If you want...

...you can go read what Rev. John Shuck had to say at our anti war march and rally this past Staurday here. The batteries in my camera ran down before I could get a good photo of John speaking. If you look at the above picture, that's him on the far right, sorry to have put you on the far right John, please forgive me, dressed in blue with his arm up. I have no idea what he was doing with his arm up maybe you can ask him in the comments page on his blog. Go on, ask, he won't bite, he's not that kind of Christian.


Thanks again John for helping out and for speaking at the rally and for all the other times you raise your voice for justice and peace.

Meet Palak

Palak is the six year old daughter of the Indian couple who run the Citgo where we buy gas, beer, and Powerball tickets. I know it's cliche these days for an Indian couple from India to run a convenience store but Nick and Katie (that's their Americanized names, one day maybe Nick will tell me their real names but I'm not gonna hold my breath) are a nice hardworking couple who are in this country legally and who are trying to live their version of the American dream.

Their daughter Palak is a beautiful little girl, in fact if you ever see her in person she will take your breath away she is so cute. She is a chatter box as well, the only time I have heard her be quiet was when she was eating. When she does her non stop talking she switches back and forth between Hindi and English, she'll say something to her parents, both of whom speak fluent English by the way, in Hindi and then in the next breath she'll start singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with a Southern accent. One day when I was in their store she was talking very fast to her exasperated Dad in Hindi and then a policeman who was in the store asked how she was doing. She looked up at him with her big brown eyes and she said, "Ahm fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnne." I nearly cracked up.
What I will never be able to wrap my brain around is this: people like Tom Tancredo and Pat Robertson hate people like Nick and Katie and Palak. They hate them even though Nick and his family never did a damn thing to them. Tancredo and Robertson hate them because they have brown skin and they were born outside of this country. They hate beautiful little Palak despite the fact that her parents work their asses off running a small business that pays taxes which go to pay for Tancredo's salary and for Robertson's Social Security and Medicare.

Personally I love Nick, Katie, and Palak. To me they embody the American dream, they wanted something different, something better so they came to America to live and work, and they contribute more to the fabric of this country than either of those old white hate mongers. We need more people like Nick and his family over here and less of the assholes like Robertson and Tancredo.

After no deliberation with anyone I'm naming Palak the official kid of this blog. Congrats Palak!

True Employment Tales

Back when I worked for Myers Tire Supply they sent out a memo to us sales guys to tell us to make sure we called Meineke shops in our territory. I had three of them in Knoxville so one day soon after getting the memo I stopped at one on Kingston Pike. I asked to see the owner and this guy who looked like James Coco but with a bigger belly came out of the office. He said in a thick New York accent, "I'm da owna. I'm Sal. Who da fuck are you?" I told him who I was and who I was with and I started showing him what all Myers had for sale. He was one of those people I took to right off. He was a funny guy but he had a great head for his business. He didn't buy anything from me that first time I called on him and he kept putting me off for after four or five sales calls but one day he finally broke down and bought something from me.


He and I were out in the shop area and he asked me if we carried accessories for a brake washing machine that he had. I told him we did and he said, "Youse guys got the donkey dicks too?" I gave him a funny look and he said, "Ain't you eva seen a donkey dick?" "Nope, I never have Sal," I said.

He grabbed me by the hand and led me to his machine and he pulled out what he was calling a donkey dick. It turned out it was a long tubular filter that was about as big around and twice as long as a roll of cookie dough.

I looked in my product catalog and I found the filter/donkey dick right away. He said, "How much? And don't bust my balls or break my bank either." I went out and looked up the price and I wallked back in and told him. He thought for a minute and then he gave me a sly smile. "Ok, I'll take it. In fact, send me three, one for each one of my shops." I smiled, thanked him for the order, and I shook his big beefy hand. I turned to walk out and he called after me. He said, "You know what? From now on I'm gonna get all my donkey dick from you." I started to laugh and so did his employees, it took him a second to realize what he said but then he started laughing too. He said, "Yep, I'm gonna like gettin' dat big fat donkey dick from you." Then he blew me a kiss before I left and I blew him one back. He was one of my all time favorite customers.

He took the words right out of my mouth

Well, not exactly because my man Manila makes some points in this great video that I never thought of before but when he said them I said to myself, "Damn, that dudes dead on correct." Even though he made me dizzy with all his going back and forth, he also amazed me with this video.



If you were on the fence about Dennis Kucinich before, now you can feel good about voting for him if only to piss off that despicable multi national corporation known as Disney.

Thanks Docs

We're sending out a huge pile of "Thank You's" to the team of doctors and nurses that operated on little Maria Lourdes earlier today at Vanderbilt hospital in Nashville. Maria is the baby of a friend of ours and she was born with a heart defect a year ago. The little gal has been a trooper all through her first year, she was really tiny when she was born, and she was born premature to boot, but she's grown like a weed since then.But even though she was growing like crazy and everything looked good she still had a problem with her little heart. The veins or arteries were crossed on her little heart and they had to open her up and physically move the veins or arteries to the right position to insure proper blood flow and her future growth. Her parents, Liz and William, who are hard working Americans from a different American country, in their case both are originally from Guatemala and they are in this country legally I might add, have been worried sick, as have all their friends and acquaintances. But we got word earlier tonight that little Maria made it through the operation with flying colors.

That is not baby Maria in the above photo but it looks kind of like her. Actually she's about 20 thousand times cuter than this kid and this kid is mighty cute. They should be on their way home in about a week if nothing goes wrong. Man I can't tell you all what a relief it is knowing that she made it through open heart surgery. I had mine at age 42, Maria beat me by 41 years. That kid's a gamer she is.

Get well Maria and come home to Johnson City soon!

Something new for you

We've been feeling kind of guilty lately that we are so negative so much of the time on this blog. Not that the asses in the Bush junta don't deserve the scorn we heap upon them and the jokes we make at their expense, they do. It's just that in real life, we're not negative monkeys, we're positive monkeys who try to bring out the best in people and our selves when we can.

So in that vein we are starting a new continuing feature here at Monkey Muck. It's series of profiles of people who are making a positive difference in the world and from time to time we will also profile heroic people from days gone by that maybe you did not know about. No need to thank us, we're just keeping it 'reals' for you, our 'peeps.'

We start off this new feature with a profile of a TV personality who is actually using his celebrity to help others and to make a positive difference in the world. Without further adieu, we present a look of TV chef Jamie Oliver.

Jamie is, as we are sure you know, one of the rising stars of British cooking and cooking in general. In just a few short years he's become quite the rage in merry old England and over here in the USA as well. Folks around the world, through the magic of TV and the internets, have caught Oliver fever as well.

Jamie has put out several cookbooks, we admit that we own a couple here at Casa De Monkey, and he has grown quite wealthy from them. In addition to the cookbooks Jamie also makes money off a line of cookware, supermarket licensing of his name on products in UK supermarkets, and from his numerous TV shows.

We think that what makes Jamie so popular is his easy on camera style, his breezy style of writing, and his boyish good looks. Combine all that with his solid work ethic and you get the phenomenon known as Jamie Oliver. To top off all that Jamie has a sweet little family as well. His wife is quite the cutie pie and they have two little girls as well, and who knows if there are more on the way or not in the future.

Now in this day and age fame and fortune would be enough for most people. They would be content to continue to make money off their cooking and TV shows and the like and they'd never give back to their community or to their country.

But not Jamie.

The young Mr. Oliver started up a fine dining non profit restaurant a few years a go in London called Fifteen. He staffs the restaurant with cooks who come from the ranks of London's disadvantaged youth. He's taken these at risk kids and trained them to be chefs. Some of the young chefs he has turned out have gone on to work not only at Fifteen but at other fine dining establishments in London and other cities as well. The reviews of his restaurant are consistently positive and the food is, according to patrons, excellent. It's been such a smash hit that in order to get a table you must make reservations well in advance. Jamie is thinking of spreading Fifteen to other cities as well.

Now, surely, that would be enough for most people, fame, fortune and one charitable cause. Surely that would keep a person busy and content.

But not our Jamie.

He recently took up the cause of getting the schools in the UK to serve healthier food in the school lunch program. Most every school lunch in Britain used to consist of basically crap food, they'd serve chicken nuggets that were deep fried then frozen then reheated, french fries, chips, and soft drinks. Jamie saw what the kids were eating and he became horrified, as you should be too if you have school age children because your kids are still getting crappy meals like this in America, and he chose to do something about it. He started with one school in London and he taught the cooks in that school how to make healthy lunches without using the shit foods they were using before. Yes the kids complained about the new food, most of them had never eaten anything very fresh and healthy before, and yes the cooks complained, because cooking healthier meant that they had to do more than just open a box of frozen crap or open a can of vegetable ick. And yes the school board complained because at first the cost was a bit higher, but Jamie negotiated better pricing. After he made a success of his program for better eating at that school he took his crusade nationwide, all the while continuing to his other endeavors. He spoke to civic groups, school boards around the UK, to Prince Charles, and he even sat down with douchebag Tony Blair, who took time out of his busy 'being George Bush's poodle' schedule to listen to Jamie. As a result of Jamie's efforts the schools in the UK serve better food now and perhaps the kids won't end up like their fat little American cousins.

Jamie has his detractors of course, as does anyone who achieves a modicum of success. There are those, most notably in the Murdoch owned British tabloid press, who constantly hound Oliver and his family with paparazzi and with stories that are based on rumor and innuendo. But through it all Jamie stands tall and he continues to cook and do good things for his home country and for people everywhere. On a personal note, we here at Casa de Monkey have learned to use his approach to cooking, using fresh ingredients to make healthy and good tasting dishes, and we love the results. We know you're not perfect Mr. Oliver, but we love you anyway and we hope you continue to keep up your good work in the kitchen, on TV, and anywhere you are needed.