From: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Not Al Crawford)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: Chimpanzees/Olympic Games
Date: 28 Jul 92 09:58:56 GMT
Reply-To: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Not Al Crawford)
Organization: Penicuik People's Revolutionary Sheepdog Liberation Front

Unfortunately, two separate peeves, rather than one. Unless anyone can up
with something along the lines of "UK Olympic Team In Primate Sex-Romp
Scandal".  Well, stranger things have happened - that woman having an
affair with Mellor for starters...

Peeve number one centres around that popular primate, the chimpanzee.
Generally thought of as cute and adorable, despite the adults chimp's habit
of ripping any dangling appendages it can find off anyone it doesn't like,
chimps are prime wildlife documentary material, partly because they look
vaguely human (certainly moreso than David Mellor) and partly because the
viewer can see the little cuddly apes indulging in human-like behaviour,
such as dismembering small monkeys for fun and eating beetle grubs.

It's this whole "human-like" idea that has led to my peeve. On Sunday night
I had the misfortune to catch a trailer for a documentary to be shown this
week about...chimpanzees. The voice-over went on about "the adorable
chimpanzee" who is "our closest relative" and who indulges in human-like
behaviour like "kissing, and caressing" (yeah, and picking fleas). This, I
would not debate. What *did* get me riled was the voice-over's claim that
"the chimpanzee is much closer to us than we think, and can be trained to
do anything, except speak."

Right. Chimpanzees can be trained to do everything. That'd probably explain
the way my bus driver this morning checked my ticket by tearing it up and
eating it. Obviously a trained chimp. After all, if a chimp can be trained
to do anything, it's only reasonable that we'd find chimps driving buses.
They're fully capable of dealing with undesirables, have quick reactions,
work long hours and ask only a couple of kilos of monkey nuts a day in pay.

In fact, chimps must be everywhere! Someone, it seems, has trained one and
put it in charge of the roads planning department of Lothian Regional
Council, which would explain why they've started to resurface Princes
Street, the busiest street in Edinburgh, about two weeks before the
Edinburgh Festival, the busiest time of year in Edinburgh. Obviously chimp
logic at work.

It'd also explain why our SparcStation 2's kept crashing mysteriously. Of
course, I wouldn't claim that these machines were designed or built by
chimpanzees. I would, however, contend that if chimps didn't write SunOS,
they were almost certainly in charge of the beta-testing.

"Chimps can be trained to do anything". Oh really. What they *really* mean
is "chimps can be trained, with years of work, to do the sort of thing that
even a particularly stupid 2 year old could pick up in a week." Since this
is also about the same level of ability as your average TV executive, it's
not a huge surprise that this mistruth slipped past them.

At a slight tangent...

The Olympics. I don't plan to watch them if I can possibly avoid it. And
I've come up with the ideal solution!

AntiPeeve: well, it's probably a peeve for them, but one of the teams
taking part in the opening ceremony (it was either Bahrain or Brunei) found
themselves in a rather awkward situation. They had *1* athlete taking part,
and he pulled out at the last minute, but they still had to go take part in
the opening ceremony. The result? The three IOC representatives for
B{ahrain | runei} had to walk around the track in front of their team of 0
athletes. So they're still in the Games, they just don't have any athletes.

It presents a wonderful opportunity. I've now decided that I'm going to
support this team all the way throughout the Olympics. After all, I already
know where they are going to come in the medals table and I can see *all*
the events they're going to take part in without even having to switch the
television on.

Peeve: I can't remember which of the two it is, Brunei or Bahrain.

Peeve: Since they can't do it themselves, I'd like to peeve on behalf of
the Olympic team from Aruba, who for some reason didn't get their name
called out during the opening ceremony.

Peeve: Another peeve by proxy. Anyone see the Swaziland team during the
opening ceremony? They were about the only team that had the guts to *all*
appear in traditional dress (rather than some godawful "fashion" tracksuit
that looks like it was designed by a colourblind four year old).
Traditional dress comprised nothing but a grass skirt, those little grassy
things around their ankles, a big spear and a shield (actually, not sure
about the shield). This sort of getup looks very impressive if you're 1.8m
(6'), in the prime of physical health and very dark in colour. It does
*not* look very impressive if you're about 1.5m (5'), could do with losing
a bit of weight and are subterranean-arthropod white. As one of the team
was. I'm sure the guy was thoroughly pissed off at this situation. Thing
is, even if he'd dressed in something other than traditional dress, he'd
*still* have stuck out like a sore thumb, mainly because he wouldn't be
dressed like the rest.

Peeve: the guy didn't miss when he fired the flaming arrow at the Olympic
flame. It'd probably have lit anyway, but it'd have been nice if he'd
missed.

--
		Not Al Crawford - Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk
     "The water shines/A sheepdog skips across the face/A dozen times"