Monkeys

2005 Monkey News: LA Weekly’s List

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LA Weekly gives us a rundown of the top primate news stories of 2005.
This story is good:

Contagious Yawning
Science has yet to explain why humans yawn, or why we yawn when we see other people yawn. What we do now know is that both great apes and the lesser primates (macaques and lemurs) also yawn contagiously.

But my favorite is this:

Giganto
Gigantopithecus blacki (a.k.a. Giganto) was a prehistoric ape that stood 12 feet tall and weighed 1,200 pounds. Giganto’s fossil remains were first discovered in 1935 in a Hong Kong pharmacy, and paleontologists long thought the species died out a million years ago. But this year researchers learned that the creature lived as recently as 100,000 years ago — side by side with modern Homo sapiens, i.e., us. Could he still be roaming the forests of the Pacific Northwest?

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Gourmet Amigurumi

I’ve mentioned before Gourmet Amigurumi, the business run by Beth Doherty that makes great crochet animal dolls. I had Beth make this figure skating monkey for Christmas for Stephanie… along with a monkey for me, too.

If you look at Beth’s Flickr photos of her work, she’s got some really amazing dolls. She just recently created a really cute Chihuahua and an adorable penguin. Some of my favorites, though, are Angus the Monster, the Punk Bunny Rabbit, and the Hep Cat.

What’s really cool is how quickly she gets them done. She whipped up the monkey really quickly, and she hadn’t ever done ice skates before, so she had to figure them out. Even so, it was just a few weeks between the time I ordered and she got them to me. She seems to be getting a lot of business lately, so it might take a bit longer.

You can contact her through Flickr, or you can buy things from her shop.
Along the same lines, Jessica Hutch makes knitted dolls, including Robots.

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Goth Embroidery (and pirates, and monkeys!)

Sublime Stitching‘s site says, “This ain’t you gramma’s embroidery!” And they’re quite right. With patterns for everything from tikis, sushi bars, goth patterns, mexican wrestlers, pirates and monkeys, they make a really boring craft into something fun and hip. Well, okay, about as hip as embroidery can get, anyway.

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Melissa Etheridge and other cool stuff

My friend Amy gave me Greatest Hits: The Road Less Traveled by Melissa Etheridge a few weeks ago. I’ve been listening to it, but didn’t get around to paying attention to some of the new tunes on it until this week. There’s a very beautiful song called “This Is Not Goodbye” about going into surgery and having a loved one sitting in the waiting room for you. Thank God we didn’t hear that frickin’ song earlier in the year. I can’t even listen to it now. It’s a great song, but still.
Also, check out this awesome Library of Congress photo gallery of color pictures taken between 1939 and 1943. There are some fantastic photos there, like this one. You can see even more of the photos taken by the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection at this link, though, and although it’s not as easy to navigate, you can find the high-resolution images.
A really cool video on how to perfectly fold a shirt. I’m so going home to practice this one.
Cool new board games for 2005. There are some on here I really want. I looked at “Around the World in 80 Days” and “Ingenious” at Game Preserve the other day, and they made my want list. I’m adding “Shadows Over Camelot” to the list, too.
AirTran/Wendy’s Free Flight offer: for 32 flight coupons, get a 1 way ticket, 64 coupons get a round-trip ticket. You get a coupon on every Wendy’s drink cup. Pretty awesome.
PaperbackSwap is a way to exchange paperbacks with other folks. You send paperbacks to others, and get credit to have them send some to you.
The straight dude’s guide to ‘Brokeback Mountain.’
From Uncommon Goods:
gorilla pillows – $40.00
sock monkey slippers – $15.00
monkeys on the bed – $26.00
write no evil pen holder – $75.00
FREUDIAN SLIPPERS – $24.00

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King Kong Game for Xbox Day

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King KongI should blog about last night’s city-county council meeting, which I attended to view the introduction of Proposal 622 to amend the Human Rights Ordinance.

But I’m too excited to do that because the King Kong game for Xbox is released today, and I have to go get my copy. According to the King Kong Official Strategy Guide you can either play as the Jack, or as King Kong. You know which one I’ll be. I’ll be swinging through the trees in a matter of a few hours. Yeah!

This is, of course, all a marketing ploy to get us to go to the King Kong movie, which will be release on December 14th. They didn’t need to do all this, though. They had me at “giant monkey.”

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On eBay: Soviet Space Monkey’s Flight Pants

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Listed on eBay:

It’s offered to your attention the “space pants” for macaque small monkey to wear it during the experimental space flight. This pants has been used for animals (monkeys) experiments in 1950-s – 1960-s in the USSR Institute of Biomedical Problems (IMBP, Moscow). The monkey’s “space pants” are designed with many clasps to fit bigger or smaller monkey.

No, I’m not bidding.

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King Kong – Retro Style

Stephanie and I are going to see King Kong (the classic 1933 Fay Wray/Empire State building version, not the 1970s Jessica Lange/Twin Towers/so bad it’s funny version) on the terrace at the Indianapolis Museum of Art this Friday evening. I’m taking advantage of my summer hours program to go early and stake out a spot, complete with a good book and a picnic basket. Y’all are welcome to join us if you’d like. We’ll save some space on the blanket if you let me know ahead of time that you’ll be there. You have to go see the big monkey! Who doesn’t love giant monkeys? Besides, you should see the original before the Peter Jackson movie comes out.

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