I answer more reader questions, much to their screaming delight

Is there no end to the good news? Yes! It is true!  After Sunday's extraordinarily successful first foray into answering the questions of my adoring readers and/or fans, I am answering some more today.  So far I think it's going pretty well.

I am not sure what you think, but it is Tuesday so you have the rest of the week to decide, and if you don't like the questions then I cannot help you until tomorrow, when I will be using the words 'crustacean' and 'carapace' in one blog post whilst holding a linen handkerchief doused in cologne over my retching mouth.

So. To the questions. They are good ones, I must confess. We start with the magnificent Y S Lee.

Why Hula Hoops?

Delicious texture: so super-crunchy, then they stick in your teeth.  Salty. Can put them on the end of your fingers even if you are old and your fingers are fat like gigantic pork sausages.

3 things that need to be invented.

1. Funnel thing for putting peppercorns into your pepper mill;
2. An interesting newspaper for Canada;
3. A beaver pet shop and a new paradigm* of what is and isn't acceptable in the pet world, i.e. it becomes socially acceptable for me to buy a small beaver and bring it up so that I can train it to sit on my lap, fetch twigs, not chew trees (unless permitted), lie on its back to have its tummy tickled, call it Graham, be microchipped, accept tiny snacks from my soft receiving hands, etc.


Sting's ultimate fate (deserved).

He will be eating an organic trout out of his own organic yoga lake in his organic farm in Tuscany when an organic trout bone will stick in his stupid Geordie neck.

Trudie will leap to her feet in a  tantric style and will attempt (and succeed) the Heimlich manoeuvre. The bone will shoot out of the preening cockmonkey's suspiciously taut organic yoga neck, bouncing into his organic rubber yoga ball, only to rebound and shoot into his eye and from there, into his tiny brain.

Astonishingly, the organic yoga fishbone will then find its target (i.e., Sting's tiny brain) despite having to travel through his eye and thence his brain (which is mostly made of tofu) causing an immediate and painless death.  




Tracy Lynn asks:  I will admit to some curiosity as to what ever happened to that fat bastard of a cat you were housing in Brixton.

Fat bastard of a cat (aka Monster) was gathered up (i.e., stuffed into a cat carrying basket despite gigantic roars of protest) by MonkeyMother and my friend Sonia and taken to a nice cat rehousing centre. MonkeyMother claims to have had a report that he was last seen sprawling in great comfort on a bed somewhere in Bromley, but I know what she is like and I would not be surprised if "a bed somewhere in Bromley" is MonkeyMother speak for "gone to the great Cattery in the sky".



Can you name us your top ten dinner party guests, living or dead. 
I have thought about this for a bit and the conclusion is that it would be people who I already know, like, and don't see enough of, although I'd like to have Sting round for dinner so I could wee in his soup.

Lord Philth asks:

Have you ever farted loudly in a supermarket (Montreal or elsewhere)?
Not loudly, no. 



Jam or marmalade?
Both, but only the ones out of the actual jam and marmalade making hands of either me or my mother, MonkeyMother.

Have you ever been too lazy to take the wrapper off an Opal Fruit (Starburst) and eat it "as is"? 
Yes, but only once. Excellent question. Strange but definitely not unpleasant, and I swallowed the paper, too.


Some questions from Anonymous:

What would you do or where would you go if you were invisible for one day?
I would go to Sting's house and I would wee in his soup.

Have you ever been sick through your nose?
Yes, and it hurts like all the worst fires of hell.  Almost as bad is when you burp and are a bit sick in your mouth. Awful.



Are there any circumstances that would justify a Genesis reunion (inc Peter Gabriel)
Yes, pretty much any and I would welcome it in some ways. I do not hate Genesis. I just hate the endless Genesis that goes on and on and on and on (although I like this after the stupid bit at the beginning). I don't hate it as much as I hate the Yes that goes on and on and on and on, mind you, so I don't think there would be any excuse for a Yes reunion, particularly as from what I understand Jon Anderson is a right twat.

(A little known fact about the early Monkey years is that MonkeyFather used to punish us (i.e., me and my brother, RunningMonkey), with prog rock; if we were really bad, we were locked in the basement with no supper and "Yessongs" on repeat.  I will write more about this another day. The pain is still a bit too alive in my memory, as it were.)

Who in your esteemed opinion is the biggest preening cockmonkey in advertising?
Easy, but I cannot say it in public. He is in New York and he really is a gigantic twat.



Do you play a musical instrument?
No, but I fancy the Jew's Harp might be "my" instrument, were I to play one.

Sama writes:

I would like to know WHEN you discovered that you were simian, ditto your family, and how?
We have always known. How and why I cannot explain. We just have.

* people use this word in advertising agencies a lot without really knowing what it means. "We are going to create a new paradigm for communications strategies", for e.g.  Amazing.

I find some rules I like

I do not like rules much, partly because a lot of them don't make much sense. I'm not including things like "drive on the correct side of the road", or "write thank-you letters", because those are things that are to do with being polite and/or not killing other people.  No no.  I'm talking about the kind of rules that aren't really necessary, or have been decided and set in stone by someone in a different time and context and followed blindly by people without the imagination to question them, or the desire to change them to make things better.

Do not be afraid; I am not going to start bellowing things like "rules are there to be broken!!" like an enormous spanner, but a bit like deadlines or guidelines or people in positions of authority, if rules make sense I will follow them; if they don't, I won't. (Assuming no-one will get hurt.)

I have done those Myers-Briggs things twice in five years. In that time, I have apparently undergone a complete personality transplant, which is encouraging; the second time, it was even mildly interesting, for I found out that I am a rare and special (obviously)  INTJ. If you do not know much about Myers-Briggs, that means that I am a socially awkward engineer called General Ulysses S Grant who rejects formal notions of what you "should" do, some of which has a glimmer of truth about it as far as I am concerned. Anyway, we shall now draw a veil over the whole affair, partly because I find discussion of IQ, EQ, MENSA, Myers-Briggs etc etc etc very dull. ("But I have an IQ of 145!". "You are still a fucking twat, though, aren't you?")

Back to the point, if there is one:  I have just found a splendid thing in The Guardian that you probably all saw when it came out in February. It is Ten rules for writing fiction; not just one set of ten rules, lots of sets of ten rules from lots of different writers. I think you will like it a lot, whether you write fiction or not.  I liked a great many of them, but I liked these two best (from Richard Ford):

1.  Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer's a good idea.

10. Don't take any shit if you can possibly help it.

Obviously you can subsitute "writer" for whatever it is you do in the first one but still, you get the point.

Pip pip!

NWM

I am immensely pleased by a traffic light

Uploaded by Non-workingmonkey2010.

I begin to answer my reader questions

Because I have nothing to do, and because there is less to do when you have nothing to do in Montreal (scene of this round of non-working) than there is in London (scene of the last round of non-working), I am constructing an 'About' page. Fuelled less by a belief that I am universally fascinating than it is by a need to fill the days, the "About" page will be constructed around questions submitted by you, my adoring readers and/or fans.

Here we go. I am answering them all, in order. (Although I may not answer them all in this post.)

Welshbird asks: "I would like to know what sort of animal you would choose to have for a servant at Monkey Towers, and why."

A beaver, because:

1. I have never seen one in the flesh and I long to;
2. They are industrious, hard-working, resilient and (as far as I am aware) not unionised;
3. They will work for wood. I have a great deal of wood, but no money.

Alison Cross asks a great many questions:

How you arrived at the NWM concept

I won't take this as meaning "why did you call the blog Non-workingmonkey?". I will instead take it as meaning "what is the idea of non-workingness?". The original definition is here; it is time for a tiny update, but "In essence, it is the strong desire to do very little (unless it's something you really like doing) and be answerable to no-one, whilst understanding that working is necessary in order to get money, which we need to live." (I have just been sick in my mouth, for I have just quoted myself. That is the kind of thing Sting would do.)

How you met the vet

He was reading my old blog, then started reading this one. Then we met. There is a longer and better story around this that I have never told. I'm not sure why. There is a hint of it here.

What biscuit you would most like to be and why?

Ginger nut. Look more boring than they are.

Where is Welshbird's badge?

Icelandic airspace.

Can I get a badge?

Yes, you can. I have received your email. It will be posted on Monday, so you should have it by Christmas.

What did you do before you were nwm?

Before, during and after being NWM, when I work I do advertising and marketing-type things. When I'm doing what I'm supposed to, I do things that involve my brain, which I enjoy very much.

Elana writes:

Dear nwm,
I would like to know how come Canadians cannot speak more like Brits. We are part of the commonwealth afterall. I would like to know how to sneak in the word, irate for example in everyday conversation. Please advise.
Fondly,
e

Dear e,
It is quite simple. All you need to do is replace the world "while" with "whilst" once in a while, and everyone will think you are English.
With love
NWM

Katyboo asks a good question:

Why fez? Do not get me wrong. I am a fez fan, but I fear for its stability. Do you have to attach it with hairpins for example? That is what I would like to know best.

Why fez? Because it really suits the shape of my face, as you can probably see in my profile picture. I do not need to use pins, etc; just a spot of double-sided sticky tape if I am going driving in a convertible car.

Secondly. Where do you stand on the topic of poutine?

I like your use of the word 'topic' there. The thing is about the word 'topic' is that it suggests that some kind of debate/lively discussion will ensue around the 'topic' in question, whereas where poutine is concerned, no such thing happens. 9/10 conversations about Poutine probably go something like this:

- What is poutine?
- It is fries, fresh squeaky cheese curds that melt a bit, and hot gravy.
- Do you like it?
- If I am very, very drunk and it is 3am in a snowstorm.
- Do most people like it?
- Well, in the way I like it (drunk, 3am, snowstorm), or when they are hungover.
- Is it the national dish of Quebec? No. That is Cuisses de Castor au Sirop d'Erable.

That is enough for the time being! If you wish to ask me any questions, you may do so at nonworkingmonkey@mac.com.

Pip pip!

NWM

I share with you a mollusc with a tongue

It is disgusting, and yet GREAT.