16 July 2008
m is for monkey (educated)
"CONSUL", THE EDUCATED MONKEY
Again, like seemingly all of my objects, this one is broken. The maths monkey's left foot has come unhinged and is now basically useless as a calculating device. Not that I ever used him for that anyway.
I used to write a lot more about monkeys, didn't I? For a while naked mole rats, monkeys and pigs vied for my affections as favourite beast. The pigs won it, with their vast unblinking intransigence. One day I'll explain in great detail 'why pigs', but not now, not now. So what about the monkey? I bought him in a museum shop in Berlin, I think. There was an exhibition about robots. One of them gave me a pen. It was strangely exciting.
I like the educated monkey. He wears a suit, he does maths and his tail forms part of the simple mechanism. There's this video that reminds me of the educated monkey ('monkeys whose brains have evolved to such an unmanageable size that it's pretty much impossible for them to stay happy for any length of time'). Although I am not keen on biology, or living things as such, I enjoy thinking about our partaking in the animal kingdom, and how upsetting this is for (almost) everyone. I also like taxonomy, and the drive to taxonomise, which does seem like a strange way for any animal to spend its time.
regio
regnum
phylum
classis
ordo
familia
genus
species
