INTEGRITIES

Call me Ahab.

Well, the day finally came when with the help of a friend I erected the structural framework of the anti-monkey infrastructure project I have at last initiated in my garden. As I expected, it is an ongoing - not to say obsessive - discover-as-I go process, an ad hoc learning curve that ominously approximates the trajectory of a boomerang.

But as the short snake said, you've got to start somewhere. So I took as my parameters the dimensions of my garden and the dimensions of the patented anti-monkey netting that I planned to use since it was the only product that expressly depicted disappointed monkeys on the label. I know better than to trust mere advertising as a general thing, but when it comes to outwitting monkeys, advertising may be all we have.

Whatever. I ordered the framework piping a few weeks ago, bought the clamps and netting myself, pondered the vertiginous undertaking for a week or so and then my friend Ian came out on Saturday afternoon and we set to work achieving what in the case of Stonehenge, for example, took a millennium or so, and was a bit larger, but then they had to use stone didn't they, as with the pyramids-- and after everything has tracked out, my fence may take a millennium as well, who can say-- Not me, I won't be here, I don't really care beyond a few decades, maybe a generation or two-- after that, it's all in their hands, if the monkeys haven't taken over completely by then in accordance with their long evolutionary plan. Look what they've already done to the world financial system.

Anyway there I was, thanks to the history of monkeys, at the end of a fine afternoon teetering atop a tall ladder, one hand clutching a tall and similarly teetering metal pole, the other hand grasping at the end of a long horizontal metal pole that I intended to attach to the teetering pole with the flexible two-part clamp I held in my third hand while tightening the nuts thereon using the pliers in my fourth hand. It was a clearcut procedure-- not really designed for humans, monkeys would be good at it, but I'm nothing if not idiotic enough to try anything several meters in the air in a darkling wind.

We had earlier (I know I'm going backward in time while going forward in the story but if you think I'm going to rearrange all this you can go tweak my anti-monkey infrastructure; I'm going to take a nap) driven a wooden post into the ground with a major mallet at several points (8 in all) around the garden perimeter; into these holes we inserted the poles to an ultimate depth of 80cm, leaving 3.2 meters of pole above ground, slightly less than double my height. Each of these was but a single example of the aforementioned poles teetering in company with yours truly. When the last clamp was clamped, the whole thing took on a unified integrity and became a strong solid structure of nonetheless questionable character.

It was hard to see Monkeyhenge from closeup in the dusk. The next morning I looked out the window into the morning sunshine falling golden on the garden and there beheld a structure that needed... my first reaction was Removal, but then the monkeys would love that wouldn't they, so onward we Ahab in our ways. Tweaking is maybe what it needs, some nice blue stones from Wales, perhaps, maybe a point on top...

I am so glad I do not have a large garden. This is just an experiment, anyway, it's not exactly a Tower of Babel yet, but who knows where it will lead, I'm not putting any photos in here because the structure is going to change from day to day, week to week etc. as I steadily approach the ideal form of antimonkey perfection, or maybe wind up replicating the Eiffel Tower.

Some of my more questionable acquaintances seem to share the delusion that this whole protogeodesic affair has affected my mind, simply because I've said a few dozen times or so that I might give up this vegetable obsession and enjoy a rock garden instead... Thinking I might go into rock gardening at some point is no reason to question my mental integrity; fact is, I think I could raise rocks rather well... I wonder where I could buy some seeds...

SMITH AND JONES

Ya gotta wonder sometimes about the PR capabilities of certain organizations, like Japan's "Institute of Cetacean Research." It brings to mind an early seafarers' "Institute for Dodo Research." They think it's a slick name that gets them the respect they deserve while pulling the wool over the public eye, which seems to have worked well in Japan, where the public eye is pretty used to wool, but because of the ballpeen way the "Institute*" thinks, i.e., that they are so right they can't go wrong, they never realize they're a laughingstock to the rest of the world.

This same hammer-edged perception is evident in ICU's response to recent photographs and video footage of two harpooned minke whales being hauled up the stern ramp of the Nisshin Maru, the media claiming that they were a mother and calf: it was "emotional propaganda," there was no proof two were mother and baby, i.e., the two whales were unrelated. One was named Smith, the other Jones. Oh. Well. So that's ok then.

Moby Dick saw this day coming.

*"They bring along the stats for the number of calf, pregnant mothers, males, females, how big their eyeballs were - whatever - but there is never any analysis." [Excerpted from linked article]