Divine Abandonment...the true sad story.

Greetings my dear fellow apes,

The last post ..you know..the one about the elusive intergalactic travelers,  has generated a lot of responses from fellow earthlings and  also from the Great Beyond....a lot of these responses have been encouraging...in fact some people have refrained from using more than five swear words per sentence...others ..to put it mildly..have had a slightly agitated tone.

 Mr Bappi Lahiri has threatened to sue me for spreading malicious falsehoods about him. He says his ego has been mortally hurt by him being called a native of the Andromeda Galaxy.I humbly apologize to him for my folly . Per Capita gold holding on the inhabited planet systems of Andromeda is only 17.56 tonnes, and Mr Lahiri would rather not be associated with such a pauperish place. New rumors that are floating now suggest that he is actually not from any planet system  but from the asteroid Eros, which,you guessed  it, is made of nothing but solid ,pure, sparkling, gold.

Another angry response has been received from the Galactic Overhaulers and Developers Inc., a company engaged in buying out black holes for peanuts and overhauling them , and developing new private resort planets ..complete with designer mountains...flora and fauna as per demand..and flush toilets,and golf courses that tilt automatically according to the owner's handicap , for the galactic super rich. The promoters are the same ,once idealistic,nerdy former research scholars who failed to earn their doctorates when their project grant was withdrawn..with regret.

They say that ,after they had earned their trillions in real estate ..one evening ,after a couple of rounds of Vulcan good stuff , they all got all teary eyed about their good ol' days..and they did try to come back and see what they can do about their former test subjects. They hopped into their new sports ,quantum jumping ,space ship and set course to earth.The mood was good...the bottle was still being passed around..singing becoming louder.

They traveled a few hundred light years ...entered the Milky Way..took a left turn from the Great Bear constellation. The blue green abandoned former laboratory was now only 10 light years away.

Suddenly ,without warning ,the ship shuddered,flipped from side to side and did a cart wheel..or two.. The ship’s on board computer fired its logic engines on the turbo mode and made multiple quantum jumps through multiple dimensions. The travelers saw kaleidoscopic, psychedelic lights zap by...and then complete .., black as a politician’s heart, darkness.

It took a fleet of dimension jumping rescue ships to finally extract them from the parallel universe ,(where they picked up a fight with themselves and got beaten up by themselves...but that's another story )

The ship's organic, pulsating, high EQ, on board computer was taken to an R & D planet , and examined. The computer was, to put in plain words, inconsolable. It was a morbidly historic moment.  For the first time in the history of the universe..a computer was displaying signs of clinical manic depression and was suicidal. It had overloaded its own neuron circuits and was slowly melting itself to death.It was too late to do anything for it.One of the younger technicians had the presence of mind to quickly back up the remaining data . Then, the team decided to examine the data for the last intergalactic voyage.

We will never know ,in totality , what actually happened, except that the ship's computer had accidently picked up some highly infected data from the zillions of mega Hertz s of radio waves in the space.Once the team replayed the data , a chain reaction set in.The R & D planet's core melted and it imploded.

 In the radius of 9 light years, all organic neuron computers had a meltdown.All the ships in this kill zone ,either atomized completely or made quantum leaps into unknown dimensions, never to be found again.An area of 12 light years was quarantined for ever.

  The young technician was the only one who could get out..barely alive, in an escape capsule, which with a totally outdated on- board computer (without high EQ),escaped the carnage. Before he turned into a complete vegetable, he would sometime open all his six eyes wide and scratch a strange symbol on any surface within reach......and the symbol was... "K" .

All voyages towards the Milky Way were banned for ever. The area was blacked out in all galactic maps.

The Galactic Overhaulers and Developers inc. survived the crisis ...but the promoters vowed never to even think of their former test subjects. Earthlings were abandoned again..this time for ever.

Meanwhile on Earth, Ms Ekta Kkapoor launched her new daily soap .." Kkaise Kkaroon Main Aur Kkamai ".

The transmissions, in the form of high energy radio waves , reached the sun in eight minutes and then started their journey into the  intergalactic space, at the speed of light, towards another unsuspecting alien civilization.

So the Preaching Monkey says , that the question raised in the post "Big Alien Question " will soon be irrelevant. We will soon be alone......

The Preaching Monkey is signing out .....and will try to be regular in posting...

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Greetings revolutionaries...

The Preaching Monkey is back in his jungle...after spending three days in the bigger..badder jungle called Delhi..and there he saw something that restored his faith in honesty...that honest men still exist...He saw...a signboard.............

"Touch and Feel Spa and Parlor"

......................21 gun salute for the owner/nomenclature artist...

(..and NO..The Preaching Monkey did NOT stop to sample the wonders the establishment had to offer )

..and thus humbled and inspired The Preaching Monkey is back on the job...

Keep watching this space....

Greetings my fellow ex tree swingers,

The Preaching Monkey has left his jungle for the City ,for a short while. He will soon be back , and he will annoy you some more...

The Preaching Monkey , as a rare gesture, apologizes for his absence...

Till then , keep slow but steady progress on the road back to full monkeyhood.... 

............Long Live The Revolution........

The big Alien question...a serious debate

Greetings my dear fellow bipods,

I hope my last post, instilled the spirit of revolution in you, the chrono deficient, fur less,fun less,instant noodle consuming masses.Those still in doubt can go out and swing from the nearest tree to get a feel of the things to come.

And now get ready for today's dose of annoyance...

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."
Bill Watterson

Is there anybody out there...Are we alone in this universe ???

 We have all asked these questions to ourselves...and we have asked these questions to ourselves in Morgan Freeman's voice. (In fact, Noah took the.." whole earth's gonna flood" thing with a pinch of salt till God did his best Morgan Freeman impersonation. And then he took it very seriously and took all known animals on one hell of a cruise.). But did we ever get a conclusive answer ??? I don't think so.

The problem is that, most of us either do not possess the advanced circuitry needed to ponder on such questions (Honey, is Magenta better or peach ??? situation ) or we are afraid to answer (honey , do i look fat in this ??? situation.). I really cant find a fault with both sets of losers though..trying to answer in the first scenario will give you at best ,an headache and at worst, a stroke..and in the second..what if you answered with a NO and the aliens go out of their way to prove their existence by abducting you.

But still, the question needs to be pondered upon. To just sit back and decide , without any deliberation , that we are alone in this universe...and that the God created the universe only to be an exclusive playground for earthlings would be the ultimate act of arrogance. It would be something like all those germs thinking that they own your loo.Well, they don't ...or at least i hope so.

So lets talk about aliens...

Conditioned ,mentally,as we are by watching endless Hollywood alien flicks ,we envisage our encounter  with extra terrestrial life,if it ever happens, to be either in the form of a cute , green, stranded ,in distress, very friendly, refrigerator raiding, ET sort of a being...or totally ruthless, blood drinking, flesh eating, resource hungry, Death Ray firing (with a fetish for destroying landmarks all over the world, especially those in Washington,DC ), colonizing, egg laying,totally badass monsters like the ones in Independence Day.
I think Hollywood is wrong on both counts.

I mean, a life form which has the ability to overcome the problem of transporting itself over a couple of dozen light years ( those of us who have tried to overcome the problem of transporting ourselves over a couple of hundred miles by trying to book a tatkaal ticket on IRCTC,will certainly appreciate the enormity of the problem ) , will not be a helpless ,slow creature who will waste time playing ball with kids,,,or making their bicycles fly. Even if stranded, he will go to Nokia and sell them some alien tech , buy a villa in Hawaii and wait for extraction ,in style,sipping pina colada. And Nokia may start selling some phones again.

Same applies to the supposed and imaginary.. " we want to colonize this planet for its resources , and bar-be-cue humans as a bonus" school of alien thought.Any advanced and intelligent extraterrestrial civilization will not traverse light years to come and colonize a planet which is scarce in everything ,which has already been screwed by pollution and overpopulation ,and which has a highly belligerent ape as the dominant species ,which loves war and killing, and would not mind a bout or two with them, Death ray be damned. No sir, i don't think so.I think they will use their awesome technology to solve their resource problems , without risking a fight with us apes or look somewhere closer home and friendlier.(would you rather buy a banana off the shelf in the neighborhood supermarket, or would you go into the gorilla territory to snatch one off a wannabe King Kong ??  ).

There is another school of thought.. popularized by the MIB franchise ...that the aliens are already here.. hidden among us. Certain awesome and extremely talented people like Bappi Lahiri , George Bush and yours truly have always been suspected of being from the Andromeda galaxy.But this idea has been milked dry and done to death by the same MIB franchise, so i will rather not delve into this.

So , even after tapping, undeniably and unquestionably  the best single source of all modern human knowledge, Hollywood, the question remains unanswered.

Are they out there ??

Personally i think they are, but i don't think they will ever oblige us by flying by in big  saucers with multicolored blinking lights.( No, the Chinese are NOT selling them stuff.). I think they have been here already. Long ago.

As one of the few surviving fans of Erich Von Daniken and his cult book Chariots of Gods, i fully and firmly subscribe to the view that , we, the earthlings, are an experiment started by alien visitors in pre historical times. These alien visitors have stayed on in our collective memory and we call them ...well.. you guessed it...God.

They introduced random lifeforms ...embedded them with evolutionary blueprint, called DNA ..microwaved some popcorn ..and started observing us.They published papers on the developments. Made some adjustments , here and there..sometimes..you know..making a couple of non promising subjects extinct ( hey guys, these dino things have been there for too long..lets bump them off and throw in that two legged thingy , the one with opposable thumbs, as the dominant species..yeah .that would be fun. ). So the experiment continued.

Then something bad happened.

Those unfortunate friends who are in the field of any scientific research will vouch for the fact that the logical conclusion of any long term scientific pursuit , depends on a single overwhelmingly important factor.This factor is not the talent of those involved ...nor is it the equipment ..its not even the subject of the experiment. It is the mood and the whim of the bureaucrat who controls the funds.

So ,one fine day...or whatever they call the period of one rotation of the planet that the Gods live on, some senior  babu wanted to visit the neighboring galaxy to study the management of black holes. Budget..no problem...and soon the Gods were informed..with regret ..that due severe budget constraints their project grant is being withdrawn. And the rest, as they famously say, is history.

So poor semi evolved  species...us homo sapiens.. were left to their own devices..and they have conducted themselves, as a cage full of unsupervised monkeys, naturally would. And the Gods are nowhere to be seen.( they probably chucked the research field and went into real estate, i mean some of their agents are still busy selling us slots in heaven  ).

too bad for us......

So my fellow banana munching primates...see you again..hopefully soon.

Preaching Monkey.

A very serious debate on evolution...

My fellow travelers on this celestial Mary Go Round, greetings from the Preaching Monkey,

The big question which is annoying me today...and will annoy you too, if you don't stop reading this blog right now and do something productive, is ...why did we even bother about this whole "lets evolve" business ? was it worth it ? and if not, what can we do about it ???

Evolution is funny business. We were a bunch of happy, self sufficient ,tree dwelling, free loving, hairy apes peacefully minding our own business.Then one day the Big Guy in the sky, after a million or so years of watching us being self sufficient..and swinging from trees..and being hairy..and being free loving ,got bored. I would not fault him though, because how many of us can go on watching National Geographic for a couple of million years without getting sick of it and wanting to switch channels to HBO ? So The Big Guy clicked on the update icon on his screen and evolution (version. 1.1) started. ( BTW.. i have a strong suspicion that he was using an Apple platform as it has been a couple of million years and we are still evolving,no other software takes as long to update)

So, the question of why did we get involved with this evolution business is answered. We didn't have a choice.It was a " take it or leave it " sort of a deal. Our primal cousins, the Neanderthals ,chose the "leave it " part and then realized , too late, that God was a serious Godfather fan and he was making them "an offer they couldn't refuse ". So Neanderthals no longer grace the blue green sphere we like to call earth, with a possible exception of middle America , where they drive gas guzzling trucks , have red necks , love their guns and Jack Daniels ..hate anyone not white..and are not really known for their love for pure mathematics.

So , like it or not,evolution happened. Gone are the days when you spent your day hanging upside down on your tail from your favorite tree , worrying about nothing , had a lot of friends at hand to scratch your back and pick your lice .Now we are a bunch of unhappy, machine dependent, concrete dwelling , and "honey ,i have a headache today " chanting ,considerably less hairy apes (exception alert : Anil Kapoor ), who spend their days running after deadlines , their imaginary tails between their legs and the best they can hope for from their friends is a few likes on their copied and pasted FB statuses. Only bright part is that there is considerably less lice..driven away from the once densely covered forests of your scalp, due to stress and pollution induced deforestation.

So was it worth it ?

Apologists of evolution would say yes. They say we are a much more intelligent life form now. They say we are better off ,as now we have Walmart ,Facebook and Heinz Tomato Ketchup . I would say that the jury is still out on that intelligent bit.Wikipedia defines intelligence as, the wisdom or the ability of an organism or entity to act with appropriate judgement. Going by this definition, a race which spends most of its scarce resources on killing each other ,poisoning their rivers and eating artery choking McDonald burgers ,simply cannot be accused of using appropriate judgement or being burdened with wisdom. So we are not better off and no sir, it was not worth it.

Now the big question..what can we do, to set right this historical or rather prehistorical wrong ??

Most of us, at the first instance, fatalists as we are, would say .. there's nothing much we can do about it. Some of us , or rather most of us , being mortally afraid of the Big Guy ,would not want to interfere with Divine entertainment .But my friends all is not lost. There is still hope.The revolution against evolution has quietly begun and has been going strong for some time now. Why do you think Gangnam Style became so popular? It was nothing but a tool to arouse the subconscious , hidden, pre-evolution ape instincts in us.Look around you, and you will see signs everywhere. Look at Afghanistan, where Taliban had been making slow but steady progress towards stone age, and i am happy to report that now with the help of our American friends, many of them residual Neanderthals mentioned above, the progress is not slow anymore.Copy the same for Iraq.

 The best thing about pre- evolution life was its sheer simplicity. This was made possible by the uncomplicated wiring of the brain. Evolution ruined it all, and the human brain became highly complex. This is being taken care of. Facebook, Whatsapp, Twilight Saga and Angry birds are just a few weapons in the battle against the polluting grey matter corrupting the simple banana loving ape brains. The revolutionaries are among us. They are unsung heroes who design new mind numbing apps for your phones.They are those who like your silly pouting pics on social media , encouraging you to spend more time there.They are the people who write pointlessly silly blogs like the one you are reading, to waste your time and brains.Its only a matter of time. Hang on my fellow apes. We will bring those golden days back.

So dear fellow slightly evolved monkeys , Preaching Monkey is signing off....and will be back ,no matter how hard you pray for him not to.

The Happy Debate....

Greetings , my fellow apes.

We live in a world that is becoming increasingly complex. The problems that have plagued the human race since time immemorial ..like war, disease, hunger...have not been solved and civilization is being threatened by  newer problems and threats like Facebook and Justin Bieber. We are not happy...not content..and nobody burps after lunch anymore.

Happiness ...that elusive mermaid...lost in the sea of life.. needs to be lured , caught and put in the personal fish tank of your mind. The world is full of preachers/teachers/trainers/motivators/postmen/bartenders who are willing to tell you how to do it.The world is full of attentive people who are willing to listen to these preacher/teachers/trainers/motivators/postmen/bartenders and to try and practice what they say. But is the world a happier place ???

No..the sad reality is that , despite a hell lot of people telling you how to be happy, and despite millions of people sharing those pics on FB that are supposed to make random little boys in Africa happy..the world is still a sorry dark sad place and you are, for the most part of your life, gloomy like a whale relocated to Sahara..(Sahara as in the Sahara desert, not one of those, on the margins of the town, townships built by M/s Subroto Roy and Sons,in which case the whale will not only be gloomy, but also under clinical depression )

The reason ,my friends, for the lack of general happiness is , as in most cases of Herpes, denial of the true nature of the problem,leading to wrong diagnosis and wrong treatment. Let me elaborate.

We work on ourselves on the basic premise that the big guy we call God ,intended us to be happy and wanted the world to a bright sunny Disney-ish place. We have got this gift of life and it should be celebrated. We believe god to be a beneficent Grandpa who is there to reward you for being good.We are conditioned to believe that being happy is the default setting of the human mind and the lack of joy indicates a software bug.Lets get together and make the world the beautiful place that God meant it to be. All crap.

Let us now face the naked reality..Life is a disease with a 100% mortality rate , God has a weird sense of humor which is indicated by the fact that, for fun, he routinely sends buses full of pilgrims down into ravines..and finally according to Murphy's 8th law..mother nature is a bitch. The reality is that you are screwed anyway..in fact you have been screwed ever since you emerged all bloody and wet into this world and the first thing that happened to you was that your bums were slapped while you were hanging upside down. Let us first accept the big soup we are in .The truth is that the God's creations were not meant to be happy..well ,with the possible exceptions of penguins. Happiness is a scarce by-product of the Big Bang.Thus, we have identified the true nature of the problem. 

So happiness is NOT a normal state ,just like being drunk isn't. Its an aberration.You have to attain it, not due divine kindness, but despite it..period. Getting drunk takes an effort and so does attaining happiness.

Now that we have accepted the problem lets work on the treatment.

Be good. Live a model life , do not give in to temptations and always listen to your inner voice. Bullshit.

Look at any soap opera, those who are good ,cry in every episode and the vamps revel. Be yourself.
Most of us live our lives as if we are in an episode of Big Brother, trying to be model persons even when alone. Come on guyz..good chaps do not win realty shows anymore. Be what you are..selfish..bitchy..and jealous..and enjoy it. Give in to temptations, at least where there is little chance of being caught. Been there done that. And forget about the inner voice.Its probably gas .

Spread happiness around you. This will bring more happiness to you. Smiling faces and cheerful atmosphere that you create for others , will in fact, make you happier. Crap again.

Smiling faces ,after a few seconds are irritating . Many a husbands have found out to their peril that being cheerful when your wife is on PMS, does make someone happy..and that someone is the doctor who sews your wounds up. Happiness like energy or matter follows the Universal Law of Conservation. The sum total of happiness in the universe is constant. Happiness cannot be created or destroyed. So, stop trying to create happiness for others.In fact , as it cannot be created, any act of making others happy will diminish your own stock. So do it only for people you really really care about. And the easiest way to replenish your stock is to annoy people you don't like. So annoy and irritate people more often.Always say your thing..and the more annoying it is..the better. And refuse to grant the favor back by getting annoyed by their counter attack..it annoys them more.Be a predator in the happiness food chain.

And when you finally attain a respectable stock of happiness, your reactions should be subdued, you should not go overboard in your happiness. Happiness should be held close to heart and chewed slowly. Again trash.

Happiness, as i have preached above, follows the Universal Laws. It cant be created or destroyed. But the same law also says it can change form and state. So, just like matter can change from solid to gas, happiness if kept unutilized for long will turn into gas and escape. So if you have reasons to be happy..go berserk..shout from the rooftops..do cartwheels. Remember a bottle of good wine , if drunk ,makes a person very happy, but if kept for long ,it turns into vineger and makes onions happy. You are not an onion, you are a person.

So fellow apes, i hope you got the point. Good for you if this gave you an insight in the crooked nature of the Universe , God and hamburgers. And if this piece annoyed you, even better.

So long, keep swinging ....from the tree of life.

Preaching monkey will be back.