Monkey will be mad by Mr. Pw I got her this sock monkey. his name is Kwame, and he's from the amazon. the amazon.com, that is. and he's usually very inquisitive, likes Gran Turismo, and driving. he often becomes angry, especially when you point out that he has no knees. and when the water comes down the pipes in the wall, he really wigs out. mostly, he's irate. often, we come home, and see that he's been alone for too long, and gets upset, uses his little sock hands to hit me. once, we were in a thai restaurant, and for no reason he starts hitting the plate in front of me while we're waiting for our pad thai. it was embarrasing, really, and we decided that day not to bring him out to eat anymore. he just has trouble controlling himself, i think. we were at third street this week, and saw another sock monkey, just like kwame, sitting on a very big stuffed buffalo in the window of a toy store. inside, there were about a half-dozen more sock monkeys like kwame, most looked younger, or more european, but there was one that was just downright ugly. i mean, don't tell him i said this, but kwame is ugly enough. but this one in the store was just horrible! i think she took kwame with her to the women's retreat. Monkey has a new friend. Some sort of weird animal, kj says it's a cat. We just call him Mutant. I think it's a demon from hell. Like, right out of one of those horrific anime movies. It has a big red butt, a skinny body with french fry like arms, and a big, sewn on smile. All really psychotic, and the weird thing is that he makes Kwame look handsome in comparison. I think monkey really takes to these creatures that are less mobile or are more handicapped or ugly that he. For instance, his new friend is Peanut, a little white duck with no wings, just little orange feet and bill. Monkey shows the animals the ropes, in exchange I think they look up to him. Kj just brought over a very large box of animals to my apartment, every few days, a new animal emerges, takes a look around. usually kwame shows them around. i come home, and there is monkey showing the new animal his way around the apartment, the playstation, the tv. Imagine our surprise when we came across another monkey. Same manufacturer and everything. We found about a dozen of them at the Promenade, in Puzzle Zoo. And the thing is, they are all different. Their faces are all unique, some have lips that curl up more, some have eyes too far apart, some have narrow geeky heads. Everytime we see the tribe, we rearrange them. Better looking ones up front, uglier ones to the back and sides. It's sort of a weird twist on Darwinism, assisted selection, monkeys, simple humans, etc. The rearrangement is important because they always display the monkeys at eye level. Not sure, but I have a hunch that those ugly things are hot sellers. Kj and I joke all the time that had she received one of those uglier monkey in that box from amazon, he would have stayed in that clear bag and gone back to the warehouse the following week. Speaking of shipping, Kwame has an understandable and strong reaction to boxes. About the time that I was planning to move from Planet Yush into Planet Perry, Kj accumulated the largest and most definitive collection of Office Depot boxes I'd ever seen. Every day, she'd bring home 5-8 boxes, sometimes more. I'd come over and they'd be stacked to the room. She was collecting them in anticipation of our moving. We knew we'd need boxes, and so we collected them. Anyway, Kwame gets very nervous around them, having been shipped in one at some point and all. The dark and the plastic bag smell, they make him crazy scared. It's like a coffin of sort for him, I suppose, and it is a traumatic thing for a monkey to endure. When he's scared, instead of assuming a fetal position (as humans know it), kwame straightens out, his arms to his side. After seeing this a few times, I finally realized that this is his fetal position, and indicates severe traumatization. The last time Kj put him in a box as a joke, monkey didn't talk to us for days. Yesterday, Kwame the sock monkey got to visit Media Revolution. You can see his tour here! Afterwards, he got his first ever bubble bath in the kitchen sink! "me kwame! famus! me! movie star! me! Mm. me! famus! smell good! you stink! me good! famus! movie! pictures! want eyewhere like mandy. like. kwame like. famus! everyone see movie!" :: more Stories ============================================