My Kind of News

Two previous caretakers who worked with Koko the signing gorilla recently settled a lawsuit in which they claim they were fired for refusing to show their breasts to Koko. Allegedly, Penny Patterson, Koko’s primary guardian and founder of the Gorilla Foundation, urged the caretakers to show Koko their nipples because Koko was tired of seeing Patterson’s nipples.

Is this for real? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve worked in the primate field for years and there are some really nutty people there, especially the ones that work with apes. I once heard a rumor of a caretaker who worked with a chimp that would sometimes let the chimp groom her naughty bits down below (grooming is a big social activity for chimps in which they clean debris from one another’s hair).

I understand there’s still one more lawsuit of this sort pending against the Gorilla Foundation.

They’re too loud. They hog the seats at the food court. Often they don’t even buy anything. So now they’re being kicked out of the mall.

Just another incident of chess players making trouble at the mall. How many times have we all been annoyed by the commotion of chess players in public? One of the players, a retired 70-year-old, claims they’re being treated unfairly. Maybe you should take up a hobby that’s less disruptive to everyone around you, buddy. Maybe napping or sitting quietly and looking around.

Will GW do his duty and show up for jury duty? Not this time. He has other commitments, or so the White House says. But they say he’ll reschedule and serve jury duty another time.

Hmmm. That will be an interesting deliberation by the jury.

Bush: He’s clearly guilty. What do my fellow Americans here think?

Um. Yeah. Well, you know, I have some doubts, but yeah, I think he’s guilty. Yeah, definitely. Mr. President.

Says the boy’s father:

One day the Goddess Parvati (consort of Lord Shiva) appeared in my dreams and told me that when ‘my daughter’ attained puberty I must get her married. Over some time I realised that ‘the ‘daughter’ meant my son who had been transforming into a girl over the last few months. It is, I guess, a blessing that has happened to us as my in-laws are devotees of the Goddess. The Goddess just decided to be born in my family as my son,” he said.

So the boy, I mean girl, ended up marrying a stone idol of the god Shiva. Now there’s a life that’s not starting out well. I don’t expect he, I mean she, will get a lot of affection from that statue.

In total around 14 percent of global methane comes from the guts of farm animals.

That means farm animals burping and farting. Apparently this is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. So important that British scientists are testing ways to reduce these “emissions”. There was already a proposal in New Zealand to tax gaseous farm animals, but the movement was shot down.