He Thinks He's People

I believe in God, but I have never thought for a second that we didn't come from monkeys. I still don't understand why so many people think that these two theories/beliefs are mutually exclusive but that's not really the point. The point is that you need to meet Nyota. Nyota is the bonobo chimp pictured above and he is proof, at least to me, that monkeys are people. Why? Because in the midst of my research about primate retirement centers (more to come on that), I started reading about Nyota. First there is this kind of a reductive profile on him.
Name: Nyota
Birthday: April 4, 1998
Favorite food: Bananas
Favorite game: Watch tv
Favorite toy: Bubbles

My internal monologue:

Wait, wait, waaaaiiitttt. Bananas? TV? Bubbles? I mean he's a little bit younger than me but this pretty much is what my Facebook profile says. Or if I haven't included on there how much I like bubbles, I'm about to....make note on my hand of that annndddd READ ON.

Then I got to the part that says "recently Nyota has shown interest in learning stone tool knapping, fire making, and painting." I was an anthropology major in college. This doesn't really mean anything except that I hung out with lots of stoner artists and took a lot of classes that no longer apply to my life. Nyota's recent interests essentially describe my scholastic experience and for my ethno and experimental archaeology class I did a little stone tool knapping myself and guess what? It's really fucking hard! Oh hey! Make this sharp, functional rock tool out of a rock and the only tools you have at your disposal are rocks themselves and other tools made out of rocks. It is worth 75 percent of your grade. When you are done, you should be sure to check ditches for deer carcasses because next week we have to make needles out of bones so that you can sew together some cattail reed mats and ribs really work best...

Now here is where we kind of start to veer off into separate directions. "Nyota's lexigram utterances have always been unusual and distinct. Most recently, a common expression of his is "QUIET THINK" which we translate into "Let's have some quiet time together."

While I do consider some of my utterances to be unique, I rarely have the expression of "QUIET THINK" on. The one I more often wear is, well, "GREASY FACE" and practically all the time "WAITING TO TALK".

I wondered if any of the other monkeys fit descriptions of the people in my life. I think this one might be my friend Sarah Korsch:


His name is Kanzi and this is his profile:
Name: Kanzi
Birthday: October 28, 1980
Favorite food: Onions
Favorite game: Chase
Favorite toy: Red ball

Now Sarah, before you get mad I think you should know that, "If there were a superstar within the bonobo community, Kanzi, which means "treasure" in Swahili, would certainly be it."

I am going to take a page from Nyota's words and work on "QUIET THINK" for at least the rest of the day.