Here’s an additional article about a chimpanzee who was forced to learn man’s language and destroyed, emotionally, psychically and physically as a result. He was also given an stupid name: Perhaps the saddest aspect of Nim’s life is that after Terrace concluded in Science that Nim was using sign language only as as sophisticated form of begging, which had the effect of killing most chimp research at the time, Nim spent the rest of his life living in cages and desperately signing to people. He even taught sign language to his fellow chimps. When approached by an unfamiliar human, Nim would sign his desire for food, freedom and companionship (what else is there?). If the human signed back, Nim was thrilled. If the human didn’t know sign language, he would lapse into passive...
Author - Chris Weagel
Chris Weagel writes about the intersection of technology and parenting for Wired Magazine. No he doesn't. He can't stand that shit.
Read this, dear friends, and we can both share the same nightmare tonight: The American people and their wants and needs are not represented in Washington. Washington serves powerful interest groups, such as the military/security complex, Wall Street and the banksters, agribusiness, the oil companies, the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and the mining and timber industries. Washington endows these interests with excess profits by committing war crimes and terrorizing foreign populations with bombs, drones, and invasions, by deregulating the financial sector and bailing it out of its greed-driven mistakes after it has stolen Americans’ pensions, homes, and jobs, by refusing to protect the land, air, water, oceans and wildlife from polluters and despoilers, and by constructing a...
This is embarrassing for everyone involved, myself most of all. The ice cream eating contest was meant to be a bonding experience. It was supposed to be a light-hearted, jolly wrap up to another fantastic corporate event. An ice cream eating contest, by its very nature, is low stakes. The competition itself is its own reward, after all. I will never understand where the idea that the winner would get not only a $5 Gift Card to Dairy Boy, but also be granted the opportunity to be adopted by my wife Onaedo and me and raised as a wolf-baby began. I did not author, nor have even read, the supposed memo outlining such a reward and its accompanying sketches of a feral child holding pen and mess pit it is purported I built to restrict you to until you are "of fighting weight." The whole matter...
Every night for the past 7 years I've been sneaking into the next door neighbor's house and silently raising their towel bars ever so slightly. Just a quarter inch or so each time. I repair the drywall and paint and rehang the towels just as I've found them. They don't really notice the change and so have slowly adapted to ever increasing heights without issue. Now finally, the towel bars in their master bath are 37 feet higher than normal. I've had to raise the ceiling several times, all in total silence, but it's worked out. But now it's paying off. To simply hang a washcloth to dry after wiping up vomit, they require either an acrobatics team (which they don't have) or multiple ladders. My ladder rental business is booming. If the man of house's incontinence keeps up, I'll be able to...
And so the vice gets tighter every day. No matter what you do it's never enough. Work all day painting dogs to look like ponies and the next day they want you to paint 'em to look like slightly meaner ponies. Why? Ponies is mean enough - everybody knows that! They'll bite right through your hand just to boost their terrible little egos. And why do I get paid more for painting dogs to look like anything than I do for my given trade and talent of counting cars that go through the carwash from a vantage point that's technically public property yet still requires the use of binoculars and speed dial to ring up said car wash only to hang up without saying a word three or four times a day? They don't care about a man's passion of counting things that ain't his. They just want these dogs painted...
We find ourselves in an intense period of transition. The old ways of eating sand and blacking out in front of a Magnum PI marathon are crumbling away. Instead our free hours are spent staring at sections of dirt, a foot square, hoping desperately for meaning and guidance to burrow up and sprout wings and fly into our ears and maybe nose. While we study these patches of dirt, we are fed lemon syrup and marzipan fruits (and sometimes babies, see figure 2 below). Our teeth rot but our guts grow strong from the chaffing. Our intestines respond to such abuse is instructive. We must be flexible. We must adapt to these new ways without fear or unneeded anxiety. In the end your face will melt off and it won't matter what you did with your precious free time. You will be judged a hero for your...
Piano stacking is a lost art. Formerly, entire families would devote their Sunday Afternoons, working together in the yard, stacking piano after piano. One atop the other, the stack would rise. They’d do it as a team, helping one another without the aid of any crane or hydraulic equipment. Some piano stacks were blunt, just one heaved up on the next, the best that family could do using whatever spare pianos they could gather from drainage ditches and alley ways. Other families were better organized. They coordinated the piano colors or stuck to just baby grands or uprights often stacked impressively vertically on their ends. Injuries were few in those days, gravity seemed to be on our side for a change. What injuries did occur were usually laughed off with a handshake and extra...
Sometime during the night a baby deer crawled up into bed with me. It's still sleeping against my legs. I don't see any broken glass so it must've found the emergency key I keep hidden in the yard and let itself in.
If I can move quick enough, I'll trap it here and dress it up like a human (I keep a spare set of deer-sized clothes in the nightstand). Then I'll raise it as my new son, Adolpho.
He'll be my only heir and will inherit everything. So don't treat him like a freak.