The Benevolence of Q-tips

In Bangkok, doctors have found 50 maggots in the ears of an 84-year-old Thai man after he went to hospital complaining of an itch.

Now I don't know about you, but that's it...

...I'm never my filling my ears with uncooked ground beef ever again.

Just A No-Good Cheekbiter

Okay, maybe I'm just retarded...but are you ever eating something - maybe a fried peanut butter and pork hock sandwich on rye, ya know...just for example - and all of a sudden you bite down really fucking hard on the inside of your cheek?

It hurts like hell so much you go look in the mirror to see if you drew blood.

Then, after a thorough examination, you go back to eating said sandwich and you do the exact same thing again. You bite the same spot, but even harder and this time you do draw blood.

What the hell is that all about?

One Virgin Too Many...

The Virgin Mary really needs to slow down. Lately, she’s been showing up around the U.S. more frequently than Carla Gugino’s asscrack in Sin City.

The latest appearance is, ofcourse, in the form of a salt-stained mark on the cement wall of a Chicago underpass, and it apparently has hundreds of people flocking to see it with photos of Pope John Paul II, rosary beads, votive candles and presumably, trucker ballcaps writ “Jesus Is My Co-Pilot”.

Many are so convinced of the apparition, they’re even kissing the salt-stained wall. Wouldn’t it be funny if it turned out not to be a water stain after all, but instead the salt-stain of some homeless dude who couldn’t find a place to piss in the middle of the night?

There is definitely no shortage of Holy Mother sightings. She’s showing up in everything from grilled cheese sandwiches to picket fences to a soiled bedsheet at the Salvation Army. Yes, a soiled bedsheet. Now the Virgin Mary even comes in the form of a filthy blanket once owned to an incontinent World War II vet who forgot to wear his Huggies to bed.

Which kinda makes ya wonder – how fucking dirty do your sheets have to be before they begin to develop stains that resemble religious deities?

"Yo Crusty, it’s called a laundromat - get some quarters, a box of Tide and give it a whirl once in a while. "

The thing that gets me is why the Virgin Mary is appearing in the form of such bizarre items – y’know, spoiled cabbages, bowls of day-old pudding, piles of ox dung, you name it. If I were the Virgin Mary I think I’d be a little more selective about where I decided to show up.

First, I’d only show up in items of high quality – on the side of a 60-year old bottle of Scotch maybe or charbroiled into the top of a perfectly grilled 10-ounce New York cut steak. I mean a grilled cheese sandwich?! Come on, that hardly sounds like the work of the woman who birthed our Saviour. Are you sure that ain’t Flo the waitress from the old TV show “Alice” grilled into that sandwich? Seems a bit more like her style to me.

All I’m saying is that if I’m supposed to be getting a sign from God or the Holy Mother or my insurance broker for that matter, I really hope it comes in a bigger package than mould on a fermenting peach or pubic hairs on a bar of Zest because to be honest, if it’s divine intervention, it had better be a decent show.

In fact, it better make Live-Aid look like a sleep-deprived Fred Penner singing “The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round” to a class of half-witted kindergarten students crashing on low blood suger.

That’s the kind of sign I’ll be looking for.

Good Monkey Cop, Bad Monkey Cop

If you’ve checked into the Quill with any bit of regularity, you may have undoubtedly noticed I like to write about monkeys. Hey, what single, red-blooded, secure-in-his-heterosexuality man in his thirties doesn’t?

So, it would be amiss – nay, negligent – of me not to comment on the latest turn of monkey events:

An Arizona police department is trying to get $100,000 to fund a program to train monkeys for “high-risk” police operations.

Well, why the hell not? We taught ‘em to smoke after all. Least we could do is teach ‘em to earn their smoke breaks.

Now, I hate to be cynical, but isn’t the police force having enough problems with faulty crime reports, racial-profiling, keeping evidence from being tainted and just generally doing their job without passing along these responsibilities to a creature that eats it’s own poo?

I dunno about you but if I’m in the middle of a “high-risk” police operation like, say a hostage-taking in a bank and the crazed, sociopathic gun-wielding trigger-happy hostage-taker has me headlocked with a 9 millimeter pressed into my temple, about the last thing I wanna add to the experience is a high-strung capuchin monkey jumping around tossing deposit slips into the air like confetti all because “Chet” missed his mid-morning fruit cup.

Look, there’s a reason why monkeys are still wearing diapers and riding tricycles at the circus – they’re fucking monkeys, alright? It’s called being one link lower on the food chain. We don’t need them to be playing professional sports, joining the marine corp or aligning our stock portfolios. We got enough problems with humans doing those jobs.

Let me make this perfectly clear, they are fucking monkeys. They’re only human-related traits are:

1) using available plants as tools or utensils to obtain food.

2) expressing themselves with such with human-like emotions as sadness, curiosity, anger and pleasure.

3) co-starring with Clint Eastwood in movies about fist-fighting truck-drivers.

Besides, don’t we humans have enough out-of-work humans without passing on perfectly-good jobs to disinterested apes? Which brings to mind, just how fucking pathetic is your resumé when your application’s being scooped by Magilla Gorilla?

Or maybe that’s the issue here – has human mediocrity become so rampant we may as well just hire fecal-tossing simians to obtain the same results? Anyone who’s ever taken their car to get fixed at WalMart’s auto service department would surely think so.

Maybe If The Popemobile Was Car-Jacked...

I just read a poll this morning that stated only 12% of people thought a new pope would revive the popularity of Catholicism. 88% said it won’t.

So tell me again…why was CNN running non-stop coverage of the selection of a new pope for the past 3 days?

Wasn’t there some al Qaeda-affiliated celebrity-stalking serial rapist-pedophile-murderer suicide bomber with a case of mad cow disease and a cure for cancer armed with a bottle of anthrax involved in a dangerous live police chase down the middle of Hollywood boulevard driving recklessly in Michael Jackson's car-jacked limousine while Ryan Seacrest was being presented with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame they could be covering or something?

Just seems like it would’ve made more interesting TV to me.

Whatever Happened To Corey Haim?

Whatever happened to Corey Haim? Yes, that, along with who built the pyramids, where did those giant head-statues on Easter Island come from and the whole chicken-in-a-can thing, is one of life’s great mysteries…until now.

Listen up, I got the answer. The former ‘80’s teen heartthrob has moved back to his hometown of Toronto (and living with his mom, so I hear) and pushing about 250 lbs (or so I’d guess).

I met the former star yesterday and if it weren’t for the fact that his hairstyle hasn’t changed since he made License To Drive, I never would’ve guessed it was him. The once puppy-faced kid who played the shy Lucas now looks like a pudgy-faced beer-swilling biker you’d nickname “Shit-tank”. I mean, the kid looks like he ate a Buick for fuck’s sakes.

Now, I don’t want to take this opportunity to make fun of a dude who’s likely all but accepted his career is dead. In fact, he still seems to think he’s sorta in the game. But then, he IS a former child star who got so mixed up in drugs he allegedly had a stroke in 2001 (that by all accounts didn’t inhibit his ability to eat – ouch, did I say that?).

Corey is an example of why Hollywood and celebritydom is Hell (with a few more Starbucks floating around). Not only does it giveth, it taketh away and then leave you with a crippling drug habit, insecurity beyond belief and to cap it off, turns your name into a punchline…and that’s before you hit 20.

I can’t blame Corey for being disillusioned. Hell, he was making 2 million bucks a picture, snorting assloads of coke and shagging Playboy bunnies in Hef’s Jacuzzi before he knew how to shave. That’s not quite the struggling teenage existence they showed us all on Growing Pains.

But I imagine the worse part has to be waking up to that two-headed hydra called The Burst Bubble. Remember, people don’t just worship you on the way up, when your star begins to slide, they turn on you harder than a shared hammock with John Goodman having a spastic chili-fuelled nightmare.

Well, I feel sorry for Corey Haim. Not because he blew it (and that he did) but because he just may have believed the hype along the way. If enough agents, managers, studio heads, reporters, autograph seekers, limo drivers, hairstylists and fans tell you how brilliant your performance is in say, Police Academy 6…well, you’d probably start believing it too.

We need to stop believing the hype ourselves. There’s nothing behind hype. Nothing.

Do you know what Paris Hilton did to become famous? Nothing. She shopped. She became famous because she could afford expensive shoes (well, and the fact she doesn’t mind cameras in the bedroom didn’t hurt).

Stop buying into the hype. If there’s one thing meeting Corey Haim taught me…well, actually there’s nothing meeting Corey Haim taught me, but it did re-affirm one belief: there’s more to life than worshipping other people’s lives just because Hollywood dealt them a tentatively sweet hand.

Like perhaps, maybe worshipping your own.

Neutering The Cookie Monster

I feel sorry for Cookie Monster.

With a new mandate to promote healthier eating, the producers at Sesame Street have now cut back on the blue fuzzy monster’s cookie consumption.

Yes, the Cookie Monster will now be the well-moderated Cookie Monster, learning that he can’t “always” have a cookie, only “sometimes”.

Doesn’t this sort of make his job on Sesame Street a bit redundant? What’s the point of a monster who gobbles cookies like peyote when he is only allowed to have 2 or 3, and only “sometimes”. Seems like neutering the poor bastard to me. Plus, will he still go nuts over cookies or will the lack of sugar leave him complacent and lackadaisical?

These are the things I think about when I'm sitting in the back of the police crusier after I've had about 13 or 14 shots of Wild Turkey and get pulled over for committing a traffic violation.

See, the thing is, okay, I agree kids are way too fat. Many of them even look frighteningly like miniature Jabba the Hutts with ice cream dripping down their third chin.

But maybe, might I suggest that in addition to only eating cookies “sometimes”, Sesame Street tell them also to turn off their TVs, get off their pillowy, oversized asses and maybe try a jumping jack or two?

No money in that I suppose.

I think Sesame Street should consider trying a different tactic. Why not use some scare tactics. Seems to me that might be a little more direct.

For instance, instead of cutting back on the cookies, why not just make the Cookie Monster a real monster. You know, give him some big fangs, a gaping, bloody headwound and have him drop a big, smelly dump everytime he’s in a segment. Then when he sees someone with a cookie, not only does he go crazy, but he attacks them, tears their limbs off and sinks his fangs into their jugular while sodomizing them with a splintered two-by-four…you know, so he can get the cookie.

Why, I bet you then more than a few kids would think twice next time they reached into the jar to sneak that “extra” cookie...

Why Do We Let Celebrities Talk?

When asked why she would release her own CD and want to expose herself to the kind of celebrity scrutiny she saw as a child of Elvis and with her own ex-husband Michael Jackson, Lisa Marie Presley had this brilliant comment to make:

I like to help people and people tell me my music does that.

Um, ok…so, what you’re saying then Ms. Presley, is that somewhere right now there is a young child stuck in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes and machines because his spine is covered with painful, inoperable, cancerous tumors and to help him cope with the tragic suffering and ultimate acceptance of his prematurely fatal demise, you recorded a cover version of Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry”?

Oh, I see.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Monkey With A Monkey On His Back

Well, it looks like there’s further evidence that the monkeys have grounds for taking over Earth and caging us up like Chuck Heston.

A zoo in Johannesburg is trying to get a chimpanzee named Charlie to quit smoking cigarettes after the simian has become hooked on the nasty habit ever since visitors started tossing butts into his pen.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There ain’t much more in this world that will entertain me on a purely juvenile and visceral level than a monkey sucking back on a Marlboro (except perhaps, a chimpanzee celebrating his birthday by tearing the nuts off his owner after his owner croons ‘happy birthday’ to him ~ see earlier Monk entry, “You’ve Been Chimped”).

Still, don’t you find this monkey smoking thing the perfect metaphor for the thankless individualist greed of humankind.

Man evolves from ape.

Man cages ape.

Man teaches ape to smoke.

Ape dies slowly and unnaturally from a degenerative lung disease brought on by a highly-addictive chemical-based habit discovered and manufactured in the form of a fatally dangerous inhalant by Man all in the pursuit of a few good years of selfish monetary prosperity.

Then again, I’ve also seen that video where the monkey drinks its own urine, so you know…there’s that.

Tell me though, when did zoos turn into a hangout for society’s asshole anyhow? I personally haven’t been to the zoo in years, but I do remember the last time I was there, it was pretty tough to distinguish those on the inside of the bars from those on the outside. It’s pretty spooky when the gorilla is clearly disgusted by the shit-stained kid picking their nose outside the glass. Yes, the zoo is now truly Darwin’s waiting room.

Zoos were started around 500 B.C. by the ancient Greeks who kept animals primarily for study purposes. 500 B.C. – wow, that’s a long fucking time ago. So how far have we evolved in two-and-a-half thousand years? Well, let’s see…

Last time I was at the zoo I read a sign asking people to resist tossing coins in the seal pool ‘cause… “you know what, Gus…that thar ain’t actually a wishing well”.

Then there’s the other sign, the one at the tiger’s pen, reminding you to keep your arms outside the cage. If you need a reminder to keep your limbs out of reach of a fang-toothed killer, maybe next time you should stay at home and spend the day watching ‘The View’ re-runs with your safety helmet on, Dagwood.

After all, these animals aren’t stupid y’know. They damn well deserve our respect. I once saw a crowd of dullheaded pricks scream at a tiger for several minutes until it paraded closer for them. As these toothless wonders all rushed in close to get a photo, the cat casually turned his back, raise it’s tail oh-so gently and then showered them with a squirt of piss d’tigre.

Now I wouldn’t just call that instinctual. I’d call that bloody brilliant.

Taking A Powder...

Due to the assortment of swaying emotions I have found myself overcome with upon hearing of Britney's pregnancy, I am afraid to say I need to take today to compose myself.

In lieu of the Monk's daily helping of Saucy goodness, I encourage you to go directly to:

http://lifeismessy.blogspot.com/

You will feel terror and a tingling in your groins at the same time.

Bewildering...

back tomorrow...

Pret-a-Pow! Blam! Wham!

Ya know what amazes me? These superheroes that design and make their own costumes.

Spider-Man, Catwoman, Iron Man, Batman…

All impeccably dressed in elaborate fashions.

Fuck saving the world from evil doers – these people should be releasing their own clothing lines.

I say leave the dangerous, heroic shit to the police, Pedro – you got an eye for flash, Captain Couture!

You’d never catch Karl Lagerfeld trying to stop a bank robbery by a dude with 4 mechanical tentacles fused onto his back.

But Everyday Is...International Dumbfuck Day

I wish I were making this up but I’m not. Today I received an e-card wishing me a ‘happy cheese fondue day’.

Alright, first of all, don’t send me cards for made-up-bullshit holidays that some dogfucking marketing dweeb on the payroll for some shitty cheese company thought was ingenious. It’s not clever. It’s not funny. So, take your shitty cheese fondue card and shove it in your Swiss cheese hole.

Second, this holiday shit has got to stop.

Look, I get it why we created Earth Day. I understand National AIDS Awareness Month. I don’t even mind the fact we observe an International Eat An Apple Day.

I’m fine with that. Hey, I like apples…

But to observe a day in order to celebrate the spirit of dipping stale French bread into cheese melted by flaming oil? Get the fuck outta here.

Is fondue really worthy of celebration? Is it really that important to our culture? I hardly think so. Why not just wish me a “happy hardening of the arteries day”.

There’s a whole melange of bullshit holidays some overpaid peckercrust with a marketing degree and no talent thought could change the world.

Just take a look:

Oatmeal Month (January)
Apple Computer Day (June 4)
Garfield the Cat Day (June 19)
National Pancake Week (February 6-12)
Safety Razor Day (December 2)
Kool-Aid Day (August 12)
National Sea Monkey Day (May 16)

These are all VERY real, and hopefully, taken seriously by VERY few. One thing is clear about these inane events: they sprang from the cluttered mind of a marketing asshole.

However, the mystery still remains what insane idiots made these up:

Talk Like A Pirate Day (September 9)
(Arrgh, why doncha take a ‘ard suck o’ me arse thar Billy?)

Slugs Return To Capistrano Day (May 28)
("Hey honey, should we go to Capistrano this year and observe the slugs or save our money and just sit around watching the hair on my balls turn grey?")

Be Bald And Be Free Day (October 14th)
(celebrate and buy a hat, you insecure dickhead)

National Grouch Day (October 15)
(On this day, don’t forget to wish your friends and family a happy ‘fuck you and everybody that looks like you’!)

Answer Your Cats Questions Day (January 22)
(Are you fucking kidding me?)

National Scoop The Poop Week (April 24-30)
(Ya, but do me a favor…don’t just do it this week alright? Pick up your dog’s shit a little more frequently, okay asshole?)

Anti-Circumcision Day (April 1)
(…also known as “taking back the foreskin day”)

Celibacy Awareness Month (June)
(Can’t we just leave these poor people alone…I’m sure these losers are ‘aware’ enough without us reminding them they’re not getting laid…)

Take Your Houseplant For A Walk Day (July 27)
(Ya, and if you do…why not do us all a favor and step out in front of traffic too, alright Johnny Appleseed?)

Cook Something Bold And Pungent Day (November 8)
(We should get these morons together with the ‘National Scoop The Poop Week’ people…)

Dear Diary Day (September 22)
(Dear diary…I have given up on humankind…)

Hey! I got a day for you! How about this...we could call today the International Day... to jerk me off!

How do ya like them apples?

Idle Thoughts On A Flight To L.A.

Whenever you're flying somewhere, are you like me?

Do you ever just look around at your fellow passengers and think to yourself about which person you'd most like to have sex with as a final hurrah in the event of a crash? Y'know, no introductions. No complications. Just an unspoken agreement, the tearing of each other's clothes off and the frantic engagement into sex like mad dogs over the drink-cart in the middle of the aisle while everyone else is screaming and puking and freaking out.

I think about things like that.

But then, I've already seen the in-flight movie.

Fingers Like Twinkies

Did you hear about the guy who had to have the wedding ring cut off his penis?

It sounds like the set up to a joke but, sadly, tis not.

In Romania, some married mutt was having a bit of a tryst when he, apparently, fell asleep in the middle of a romp. Next thing he knew, he wakes up and finds his wedding band stuck on his penis.

Ok.

Now first of all, how one doesn’t atleast wake up while a ring is taken from one's finger, then placed on one's unit is a beyond me. I mean, I’m a sound sleeper, but if anything is being forced on to my Johnson in the middle of the night, I’ll be up before you can say ‘morning wood'.

But since he didn’t wake up, I do atleast hope, for his sake, this bloke has some massive sausage fingers. I mean fingers like Twinkies. Hands like the Michelin Man. Because brother, if you can fit your wedding ring on your needledick in the first place, don’t be straying once you land a babe who signs up for a lifetime of sex with your skinny stack of dimes.

Maybe this guy’s not even telling the truth. Seems to me a dude who’s trouserworm is so tiny it can fit in a thimble might just exaggerate about his tales in the sack. Besides, there’s a ton of stories about horny gits sticking their schwanz into Coke bottles, watermelons and pretty much anything with a hole or can be fitted with a hole. Like a pork roast…hence the name, pork roast.

Walk into any sex shop and look around. Someone’s buying up all those blow-up sheep, ya know. And don’t overlook the fake, rubber female genitalia with the “realistic” pubic hair. If you got one o’ them stashed under yer pillow, it may be time to re-evaluate your goals. I recommend you go to your local bakery, have a Nanaimo bar and think it over.

Lunch Is Served...

If you are currently eating your lunch at your desk as you read this, please enjoy this tidbit of trivia, courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Saucy Monk:

There are 400 times more bacteria found on an office desk than the average toilet seat.

Bon appetit!

Dear Retarded Subway Driver...

I came to a conclusion on the subway last night:

There’s something just not right about a city that hires subway drivers that are either drunk, have a very serious speech impairment or are just plain retarded.

Now it’s not that I’m saying a retarded dude can’t drive a subway train. Hell, have you seen these transit people? Besides, if we can teach a monkey to fly a capsule into space, a retarded dude can surely drive the subway.

But if you are going to hire a retarded dude to drive public transit, please provide him with a buddy to atleast announce the subway stops on the P.A. system. Maybe James Earl Jones or that guy who voices all the movie trailers for Disney. I’d even accept Bobcat Goldthwait if I have to.

This is mass transit. You can’t have the person making the call on the speaker system sounding like a drunk Scottish soccer hooligan talking with a mouth full of saltines.

Or maybe that makes me an asshole.

But I like to think of myself as atleast a functional asshole.

After all, if my demand is the difference between being able to understand the driver’s instructions to get out after the power suddenly crashes for unknown reasons and the train is stuck in the middle of a tunnel...or instead, sitting in a damp, dark train arm-to-arm with a group of stinky, panicked strangers screaming, “we’re all gonna die!” in horrified panic while some unintelligible caveman blasts indistinguishable grunts over the P.A. system…

...well, tattoo ‘asshole’ right into the middle of my forehead, ‘cause brother, at that point, I dunno about you but I’ll be looking for the sun.

Serious Inquiries Only

Ya know when you’re bored sometimes and pick up the paper. Maybe you’re flipping though the classifieds, y’know, just kinda browsing the escort listings trying to find your dream date with a 6’5” Asian sadomasochistic septuagenarian with a harelip…and instead you find that sometimes people actually sell cars and musical instruments and things there too.

Anyhow, have you noticed sometimes these people write “serious inquiries only”? What does that mean? Who is this for? Serious inquiries only?! As opposed to what – frivolous inquiries? Jocular inquiries? I mean how serious can an inquiry be?

When I come across one of these moronic requests, I usually call up the dildo:

“Hi there, I saw your ad in the paper – the one about the chocolate lab puppies for sale…”

“Ya….ya…I want to buy one...ya...look, I’m not fucking around here. I want one of your goddamn dogs…even if I got to find out where you live and come over there. Ya, ya, I’m fucking serious!”

(click)

They usually hang up at this point. I guess they weren’t actually all that serious about the ‘serious inquiries only’ thing after all.

Your Saucy Horoscope

Aries (Mar 21 – Apr 19) – Remember that time a while ago when you found yourself hiding your tear-streaked face in your pillow and begging God to please, please, please send you a soul mate? Well, that day already came and went. As it turns out, your soul mate was a deaf-mute street vendor in Tijuana who tried to sell you a pack of Chiclets. Instead of making contact with your soul mate, your arrogant response was, “move already! I said I don’t want any of your fuckin’ gum, alright gringo!?!?”

Taurus (Apr 20 – May 20) – Today will bring you an epiphany while at work! You’ll suddenly and shockingly realize that you are never going to amount to much more than the boring, drivenless, paper-pushing office monkey you are now. Take comfort in the fact that you atleast excel in drinking yourself into oblivion.

Gemini (May 21 – Jun 20) – Get ready! Love is blossoming with the spring flowers, but unfortunately, not for you. A little deodorant wouldn’t hurt, did you ever think of that, Glando Calrissian?

Cancer (Jun 21 – Jul 23) – This month, your sign really makes its mark if you get me. Shitty for you.

Leo (Jul 23 – Aug 22) – This is the month you should spend your earnings on the lottery! Not necessarily because you’ll win, but because everyone is sick of the pathetic, desperate way you cling onto the sense that financial security will fill the giant vacuous, empty hole in your life. Hmm, then again, your life’s so pathetic, maybe it would help. Sorry to tease you about the lottery win thing.

Virgo (Aug 23 – Sep 22) – You have a lot going for you today, but beware people that may try and stop you from reaching your goals. The best way to handle them is to beat them into submission with a blunt object. Seriously. Don’t fuck around – this is your horoscope talking. I really mean it. Do it! Do it now! Virgo must hurt people! People bad!

Libra (Sep 23 – Oct 22) – see Gemini, only replace deodorant with mouthwash, colon breath.

Scorpio (Oct 23 – Nov 21) – You’re finding yourself pretty stressed out and need to calm yourself. Do what I do: go buy a Roger Whittaker CD, pour a bath with organic milk powder, oat kernel flower, and avocado oil, light a few aromatherapy candles and relax while listening to Roger’s “New World In The Morning”. Oh, and then call up a 6 foot tall she-male to come over and rub bergamot body lotion on your privates.

The Rest: Sagittarius/Capricorn/Aquarius/Pisces (Nov 22 – Mar 20) – Today you are active, outgoing and at the peak of your social prime. It’s a perfect day to meet others. Instead though, you will spend the day in your livingroom masturbating in the front window. The people you meet: the police.