" monkey.

The sad fact of this trip, though, was that we were going in search of some plastic toys in order to make a prototype for a project idea we have. SUPER TOP SECRET, of course, but to our UTTER dismay, because of all the problems with lead paint on toys from China, ALL childrens toys are BANNED from being SOLD! I shit you not. EVEN if they arent' from China. NO TOYS. Google it. The law went into effect only days ago, THWARTING our plan, and according to what I just read online, the shops are just stopping the sale of toys altoghether rather than check the "comprehensive database available online from the Consumer Product Safety Commission." They are, of course, afraid of getting sued. So ridiculous... The Bins wouldn't even sell me a childrens cardboard BOOK because of this "ban." And, though the Teen Challenge dudes were very nice and funny and talked to us a lot and gave us a great deal on the junk we did get, they still would not accomodate our need to get our hands on some plastic toys.

* ha ha.

oh yeah, i was gonna tell about this to, but i almost forgot. wait. oh yeah. heh heh heh.

I watched Pineapple Express last night, and of course it was hilarious and I totally lost track of how many times a monkey was mentioned, but I managed to jot the first one down. It's from early on, and I think it's when Seth Rogen's character is explaining to the other guy an example of one of his process-server visits. Or maybe it was a clip of one of his actual visits. or... anyway, he says:

"...you have repeatedly refused to trim your monkey tree..."

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darling where... did I sleep... last nite?

I never knew that Maakies, one of the most twisted, most hilarious, most weirdo comic strips got made into a show! The Drinky Crow Show! http://www.adultswim.com/shows/drinkycrow/index.html

In the Mist

Ahh, back to normal. These were in a shop window on NE Broadway as I walked to Costello's Travel cafe with friends for coffee. Terrible photo quality, but if you squint your brain you can see Jane Goodall.

NO VALENTINE'S MONKEYS. BOO HOO!

Yup, two whole days with no primate activity. Saturday I babysat and then made dinner for some friends whose kitchen is being remodeled. And Sunday I spent the ENTIRE day getting my etsy page up and running: www.thenaughtybee.etsy.com so there was barely a chance for a monkey or ape to even dart into my peripheral vision. The work on etsy is rather naughty. You've been warned.

this one is from Friday nite

I went to a friend's house to "pre-funk" before going out, as I'm told all the young kids are calling it these days. Or maybe it's just my piss-ant, prick-face former employer and all his small-dick jock friends that call it that. (Still freaked out and pissed off about getting fired...). Anyway, this was on Lisa's fridge. That's her in the photobooth pic. I'm becoming more lax about featuring my friends in this blog because it appears that no one looks at it besides my two followers, one of whom is a friend of mine, and Carissa. Hi ladies!

Happy Friday

Lookin at the weekly paper website, tryin to figger out whats goin on tonight.
Then I looked at Carissa's great blog, which linked to another blog: http://www.cutethingsfallingasleep.org, which linked to another blog, which was even better: http://www.cutethingslaughing.com and led to this:

and now I am ready to go OUT!

Oh Mickey you're so...so... well, let me think a minute...

I've mentioned my love for http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com/ before. I've also mentioned my semi-addiction to perezhilton.com. Well, today on Gallery of the Absurd I followed a link to TMZ, another celeb gossip site, which I have never looked at because I get all I need and way too much more from P-Nasty. However, today I took a peek and hooray! First monkey of the day! (This is not a good time to bring up the genetic differences between apes and monkeys. Just please suspend your disbelief.)

goin to the chapel

Last summer my friend Angela got married at that awesome little chapel near Oaks Park. Tonight while she had a little get-together, she whipped out the wedding pics. I don't know who's little kiddo this is, but I made her let me take a picture of the picture, 'cause she's playing with a stuffed monkey!

DANG IT! pretend it's still Wednesday.

I was flippin through my friend Carissa's blog: http://ihavenoideawhatiamdoing.com/, and I came across a post that mentioned a monkey. (and thanks, girl, for the shout-outs) But it turned exactly 12:00 midnite before I got to post it here. argh. but here is a screen capture and you should definitely check out her blog.

Earlier at Videorama I rented W., Pineapple Express, and Season 1/Disc 1 of Mad Men. At the checkout, the clerk informed me that 3 new-release rentals gets you one free older one. Yay! So I went back and looked for a documentary. I ran across two in the nature section that had tiny pictures of monkeys on the spine, but too small to take a phone-pic with, and I was in the mood for something else anyway, like flying dinosaurs. When I got home, I wanted to watch Mad Men first, but the disc in the box was actually number 3, so I watched W. Instead. So, in a way, I DID end up watching a DOCUMENTARY after all, about a MAD man who is a total MONKEY! Ba-dum-pum-CHH!

Hell's Kitchen

Last night in the kitchen of my friend, the one who claims to have been in a Monkey Knife Fight. Can you count all the monkeys in this picture?