Monkey Update & Coffee Research

Space the capuchin monkey is still here and we’ve had no response to Phaye’s “Monkey Found” flyers except for a kid calling to ask if we really had a monkey and if he could see it. Tom brought in an inflatable mattress and Phaye stayed last night to take care of Space and guard the office. Even so, when I came in my monitor was cracked and there was poop all over my chair. Dirk asked if we shouldn’t get a little harness from the pet store, but we thought that could only make Space squirrelly. Space is more like a toddler than a monkey—a diaperless toddler. Without talking to one another we all came into work loaded down with cleaning products.

On non-monkey subjects, Tom and Sia have decided that having black coffee and bananas together tastes like cigarettes. We all sat down and had a tasting, but I don’t think each of our opinions carry the same weight, since Sia is the only one who smokes. She’s started smoking lovely pastel cigarettes with golden rings around the filters. She’s also alternating real cigarettes with clove cigarettes; the non-smokers are deadlocked on which is more disgusting.

We thought that the best way to evaluate the banana/coffee premise would be for each of us to smoke a cigarette, brush our teeth, and then try the combo again, but, of course we don’t have toothbrushes. I also remember that last time I tried a cigarette I got so dizzy that I had to sit down on a hot, gummy sidewalk outside of a liquor store. We’ve left the assertion up in the air for now.

The happiest being here, with no opinion and nothing on the line, is Space the monkey. He played on the floor with trashcan liners and had bananas with us, but we are not giving him coffee. Phaye said she'll sew him a little beret, but I said that’s a big no can do. People who put clothing on animals get sent to hell. Tom pointed out that the absence, presence, or provability of hell, god, mankind’s existence and blah-bi-di-blah (I didn’t catch all of it) made my dressed-animal certainty dubious. Sia said that there really shouldn’t be a contented being around here: that Space needs to demonstrate gloom, a background in philosophy, wear a beret, smoke, or start drinking coffee. Philosophy, after all, does not deal with how peachy life is.