/Threaded/ Unfinished monkey business
20/01/2007 | Filed under Discover > Threaded
Every December we pay tribute to the world’s primates, but we don’t give them the credit they deserve online, as Oliver Lindberg finds out.
Everybody loves a monkey. They’re funny, cute and ‘badass monkeys’ can pull dogs’ tails (www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4aPGtx7e6k) and drink their own piss (www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPOu88pb9qs), AND get away with it. They can do all kinds of things that your average Nuts or Zoo reader always wanted to do but never dared to (unless in an intoxicated state). What better way, then, to celebrate all things simian than with a special holiday?
Monkey Day, 14 December every year, is meant to unite people around the world and apparently poses a chance “to scream like a monkey and throw faeces at whomever you choose” (www.monkeyday.com). Really, though, it’s an opportunity to raise awareness of simian species and habitats, provide an evolutionary contrast to all the religious holidays in December and have a good time. Did you think it was a coincidence that Peter Jackson’s King Kong was released on 14 December last year?
Created by two American art students six years ago, Monkey Day bears more than a slight resemblance to the legendary Talk Like A Pirate Day (see .net 154). In fact, the Monkey Day founders hope that one day it will match it in popularity and are trying to make it a national holiday in the US. However, after three years only 941 people have signed (www.petitiononline.com/m1o2n/
petition.html) and there are only 26 photos in the Flickr ‘monkeyday’ group… Are monkey lovers on the fringe of the web?
Monkeys make us smile, yet most of the primate-related sites out there are, well, a bit crap to say the least. Let’s take Monkeyphonecall.com, for example. There are actually people out there who – for the bargain price of $10 – let some twit phone somebody to make monkey noises!
The lack of proper monkey madness is surprising because they feature so much in popular culture, and web designers have got a penchant for the little rascals (who doesn’t miss .net’s old column webmonkey?). They are constantly in the news (as proven by Monkey Tuesday, a weekly podcast show dedicated entirely to monkeys at pennradio.com) and help out scientists (tinyurl.com/rlccj).
There are dozens of monkey references in The Simpsons (www.akumako.net/monkey/tv/simpsons.php) and history has seen countless monkeys who found international fame (www.ape-o-naut.org/famous). None of them has got the web presence they deserve. Cheeta, for instance, the chimp that played alongside Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan in the 1930s and 1940s has got a few pathetic pages cluttered around the web (www.cheetathechimp.org and www.jwz.org/cheeta). The chimp’s a star, for heaven’s sake! At 74 he’s the world’s oldest primate and spends his time in retirement watching telly and making paintings! Yet nobody has given him a decent online shrine.
Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey doesn’t fare much better. His site’s awful – all animated GIFs and horrid colours (www.whiplashrides.com) – but he’s the dude! He’s an 18- year-old capuchin monkey dressed in cowboy clothes riding a dog – professionally! Whiplash has been in the business since the tender age of two and appears at rodeos all across the country. Apparently, he loves country music, and watching Animal Planet and Law And Order (what is it with monkeys and telly?!). But what do these slave drivers do? They exploit him for restaurant-chain adverts, which feature on an equally crap website (www.tacojohns.com/NowFeaturing.htm).
Strapping a soft toy monkey to a bulldog might be a beginning, but it’s not tribute enough (tinyurl.com/joc8g). So, do yourself a favour. Stop wasting your time making sites for silly sock monkeys (www.natesworld.net, www.thebigt.com and www.monkeyofsock.com). Instead, give the likes of Cheeta and Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey the credit they so rightly deserve on the web. That’s the only way to celebrate Monkey Day in style.
