No apes in Camelot, eh?

Ok, here's an old one:

"We simply must have clean butts. If we do not have clean butts, what separates us from common chimpanzees?"

That, of course, is from the ever-classy Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The clean butts thing makes perfect sense, because Jackie O. was just that kind of lady—if you hadn't already heard the quote, you could have guessed that part word for word, I'm sure—but what a lot of people gloss over when they read this is the woman's disdain for "common chimpanzees."

Indeed, disdain hardly seems to cover it. Jackie O. hated chimps. No one is exactly sure why. By all accounts, Jackie never even saw a chimpanzee, not in person or on film, until she was an adult, and when she finally did it was like the light in one bright corner of her soul was turned off. The closest she ever came to explaining her sentiments was at a White House function in 1962, when she drunkenly told a Tanzanian diplomat, "I hate [chimps]. They remind me of trolls. I hate trolls. You know that. Everyone knows that!"

Perhaps most surprising was the revelation that she repeatedly attempted to have Jane Goodall killed throughout the 60s and 70s. After examining a Onassis' lifetime correspondence in 1995, a biographer claimed that the letters contained "hundreds" of references to "that troll-loving bitch," and that Onassis felt her assassination contracts would have been successful, had Goodall's chimpanzee subjects not proven so adept at "soaking up bullets."

Anyway, it's an interesting side to such a (supposedly) well-known character. Quotes quotes quotes. Got to love them.

PS—If anyone gets sassy about the title of this post ("But humans are great apes, so..."), I swear to god I will make them regret it.

From the mouth of Ben Franklin

"If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you ticks, make lemonade. But not before pulling all of your ticks off, taking care to fully remove any embedded mouth-parts."

That Franklin was some sort of genius-philosopher. And, keep in mind, this lil' sweet-mouth wasn't pulled from the racist, xenophobic rantings of "Poor Richard"—this is pure, unfiltered Franklin. That shit can give you cancer, but it's so smooth. Savor it.

TCR, making history... better!

Sooorrryyyyyyy…

Been a while, eh? I’ve been so busy.

You know how it is: you’re writing your blog, you black out, and when you wake up you don’t remember you were supposed to be writing. And then you get some other projects going, and suddenly a month has passed and you don’t remember the last time you ate.

In addition to my regular job (I’m now working at a lab where we remove all the unnecessary parts from monkeys—more on that later!), I’ve had a few pretty major projects on the burner. I’m writing a screenplay, for one. I’m afraid I’ve committed exclusive rights to it to another website, however, so even after it’s finished, it might be a day or two before I forget about that and post it here.

I’ve also been contracted to do the editing for an independent film, written by and staring two local homosexuals, and one of their girlfriends. As payment, I have requested that I get exclusive release rights (what goes around comes around), and so you’ll likely see it here before it hits your local multiplex. It’s a slow process though, and, to be honest, coming home late most days, covered in monkey blood, I don’t even feel like touching it.

Finally, I’ve decided to become a pioneer in the fledgling art/science of adding beards to presidential portraits. I’m not the first to notice that despite some fleeting 19th century interest, facial hair has very much been taboo among our commanders in chief. Many have speculated as to the reasons for this, but few have done anything to remedy the situation. I’m not suggesting that we petition living presidents to grow beards and mustaches—they’d loose all their bible belt endorsement deals, and so it’d never fly—rather, I’m amending some of the shittier parts of history myself.

It’s not easy work, and I’m still experimenting with the best methods. (Acid etching or computer editing? The eternal battle.) I’m confident, however, that my skills will increase with practice.

That said, here are two of my earliest examples:



Here we have George Bush Jr., our most recent former president. For all my amateurish efforts, I think it's already apparent that a nice beard would have served him well in office. Flying in the face (literally) of suggestions that facial hair makes a person appear untrustworthy, it seems to me that the beard goes far in addressing both President Bush's credibility problems (and whether those were truly deserved is debatable) as well as general drinkability. He's so much more... dignified this way.

I chose to go with a natural salt and pepper to enhance his air of age and respectability. There's no denying, though, that ol' W is something of a wild man, and so his beard also has a taste of the unkempt mountain man to it. Mission accomplished, sir.

And, with some hesitancy regarding the policies of the Secret Service, I present this new portrait of our current president, Barack W. Obama:



I had a little bit of trouble with this one, despite my strong feelings for Mr. Obama. See, I don't just add facial hair willy-nilly; I look for the traces of the presidents' natural stubble, and try to build off of how their beards _would_ be. And, as near as I can tell, President Obama is a natural goatee grower. And yet... I never would have pegged him as a goatee man. Nor do I see him as mustache-only at this point in his life. So what now?

A compromise: the goatee with a hint of van dyke. Natural and subtle, but with an undeniable air of sophistication. Much like the president himself, but harrier. This is a beard that, in all likelihood, speaks at least two languages and knows well how to light the dark corners of the female heart.

I don't know about y'all, but I'm already feeling this project. There's a lot to complete here (so many beardless presidents!), and I only have photoshop at work, but they said the same things to Columbus, and look where he went anyway. I'm in. Game on!

Note: My subject line, by the way, is in the process of being trademarked.Yet another project...