Love the members, hate the company

The Flickr Nazi's shit canned my main account, the one I paid my hard earned cash to obtain, on their website, which means all my scans and photos I had on there are now lost. Luckily for me I took all my family photos off it and I put them on my Facebook account. It pisses me off though that I lost all those scans I did of vintage stuff, of book covers, of old yearbooks, and I lost all the photos I had taken including all the pictures from our holiday party, the various festivals around here, and all the other ones as well.

I'll never ever pay them to open a 'pro account' ever again. What I will do is I'll clog them up with hundreds of little accounts and I'll back up all the scans I put on there by posting the same scans to my other blogs Monkey Foto and Monkey Scan or to my Facebook account.

Despite my hatred for the company, I still love all my old Flickr friends and I'll be looking up all the ones I can remember and adding you all to one or another of my accounts.

Now appearing on Monkey Foto...

...the most depressing photos of vintage flower arrangements ever.

Click here to see the first series.

Pop Culture Friday

This week's pop culture question over at the Onion AV Club is: What’s your most treasured pop-cultural possession?

I'd have to say for me it's our collection of framed album covers.

Some of them are artsy and some of them are cheesy but I love all of them. We've both picked them out along the way and Sparky has found some of the best ones that we've framed. I'm always on the look out for more so I know our collection will grow again as time goes on.

What's your most treasured pop culture possession?

For the first time in my life...

...I'm proud of the portrait of our first lady. And I mean no disrespect to Mrs. Obama when I say, "Hubba hubba!"

Monkey Movie Review

Lately at Big Lots they've been selling DVD's on the cheap. I'm talking $2.99 each, which is less than you pay to rent one at Blockbuster. So I've been buying some DVD's and this is one of the ones I recently bought:

This movie is another in a long line of films about white British folks living in colonial Africa. It tells the story of the break up of a family, Gabriel Byrne is the father, Miranda Richardson is the mother, and their son is played by two different actors with Nicholas Hoult playing him during the time when most of the story is told. Some of you will recognize Hoult from another British film that I love called About a Boy. The short version of this film is Richardson, playing her usual cold calculating bitch part, is cheating on Byrne. She leaves Byrne and she leaves the son with him as well. They muddle through and Hoult is sent to boarding school. When he comes home on a break he finds out his dad has married an American stewardess, played by a lively and sexy Emily Watson. Eventually everyone bonds with Watson and they nearly live happily ever after until a reappearance of Richardson in their lives and Bryne's cancer screws things up for all concerned.

This type of story has been told in other films but this telling is a satisfying one. All the leads turn in good performances and everything looks and sounds authentic to the time period portrayed. I've really liked Hoult in everything I've seen him in and he's very good in this film as well. Watson nearly steals the film with her great performance. Byrne is good as the alcoholic father who finds redemption but he always looks to me like he could use a shower and some freshening up. I'm guessing he sweats gravy and single malt whiskey like every other Irish actor and that's why I think he could use a shower all the time.

All in all I liked this movie, which by the way was written and directed by the British actor Richard E. Grant. I don't like it as much as I liked White Mischief, another British folks in colonial Africa movie but that's only because Wah Wah didn't have Greta Scaachi in it. There were no extras in the DVD version I bought but even without any I still recommend this film.

How you can become a fat bastard like me?

Start by eating slices of Meyer Lemon cake that's topped with a lemon juice and powdered sugar glaze. Mmmmmmm, it's good.

Hey you...

...don't flip that switch whatever you do! And don't even think about pushing that button and turning that crank.

Just what you needed

Flickr management is being real dickish towards me for some reason right now so I started a new blog. It's just the scans of the various vintage stuff I scanned. I'll add new posts when I get done scanning more of the vintage stuff I've been collecting lately.

A word of warning though, some of the scans are from vintage Playboy magazines so if the sight of bare boobies and naked butts disgust you then don't go over there.

Speaking in code

Conservative blowhard Alan Keyes said the other day that President Obama's policies could destroy the USA and that he must be stopped at all costs. Now all of us liberals and progressives know that what Keyes is doing is what scared conservatives do best, he's trying to make the rest of us as scared as he is. He's frightened that he'll lose his place of privilege and that his tax dollars might get used to help out a sick baby or to build a school that poor people might use and we know he'd rather his tax dollars go to the Pentagon or to Haliburton or to the chicken hawk soldiers of Amway/Blackwater. And goodness knows the man who kicked his own daughter out of his house and cut her off from his life because she committed the crime of loving a person of her own sex can't abide a government that is socially conscious and that helps people outside of defense related corporations.

What makes what Keyes said reprehensible is that he is calling for the assassination of our President. Sure he doesn't say so in those exact words but what he is doing is he's speaking in conservative code and he's saying that it's okay to take out the President before he screws up the economic system for all the conservatives like him.

Let's look at the facts, shall we? The shootings in the Unitarian church in Knoxville were done by a man driven mad by his hatred of liberals and gays. He was driven to that place of madness by the rantings and ravings of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mann Coulter, Mike Malkin, and Rush "The fat draft dodging drug addict" Limbo. His would be suicide note said he wanted to kill as many liberals as he could and he hoped that his actions in that church that day would inspire many others to do the same.

In this atmosphere Alan Keyes says that President Obama must be stopped at all costs. Now if a white conservative pundit had said that we'd dismiss it as casual racism and we'd hoot and holler him down for saying it. But when a black man like Alan Keyes says it he's saying to the soft white underbelly crowd of the conservative movement that it's okay to gun down the President because if you do so then you'll be saving the America you love so much. You know their America, it's the one filled with hatred for black and Latino people (except for the Uncle Tom's like Alan Keyes, Ward Connerly, and Clarence Thomas), hatred for taxes (because they might be used to help 'others'), hatred for women and children, and hatred for gays and lesbians. Their America is lilly white and stuck in the good old days of the 1950's when blacks, spics, chicks, and guys who suck dicks knew that their place was beneath that of those who were white, Christian, and members in good standing of the John Birch Society.

The shootings in the Unitarian church in Knoxville were the logical outcome of years of hate filled talk radio. The years of blaming the blacks, the Mexicans, the gays, the liberals came to fruition that day when that chicken shit guy opened fire. And with people like Alan Keyes stoking the flames of political and racial prejudice, it's going to happen again. Conservatives are after all the people who love their guns and who stockpile them, liberals are not armed to the teeth and they don't commit the majority of gun crimes in this country. Keyes is speaking in code and he's telling a would be conservative shooter that it's okay to shoot the President because a black dude said it was.

Keyes is speaking in code to his conservative base just as surely as that other hatemonger, James Dobson, did last summer during the campaign when he said that the best reason to vote against Obama was because Obama was going to appoint judges who supported his 'fruit cake' interpretation of the Constitution. Sure that statement seems innocuous but to a whole generation of people steeped in the brand of hate filled religion that is practiced by people like Dobson, the late Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson, when they hear the word 'fruit cake' they take it to mean homosexual, as in gay, as in the biggest bug-a-boo of the modern religious right. It used to be they saved their hatred for blacks and for Communists but when the civil rights movement finally won most of their battles and the Soviet Union fell they had to find a new group to hate on and they settled on gays.

The last group to speak this much in code were the Hutus in Rwanda. They took to the airwaves and demanded that their fellow Hutus exterminate the cockroaches, which was code for the Tutsi population and for moderate Hutus. By the time they got done speaking code nearly a million people (aka cockroaches) were murdered. I hope against hope that that sort of thing doesn't happen here.

Jello hell

Your order of shrimps in aspic is here. And that's not just any old aspic those babies are in either, it's actually fish broth flavored aspic, so enjoy!

The word on the street is...

Wasn't it nice?

Wasn't it nice to see a Presidential address where Dick Cheney wasn't sitting behind the President and sneering at us all?


Wasn't it nice to hear a Presidential address that was concise and clear?


Wasn't it nice to watch Bobby Jindal flail about as he tried to follow President Obama? Ok, you got me, I admit I didn't watch Jindal for that long. I got 30 seconds into it and it started making me ill so I turned the channel. But I heard later that he was so bad that even the FOX Noise talking heads said he was pretty bad. Jindal/Palin in 2012!

"Hey Monkey, which female politicians are you crushing on now?"

I'm so glad you asked!

I'm still crushing on the silver fox Gov. Kathleen Sebelius

and the Canadian cutie Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

And I'm also diggin' this little firebrand politician:
the Honorable Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

And on the international front I'm diggin' this Ukranian minx:

She's the Prime Minister of the Ukraine and her name is Yulia Tymoshenko.

Holy Jeebus the governor of my state is a fucking idiot

The Democrat in Republican clothing governor of my state, Tennessee, is a fucking idiot. He's jumping on the GOP bandwagon of not wanting to accept all the stimulus money that Washington DC is offering.

I'm sure if his ass was unemployed he'd be pissed as a motherfucker if some asshole in Nashville wanted to deny him more benefits when he needed them.

Phil Bredsen is a chickenshit punk ass GOP wannabe. He doesn't give a shit about the people of this state. The only thing he cares about is covering his ass during his next election. If we had the option of recalling the governor in this state I'd be leading the drive to unseat his ass starting this very second.

You should be ashamed of yourself Phil Bredsen, you're nothing more than tool being used by the Republicans and corporations you love so much. I fucking hate you and I wish you'd slink off and marry your BFF Bob Corker.

Today's Sesame Street style post is brought to you by the letters 'S' and 'D' and the number '46'

Empty:
Full:
In case any of you missed that, this is empty: This is full:

The question you need to be asking is, "Is Dr. Monkey learnin'?"

And the answer to that question would be yes, I be learning.

I've been doing some reading about how to prep for and maintain an organic garden and I built the leaf bin you see in the photos above. When those leaves get all nice and moldy and begin to break down I'll mulch them back into the soil of my garden after harvest time and the garden will get all the benefits of the natural rot process.

I are be learnin' to think ahead. No monkey left behind, woo hoo!

Hey Nurse, you sure get around a lot...

And you seem to like doctor's a lot too.

What's up with that?

Story time featuring Hops and Frisky

But Hops did not like being tricked so he bared his fangs and claws and he ripped out Frisky's heart and he ate it. When he finished he danced over the corpse of his former woodland friend and he said, "Let that be a lesson to all of you in this forest, if you fuck with Hops, you die bitches."

Follow me

In addition to this and my others blogs, I'm also writing for this blog/website now. It's a new progressive website based here in east Tennessee and we're all hoping that it becomes bigger than Kirsti Alley did when Cheers! got cancelled. I just put up a post about how my new Congressman hates women, kids, and all people here in east TN. Check out my post and all the other great writers on there as well when you get a chance.

Suck it Lou Dobbs

Random thoughts on last night's Oscars:

• You just know Lou Dobbs was hatin' on the whole thing what with Penelope Cruz winning and all those awards going to a film that featured so many brown skinned people.
  
• I'm not sure who wore the dress I hated more. Was it Reese Witherspoon, Queen Latifah, Miley Ray Cyrus, or Jessica Biels? I can tell you that I laughed out loud when I saw what Jessica Biels had on. Seriously, it looked like the top of her dress vomited up that sash thingy.


• I'm glad Milk won some Oscars.


• Worst monatge of the dead ever. Shitty camera angles and the swooping back and forth between Queen Latifah and the pictures of the deceased really sucked ass. It was disrespectful to all involved.


• The right wingers hate it but Sean Penn is best actor of my generation. He'll probably win another Oscar before it's all said and done.
  
• When will Meryl Streep ever age? She's looked fantastic since 1979.


• I'm happy Kate Winslett won. She's deserved an Oscar for many years now. She's a damn fine actor.


• Danny Boyle looks like he just got out of hospital after having had a lobotomy.


• John Legend is a stand up guy for filling in for Peter Gabriel in the 'Best Song' medley. Gabriel backed out in a snit when he found out he was only going to sing part of his nominated song. I'm glad the song from Slumdog won.


• Thank gawd that the President of the MPAA didn't make his usual snooze fest speech.


• I had huge reservations about Hugh Jackman hosting but it turns out he did a damn fine job.


• How long is Beyonce going to ride At Last?


• Does Sophia Loren wear the same dress to the Oscars every year now?


• I'm officially over Jack Black. Dude, would it fucking kill you to shave for the fucking Oscars? And what was up with your wife's dress? I took one look at what she was wearing and I thought, "Somewhere there is a VW bug with out it's seat covers."


• Hey Phillip Seymour Hoffman, do you have ring worm? Is that why you wore that stupid skull cap during the show? If it's just hat wearing your into next year wear a trucker cap and then the next year you should wear a toboggan with a poof ball on it. Or hey, I know, wear your wife like a hat! Yeah, I'd pay money to see that man.


• Ben Stiller, please stop making shitty remakes and do more comedy like you did in last night's show.


• I'm shocked the show was over before 2:30 AM eastern time. Way to go Oscar people.


• Yes Robin Roberts, hosting the Oscar pre show is your reward for beating breast cancer.


• Was I the only person who didn't know that Benny Hill is Kate Winslet's dad?


• What the hell was Miley Ray Cyrus doing at the Oscars anyway?


• It's official, Bill Maher is the biggest douche bag that ever walked the earth. Before telling us who the Ocsar for best documentary he had the gall to plug his own film which didn't get nominated. Yo, Bill, way to ensure you never ever get nominated. Stay douchey Billy boy.


• Seriously, how great did Meryl Streep look? She was waaaaaay hotter than her stick figure daughter. Yo, Meryl, grr baby, grrr.


• Tilda Swinton still scares the beejeebus out of me.


• I'm looking forward to seeing most all of the nominated films when they hit DVD.

Graphic Novel Reviews

Fables: Animal Farm is the second volume in the graphic novel series that tells the story of what happened to all the fairy tale characters after they got run out of their kingdoms by the mysterious 'Other.'

In this edition of the ongoing Fables saga we find out that the animals from all the famous fairy tales now live on a magically protected farm in upstate New York. But all is not well on that farm. Some of the animals resent having to be cooped up forever on a farm never to interact with humans out side it's borders ever again, because after all if talking animals were discovered then it might blow it for all the other fairy tale people who do live among humans. So the disaffected animals decide to revolt and they stage a revolution.

Into this this atmosphere step the feuding sisters Snow White and Rose Red. One of the sisters chooses to help the animals and the other chooses to try and stop them. One wins, the other doesn't. You'll have to read the novel to find out which one wins and which sister loses.

This edition of the Fables saga is just as good as the first one. It's a story well told with top notch art. If your local library doesn't carry this title like mine does then go buy it at your local comic book store, it's well worth the price you'll pay for it.

Some of you will be familiar with Ghost World from it cinematic adaption.

For those of you who aren't the bottom line on this graphic novel is that is tells the story of a couple of teen age girls on the cusp of graduating high school. That's it. I know, it sounds boring but honestly it's not. It's an amazing 'slice of life graphic novel.' It's even more amazing that a story about the lives of two teenage girls was written and drawn by a man, Daniel Clowes.

Clowes delves deep into their lives and he shows some funny bits, some futile bits, some fumbling bits, and at times the most disconcerting bits of these two girls lives. His graphic novel is very different from the film they made of it, which is actually a good thing. It's good because if they had made a film version of this novel with out changing anything then the film would have been a huge downer that nobody would have seen. They took the best bit out of the book and they expanded some others to get the movie version and in this case I liked the movie version a little better than the book.

I recommend both highly though.

********

I got both of these at my local library and I want to give a special shout out to the folks at the Johnson City Public Library, especially the new head of that august institution. I know he's been instrumental in bringing more and more graphic novels to our library and for that he deserves a high amount of praise. And I'd say that even if he wasn't a friend.

It'll be a veggie explosion

I've bought the following packets of seeds for our garden:

• Sweet Basil*
• Bounty Basil
• Onion-Red Blush variety
• Leek*
• Curly Spinach*
• Chives*
• Bibb Lettuce*
• Broccoli*
• Cherry Tomato
• Radish*
• Summer Mix Lettuce
• Carrot*
• Butternut Squash
• Cucumber*
• Zucchini*
• Poblano Peppers
• Red Cayenne Peppers
• Jalapeno Peppers*

(The * denotes seeds that are organic.)

I'll be starting most of the seeds in containers this week and hopefully in about a month/month and a half I'll be able to plant the seedlings outside. I'm digging having a back yard big enough for a garden. Now if only spring would get here and stay here I'd be tickled pink.

Overheard in the grocery store last night

A clueless looking guy in the produce department on his cell phone said, "Dang it. I tell ya what, I'm just gonna git some green onions cuz it don't look like they got any scallions."

Who ordered eggs and pasta?

Was it you?

The return of 'Pop Culture Friday'

I didn't much care for the past few Friday's worth of pop culture questions on the Onion AV Club Blog but this week's question I liked. This week they asked:

If you could make a single book, film, or album required material to graduate from high school, what would it be?

I'd make all the high schoolers read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Ms. Klein, a current imaginary celebrity girlfriend, lays out the case for why Milton Friedman's philosophy of the free market uber alles has been a disaster for all of us the world over. It shows just how destructive the influence of the US has been in trying to implement it's favored brand of capitalism on steroids. And even though the book is unrelentingly downbeat until the very last chapter, it needs to be read over and over again until the facts sink in that unrestrained capitalism is not a good thing and that there is no such thing as a free market. Welfare is part of our existence, whether it's welfare for the poorest among us or welfare for corporations in the form of tax cuts and Ms. Klein's books shows us exactly why we need to keep the welfare for the poor and do away with welfare for the wealthy multi national corporations.

This is the end

If you have not heard of the two judges in Pennsylvania who were found guilty of taking bribes to send juvenile offenders to privatized juvenile prisons then please click here to read all about it. Go on, I'll wait while you go read it.

Oh, you're back. Wow, that was quick! You're a fast reader, actually it's one of the reasons why I like you so much.

Now, tell me, after reading that story were you surprised at all? I sure as hell wasn't, however I was shocked. I'm shocked that it doesn't happen more often. What those corrupt judges did is the logical end of the privatizing of our government. A private jail or juvenile facility makes no money if it sits empty, so why not bribe a judge to send a few hundred kids your way? There's no need to let a little thing like due process of law get in the way of a company's Gawd given right to make a profit is there? Heck, that jail was just sitting there costing the taxpayers money before, now it's full up and making some lucky stiff a few bucks, and that's the American way isn't it?

Ever since St. Reagan held our country hostage while his buddies plundered our treasury there has been a head long rush to privatize the essential services that our government provides. His toady Bush the elder continued it. So did Bill "I never met a corporation I didn't like" Clinton. And Bush the younger nearly perfected it in his years as governor of Texas and while he was flailing about as our President. They were all part of the sickness known as "the free market."

Someone got the bright idea that profit should be made off of government services and if the government was going to do it then we should let private industry take over that function of the government. So we basically auctioned off bits and pieces of our federal, state, and local governments over the past thirty years. The proponents of privatization say that the private sector can do things more efficiently than the government can. They say that not only can private industry do it better, they can do it and make a profit at it. However there two problems with that theory.

First of all private industry can't do the job of governing better than the government. The motive for profit will color every decision that's made. Tough decisions that should be made in the public interest and with the public's best interest at heart will come in a distant second to the need to make money at any cost. The need to make profit will trump the need to do what's best for all of us every time.

Secondly, the profit made in the privatization does not go back to the community or to the government. It goes instead to the bank accounts of the people who work for the companies who now do the job of our government. And the result of that is that your community suffers, as does mine. If your local government contracts with a private company to do the firefighting in your area the company is not likely to invest in top of the line fire trucks because they are not cost effective, so they buy less effective fire trucks so that they can maximize their profits. The sole purpose that private fire fighting company is in business for is to make money. But the sole purpose of a government funded fire station is to fight fires and to benefit your neighborhood. There's no profit motive and so they can focus on getting the best equipment and not have to worry about the bottom line.

The logical end of privatizing our government is that our government ends up being a government for the corporations that's run by the corporations and if you can't afford to help them make a profit then you don't get any of the benefits. As I said before, a private jail makes no money if it is empty therefore people must be arrested and imprisoned in it. A private fire fighting company makes no money by helping to prevent fires, so sooner or later they'll resort to starting them. If a private company is in charge of deciding who gets food stamps then they'll make damn sure that hardly anyone gets them because they'll no doubt be paid a bonus for trimming the fat off the food stamp rolls.

Our current system of health care is privatized. And how that's working out for us? Well, millions of Americans can't afford the expensive insurance that's out there and the ones that can afford it find out that their health care is rationed and controlled tightly by insurance companies who want to make a profit no matter what, even if it means denying life saving procedures to people who need them.

The privatizing of our government has been nothing short of a fiasco that has made our communities less safe and on the whole poorer while it makes the bank accounts of the corporations fatter and fatter. Hopefully now that America has rejected conservative politics it will also reject the privatization of our government as well.

DVD review-Little Britain USA

One Saturday morning after my heart attack and bypass surgery I was out running errands in Sparky's car. I was listening to NPR and one the weekend edition of Morning Edition they were doing an interview with a couple of British guys and a TV series called Little Britain that was just hitting our shores. It sounded like it was something right up my British comedy loving alley.


Then a couple of weeks later while in a book store that also sold DVD's Sparky asked me if there was anything in there I might like for my birthday. I said that we both might like this DVD I had heard about called Little Britain. Being the great gal she is she bought it for me and we went home and began watching it. It was, we soon discovered, better than our wildest expectations. We laughed ourselves silly while watching the exploits of the various characters. We fell in comedy love with Vicki Pollard, the Scottish innkeeper, little Dennis Waterman, the hypnotist, the little round shop keeper and his nemesis Mr. Man, and all the rest of the characters. When the second series came out on DVD months later we snapped it up, just like we did when the third series came on DVD. We fell in love so much with Little Britain that it was one of the reasons why we got digital cable.


After the third series came out there was talk of Little Britain coming to HBO. Knowing the track record of transplanting British comedy hits into American TV shows, I was hugely apprehensive. For every Steptoe and Son (which was the basis for Sanford and Son) there were train wrecks like Amanda's by the Sea (a terrible American remake of Fawlty Towers), the US versions of Coupling (ugh), Men Behaving Badly (ick), and Cold Feet. In addition to a version of Little Britain coming to a US TV screen near me, there were also rumors that Scientologist Kirsti Alley was behind a US version of The Vicar of Dibley and that there was also a remake of Father Ted in the works. I took all of that as bad news.

Thankfully the remakes of Dibley and Father Ted fell through but HBO did indeed give us, as promised, Little Britain USA. And it's not as bad as I feared it might be. David Walliams and Matt Lucas, the two men behind all the main characters in Little Britain, did a very smart thing in adapting their hit TV show to the American market, they assumed that no one had seen their old show and they transplanted some of their top characters to this version. They also added some new running characters to this new series.

Over all the US version works well. They struck a good balance of old characters in new situations, although if they had left the character of Emily Howard behind it would have suited me fine, she's a one joke character that should have been retired after the first series in my opinion. And most of their new characters are pretty funny as well, my favorites are Mr. Dog and his owner, Bing Gordon the eighth man on the moon, and Ellie Grace and her mother. I'm not crazy about the two hunter characters but others may find them funny.

My only problem with this new series is that a lot of it seems old to me. I've seen the older series so many times that I almost gotten burned out on some of the characters like Sebastian, Marjorie from Fat Fighters, and Daffyd the only gay in the village. I would have liked to see more new characters but I can see why they relied so much on older characters, not everyone watched the older series as much as Sparky and I did.

If this DVD is your first introduction to the world of Little Britain then you'll find it funny, if you have a sense of humor that is, and it's worth watching. I'd urge you to check out the first three series after you watch this one because on the older DVD's there are more characters, the deleted scenes show some characters that they lads Walliams and Lucas decided to cut but actually are funnier than and more real than what's on most TV shows now, and because you will gain an appreciation of the characters you see in the US version.

Here's Zhou En Lai with some quick advice on the economic stimulus

"If it doesn't work by next Friday, I say commence the show trials! It always worked for Mao and I. Oh and all power to the revolutionary vanguard of reactionary Republican party! What? You think I have to remain a Communist now that I'm dead? Phooey on that. The only thing I liked about being a Communist was the neat uniforms and the show trials. Seriously, I love show trials."

Rockford!

It began here, then it spread here, and now, after me, who knows where it will show up next.

Something is wrong here, seriously feckin' wrong

The CIA is out of control. Eight years of Bush/Cheney have emboldened it beyond belief. What's that you say? What am I talking about?

I'm talking about the freakin' CIA not letting the President of the United States of America read a letter. They blacked out portions of the letter a torture victim wrote to the President of the United States of freakin' America. They gave the man with the highest security clearance in the world a redacted letter. A blacked out fucking letter.

Honestly, so you think they'd have done that shit to LBJ? To Nixon? To Reagan? Hell no they wouldn't have, so why is there no outcry over them doing it to President Obama? It's bullshit. And it's exactly why I say the fucking CIA is out of control.


Oh shit, I said too much. I take it all back. I don't want to go to Gitmo. I don't want to get the soles of my feet beaten while I'm strapped to a table in Kosovo. Shit. What can I do to get out of that fate?

Oh, I know. I'll write a letter to President Obama! I know once he reads it everything will be fine. Yeah that's what I'll do, I'll write to the President, fuck the CIA.

I'm a very bad monkey

I saw this picture in a thrift store yesterday. It was unframed and sitting on a shelf. I took out my pen and I autographed it. I wrote on it, "Love ya. Mean it!" Then I signed Jesus's name to it.

Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Today's episode: Split Pea Soup

I started off by putting two No Chik brand bullion cubes into a pan with five cups of water. No Chik brand bullion is a great vegan bullion cube that makes broth that tastes exactly like chicken broth. I turned the burner on high so the water would heat up quickly and the cubes would dissolve as well too.

After the bullion dissolved I added one tablespoon of cracked black pepper, one tsp of paprika, one tsp of ground corriander seed, one half tsp of cumin, and a pinch of sea salt. I then chopped up and added a bit of pablano pepper, one third of a sweet red pepper, and half an onion. When it all came to a boil I added one cup of split peas. Usually the ratio is one cup of peas to three cups of water but Sparky requested that I make this batch of soup a little more brothy than usual so that's why I added the extra water this time around. As soon as I added the peas I stirred eveything around together and then I turned the burner down to the simmer setting and I let it all cook up for a little over an hour.

I made grill cheese sandwiches to go with the soup. I served the soup and sandwiches with a side of carrot sticks and some cherry tomatoes. This meal was just what the doctor ordered on a cold night. It was all quite tasty.


For you meat eaters out there just about any type of pork goes well with if put in this soup. I've made it with leftover ham, chopped up boneless pork chops, and even bacon bits. A word of warning though, if you make it using the suggested ratio of one cup peas with three cups water, keep a close eye on the soup as it cooks because it will get thick quickly and you may have to stir in more water to keep it from getting too thick.

Maybe he'll get mad enough to shoot him in the face

Cheney is pissed off at Bush for not pardoning Scooter Libby. If I was George W., I sure as heck would not accept any invitations to go hunting with the mean old bastard right now.

All you monkeys look alike to me

Separated at birth?

Spreadin' the love, Flickr style

I make no secret of my love for Flickr. I love being able to post the photos I take, the stuff I scan, and I love the people I've met on there as well. It's time I shared some of them with you.

• Little Rosy Runabout is the funniest, coolest, grooviest Flickr chick ever. She's all about creating characters, making folks laugh, and sharing photos and stories of her daughter, who may be the cutest kid ever. Go check her out and if you have a sense of humor, you'll love her photos as much as I do.
• If I didn't know better, I'd swear this French chick and I were the same person judging by the stuff she posts. I love all her retro cheesecake illustration scans. Vive la France!
• This Spanish chick takes dreamy blurry artsy photos. I love them.
• Eartha Kitsch is a Tennessee gal who has a special friend she takes photos of when she's not taking pictures of all thing squirrel and retro related. It's a good thing we don't live near one another or I'd be hanging out and going to thrift stores with her all day long.
• Retrogoddess is a new Flickr friend, she's a hilarious chickie from down under.
• Miss Retro Modern is the Canadian queen of retro cool. I love her mix of retro scans, her scans of postcards, and her photos. She and Eartha Kitsch and Little Rosy Runabout are queens of the interrelated character photos.
• Glen H is an Aussie who loves the retro scans and the scans of bad looking food as much as I do. He's probably another brother I never knew I had.
• Sparkleneely is the high priestess of retro cool. Her Flickr posting has slowed a bit, probably because she's got a life, but check her out when you get some time. I swear you could power a small city with the brightness of her cute smile.
• Biff Bang Pow shares my love of Sparkleneely, he's her fiancee after all, and he shares my love of lurid paperback book cover art as well. He's also into obscure bands from the '60's as well. Check him out when you get the chance.

Blog buds like Lisa (the blogger formerly known as D Cup), Liberality, and Gifted Typist are on Flicker as well, so check them out too.

Separation anxiety

I watched the Nova presentation of Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial on PBS the other day and while I had seen the last hour the first time they ran it during prime time I missed the first part of it. After having now seen it all in it's entirety all I can say about it is, "Wow. That's the way every documentary should be made. Especially ones about science and the separation of church and state." You can see the film by clicking here and for those of you who don't know what this film is about, it tells the story behind the court case in Dover, PA that struck down the teaching of intelligent design in our public schools.


Intelligent design, for those of you who don't know or who need a good laugh, is the Christian answer to evolution. It used to be called "Creationism" but it had to change it's name to intelligent design after a court ruled that creationism was nothing more than religion masquerading as science in public school classrooms. Both theories hold that life on earth is too complex to have ever evolved on it's own over time and therefore some life sprung into existence fully formed and it did so through a creator or intelligent designer, i. e. God. It's important to note that there is no body of scientific work to back up any claims made by the backers of intelligent design and that no reputable college, university, or think tank is doing any sort of research into proving that intelligent design is a valid scientific theory.


On the other hand most every university, college, think tank, and scientific group is out there every day working and proving the validity of evolution and the evolutionary process. Some small minded sound science hating Christians, and to be fair there are Muslims who join them in their beliefs, hate the theory of evolution and do not want it's precepts taught or advanced. They do this in spite of the fact that Darwin's theory of evolution has been proven to be correct time after time and that every day it becomes clearer and clearer that Darwin was right when he theorized that all living things descend from a common ancestor. The small minded religious idiots say that Darwin is counter to what they read in their Bible or Koran and that god created all things and that we sprang from his hand and not from a common ancestor.


They also claim that the earth, despite all evidence to the contrary, is only 6000 or so years old and that man and dinosaurs roamed the earth together.
Some of them also claim that Kirk Cameron is a good actor as well. I would disagree with them on all of those assertions.


While watching the documentary on the Kitzmiller v. Dover School Board case one thing becomes clear, the push to teach intelligent design along side evolution in the Dover, PA biology classrooms was nothing more than a push to get a particular religion taught in public school. The board members who wanted a statement that said that evolution was not the only theory that explained how life on earth came about clearly state in the film that they want their Christian view of things pushed on others. In other words they wanted to break down the wall that separates church and state.


"Now why would that be a bad thing?" you might ask. "After all most of the people in this country are some form of Christian, aren't they?"

You'd be right. Christians, despite what some of them say, are in the majority in this country when it comes to religion. All the other religions come in a distant second compared to how many Christians there are. So why shouldn't they be allowed to teach their doctrine of how their god created life on earth in public school classrooms which are funded by your tax dollars?

Reason number one is their theory of intelligent design doesn't hold any water. It relies on the supernatural to explain how life comes about and adapts to it's surroundings. And it's not a scientific theory, it's a theory based on faith, not provable scientific fact.

Reason number two, and this is the clincher, is if you allow a religious doctrine masquerading as science to be taught then which religion gets to be the one that is taught? I'm sure the Jeebus loving evangelicals would not want a Muslim theory of how life came about to be taught. And if it's decided that only a Christian theory is taught, which sect of Christianity gets it's views pushed in the class room? Would the Free Will Baptists be comfortable with a Quaker based theory of how life arose? Would a conservative United Methodist be okay with a liberal Presbyterian teaching a brand of creationism? I'm sure the Roman Catholics wouldn't want a snake handler teaching biology to their kids.


And that's why it's best that no religion, none at all, not any sect of Christianity, not Judaism, not any form of Islam, not the Rastafarian religion, no one, be allowed to teach their unscientific version of biology, or chemistry, or math, or history, or language arts, or anything in the public schools. It's best that since we all believe differently when it comes to religion that no religious viewpoint be taught in public school classrooms. The place for the teaching of the religious viewpoints is in the home and in whatever church you go to and not in the public schools.


In the small rural school where I went to high school we had many a preacher come in and give sermons, especially if there was a revival going on in town somewhere and it made me furious that they were allowed to do so. It made me mad not because I was an atheist at that time, I in fact was a believer back then, it made me mad because they were pushing one religion to the exclusion of all the others.


Religion has no place in public schools and if your faith in your churches power to make believers out of people is so low that you have to use the schools to troll for new converts then I feel sorry for you and your church. Schools are supposed to be places for learning, not for religious indoctrination. And the biology classroom has no place for crack pot quasi supernatural theories put forth by religious whack jobs. They may hate Darwin and the theory of evolution but it's been proven to be correct time after time and their theory of a god who creates new species fully formed out of whole cloth is as nutty and the theory of spontaneous generation or the theory that the earth is flat.


Hopefully now that the idiot, draft dodging, murdering, lying, thieving, sound science hating George W. Bush is out of office maybe the religious right will slow their efforts to make our school children stupider. Bush asked, "Is our children learnin'?" I hope we can answer, "Yeah dumb ass, they're learning sound science and not that creationist mumbo jumbo you thought should be taught along side evolution."

Monkey Movie Reviews

Here's two quick reviews of two films we watched recently here at Monkey Central:
Brick Lane is the story of a Bengali woman's life after she is sent to London to live with the man her father picked out to marry her. The man she marries is quite a bit older than her and he's not the best at adapting to the England of his hopes and dreams.

The film is a poignant take on the old adage 'Home is where the heart is.' It's a fine piece of movie making with some great performances, especially the three leads. Tannishtha Chatterjee shines as the women in what we think is a loveless marriage and she's easy on the eyes, she's very 'hubba hubba' worthy. Satish Kaushik is wonderful as her husband who only reluctantly recognizes that it's not his intelligence or lack thereof that is holding him back, it's the racism of the white folks in London. And finally as the young Muslim firebrand who in his heart of hearts loves the west with all it's moral decay, Christopher Simpson gives a great performance.

I recommend this movie because you'll get a take on the immigrant experience that you'd never otherwise see if you miss this film. And seriously, watching Bengali babe Ms. Chatterjee for an hour and a half is well worth the price of a DVD rental. The extras on the DVD are pretty pedestrian though so don't expect much there.

I'll admit I was prepared to hate Into The Wild. And I almost did. After all movies about dudes who hate civilization and cities and who pine unceasingly about living off the land and being true to and respectful of nature, even though they benefited from living in the same civilization they claim to hate, really don't interest me. I'm sorry folks, I never was into camping and while I love and appreciate nature, I have no desire to live off the land like they did in the olden days of yore.

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But even though I thought the main character was a selfish inconsiderate Thoreau wanna be dolt, I got sucked into the film and ultimately I liked it. I've known for sometime that I am 'wired' differently than other people and some people, like the main character in this film, love living on the edge and off the land. It's fine by me that those people are out there and I can coexist with them as long as they don't get in my face and tell me what a horrid person I am for living in the city and not in some bum fuck wilderness somewhere. Basically this film is about a guy who loved living in bum fuck wilderness and he was so into it that he refused to let his family know where he lived or what he was doing. They only found out what he'd been up to after a couple of moose hunters in Alaska found his body after he had starved to death out in his precious wilderness.

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Emile Hirsch is very good in the lead role. His transformation into the scared starving emaciated wilderness junkie is startling to behold. Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt are good as his repressed parents who he rebels against. As usual Catherine Keener turns in a good performance too. Vince Vaughn is good in a small role as well. And finally Hal Holbrook will break your heart in his small role as the lonely old man who reaches out to the doomed young nature lover right before he leaves for Alaska.

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The film is told out of sequence which is annoying at times but overall I recommend this film. Sean Penn did a fine job with the screenplay and with the direction of the movie.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope everyone has a nice Valentine's day with the one(s) you love.

I gave my Valentine the gift of laughter this year. I got Sparky this DVD:

I also got her some fancy chocolate bars.

I know, I know, I'm one heck of a romantic devil.

Boo ya.

Dear Netflix,

No matter how many web ads you buy, no matter how many TV ads you buy, no matter how many print ads you slip into magazines, no matter how many times your pop up ad pops up, we will never ever ever EVER subscribe to your service.


We hate your ads, we hate hearing your stupid name become a verb, and we'd like to shove a VHS tape up your queue. Leave us alone and shit can the pop up ads because every time we close one of them it pushes us further away from your lame ass company.


Sincerely,
Everybody who uses the internet and is not a Netflix subscriber


PS: We mean it.

Sen Judd Gregg (R-NH)...

...proving once again that Republicans put party first and country second. Ol' Judd decided he'd like to obstruct more and help get us out of the mess of the Bush years less. Thanks for being a patriot Judd! I for one will never forget how you voted with Bush on the Patriot act, on the war, on taking civil liberties away from Americans, and how you helped make this country less safe. And I won't forget that all the while you were bashing big government, you were sucking at it's teat. Fuck you, you stinking old hypocrite.


I'm hoping like crazy that the people Like Judd Gregg keep following the dictates of Rush "The big fat drug addict" Limbo. If they do then pretty soon they'll follow him off the cliff and into oblivion.

Why do I have a soft spot for Frida Kahlo?

Beacuse in addition to being a bisexual Communist, she was a monkey lover. And her unibrow was second to none.

Let's check in with Tom Delay

"How about you don't check in with me right now."

Why Tom? Is this a bad time?

"Hell yes it's a bad time. My book tanked, my political career is in shambles, my party got it's ass handed to them in the last election, and it burns like a motherfucker when I pee. Oh yeah, I also got that Ted Haggard guy sniffing around after me. That dude smells like stale flop sweat and Aqua Velva that's gone bad."

Well Tom, just tell me how you're doing with that whole 'God told you' to rebuild the Republican party thing. How's that going?

"Did you see what happened to us in the last election? Does that not tell you how it's going Mr. Smart Ass? When Elizabeth Dole calls her opponent godless and an atheist and she still loses you know that maybe God ain't on your side anymore."

Okay Tom. We'll leave you alone now.

"Hey, before you go, how about you give me some scratch. I could use a couple hundred thou, my investments have tanked and my legal bills are piling up."

Sorry Tom, I'm tapped out because just sent Acorn a check.

"Up yours monkey fucker."

Same to you Tom.