Monkeys Typing Shakespeare

It’s been a while since the SIMI Project lost track of most of our 100 monkeys. As I sit alone in the newly remodeled lunch room and stare at the posters of our monkeys of the week, it hit me: I’m getting pretty lonely in this place. The trips around the country following each lead of a missing monkey are wearing me out. I hearken back to when our typing pen was full. It seems like just yesterday that tails rocked back and forth holding cans of soda while hairy arms furiously pounded at the typewriters. Sometimes those hairy arms were mine but with 100 friends to share the work, I mostly spent my time scooping monkey poo from the walls.

I spent the day with one of our former scientists yesterday. We walked the old streets and talked about the old days. It was nice. A lot had changed in our lives but the lab coats were still the same. White, big buttons and poo stains. Ah, those poo stains. Isn’t it funny the things you miss? I can remember a time when nothing bothered me more than a fresh poo toss. I would jump up and scream, pounding my chest with anger at the audacity of it all. Now, the stain is all that reminds me of winters and summers past.

Back then my youthful idealism was as fresh as the stains. The world held limitless possibilities. You could even say infinite. But slowly that idealism gets stripped back. First when I realized I could never afford an infinite number of monkeys then when I realized I’d need to settle on 100. But we must always dream. I dreamed of monkeys.

The institute is quiet now. A few monkeys show up to type randomly at the new computers we set up. Even the clicking of the keyboards sounds different. Perhaps I shouldn’t have invested in the quiet keyboards. No, it was necessary. After all, our worker’s comp insurance required the new ergonomic workstations.

I don’t know if I will ever recapture all 100 monkeys. I don’t know if the floors will ever have as many banana peels and smeared poo skid marks. I don’t know if my lab coat will ever be white again. Right now I’m just thinking of the slide I went down yesterday and the rip in my lab coat I got from jumping off the swing. I was a little annoyed at myself for ripping a perfectly good coat. However, in 10 years that rip may be all that is left of this time in my life. I will hang my lab coat in the closet and smile at the rip. Yesterday took me back 20 years. Before monkeys, before stains, before gray hairs.

I recently traveled to New Jersey to try to locate a few of our monkeys. As you may recall, we’ve only been able to recover a few of the 100 monkeys that worked for the SIMI Project before we went on hiatus. The institute was doing some work for a huge pharmaceutical company so, naturally, we figured some of our monkeys may be working in “big pharma.”

After flying in to Newark via the Sunday red-eye (Okay, my eyes were only red from crying. Yes, yes… I made the mistake of watching Cool Runnings on my laptop again. The ending gets me every time), I stopped at the Dollar car rental to pick up my wheels. It turns out that I had to rent an entire car. Lame.

The clerk (associate?) handed me my keys and walked out to the car. Then I looked at the keys:

Why, yes, that is a locked key ring with two identical alarm remotes and two identical keys. Why do you ask? It then occurred to me. I was looking in the wrong place for my missing monkeys! After enquiring as to who may have put together my key ring, I found Milton! Sometimes serendipity just finds you (but usually when it’s looking for someone else).

I heard that Japan doesn’t have the same kind of liability torts that we have in the US.  After seeing this clip, I’m bound to agree.  Good freakin’ grief!  That woman is going to need a lot of therapy for a long, long time.  Don’t you just want to give her a hug and say, “there, there” while stifling a teenie, tiny laugh and marveling at the entire spectacle?  Wow!  No monkeys but lots of crazy antics.

Who do you think will win?

This monkey plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse, er, monkey:

Another video take on one of our favorite songs (with Darth Vader goodness):

Here’s a cool take on one of our favorite subjects.

The monkeys went wild when they watched this video. There are no monkeys in it but it’s about one of the funniest things we’ve ever seen. My gut still hurts.

Give it a minute before you tap out.  It’s worth the watch.

Considering the recent mess we faced when returning to the institute after a two year hiatus, the few remaining monkeys and I sat down to discuss disaster planning. Bongo made it clear that anything less than a full bowl of banana gruel was a disaster. When I tried to explain that I was talking about a disaster like an earthquake or terrorist attack I ended up with a faceful of soupy bananas. Bongo can be very frustrating some times but I know he loves me.

After running through an 800-slide PowerPoint presentation I had prepared last night we got to work securing the building, backing up the remaining computers, tying down the typewriters and creating lists of our contacts.

It was then that I realized we had not replaced the anti-poo screens for the monitors and the poo guards on the keyboards. Too late. Bongo sat in the middle of the typing pen having just “painted” several of the new computers we had just acquired. The look on his face seemed to scream “bet you didn’t think of THAT disaster, monkey boy!”

Actually, that wasn’t Bongo screaming it with his face, it was my wife standing behind him. Oh well, off to have my back shaved. I’ll have an update soon on our monkey recovery efforts. In the meantime, please keep your eyes open for any typing monkeys.

He mentions evolution, he sings part of the song like a monkey, he mentions Darwin and he uses big words. What else is there?

More Roy Zimmerman at www.royzimmerman.com