I’m thinking about getting one of those helper monkeys.

My wife reckons people are finding it a bit hard to tell when I’m actually joking – well, being sarcastic – these days. What with The Illness* rendering half of my face immobile, meaning I can only currently produce something resembling a manic stranger-scaring grimace at best.

So I’m thinking about getting one of those monkeys and outfitting him with a little drum and snare.
Then, when I tell a joke – for example, “Yeah, I agree. David Hasselhoff is great…” – the monkey will follow up with a bah-dom-tsh drum roll thingee, and that will be everyone’s cue to laugh.

Haha, haha, haaaa.

The monkey should also prove useful for keeping me tick and flea-free as well.

And for chucking primate poo at homey-wannabe-South Auckand-gangstas who roll through my hood with their windows down calling me an “East-side beeeearch!”.

Oh. I’m a beeearch, am I? Helper Monkey – ATTACK!!!

Yeah. That’d be cool.

I’d probably have to sign some sort of declaration though, promising not to eat the monkey if I got bored and hungry. OK… stoned and hungry. That’d be hard. I’ve always wondered what monkey tastes like. Chicken? Dolphin? Or more tender, like a baby Eskimo?

That thought sometimes keeps me awake at night.

No wonder I always wake feeling so hungry.

* I’m officially renaming my syndrome the D-Sease.**
** Renaming comes courtesy of the ever-witty Golf Widow.

Notice anything different?

I’m now at www.d-manbitesdog.com.
That’s way easier to remember than d-manz.diarywhatever.something.

Update your links. There’s a redirect going on at the diaryland site for those who forget. Which probably includes myself.

I’m paying to blog now, so I guess this is some sort of commitment to stick around and keep doing this.

Many thanks to Bren for hosting me through her Diarytown stable.
It was through reading the handful of weblogs contained there that I first got into this blogging thing in the first place.

She has ensured that all my buddy-links and archives have been copied across.

There may be some subtle changes in future as I come to grips with the new bag of goodies on offer through her service.

More retarded stuff I’ve done lately:

• I turned the sprinkler system on last night to water the garden. It wasn’t until 5 hours later while wondering “What the heck is that hissing sound?” that I remembered that I had forgotten to turn the sprinkler system off.

  Fortunately my plants did not drown. It transpired that a connection had blown apart not long after turning the tap on and the water had escaped onto the neighbour’s section instead. This morning I told them to stop their moaning. Some people pay big bucks to have a swimming pool in their back yard.

• I cooked some eggs on the stove, then left the house for an hour, then returned to discover that I had left the element on. The house was This Close to burning down.
  I thought that sort of thing only happened in the movies.
  

If I had a Helper Monkey, this shit probably wouldn’t happen to me.

My father-in-law had a difficult task to perform this week.

He had to contact some tenants and tell them that the gardener who had been cleaning up their section had informed him that he had spotted five very healthy marijuana plants growing in the garden. They would have to remove them immediately(!).

The tenant broke out in laughter and didn’t stop for a good full minute.

It turns out that the dope plants were actually five very healthy Tom Thumb tomato plants.

The big red roundish things hanging from them should have been a give-away, really…

My wife was trying to explain to me last night that people are finding it hard to understand me at the moment, what with the palsy Godfather mumble and the fact that I get easily distracted and tend to be talking to people whilst looking off in the other direction.

I got a little hissy and said:

Fine. I’ll just stop talking, then.

She laughed and laughed and laughed and didn’t stop laughing for four minutes.
Then she got her breath back and continued to laugh some more.

Shut up.

I can stop talking any time I want. I could stop right now. If I wanted.
I can go for hours without talking sometimes. Well, if you don’t count when I’m sleeping, it’s more like minutes. OK, so if you don’t count eating, it’s more like seconds, but my point is I can stop talking, should I choose. If I wanted.

Shut up.

Where’s my goddamn Helper Monkey?