Look at this fucking Poets & Writers cover

I can't even really tell you how much I like that the cover of the latest issue of Poets & Writers is featured on Look at this fucking hipster. Although to be fair, James Kaelan is a fiction writer, not a poet as LATFH suggests.

Monkeys are #1

Monkeys top the list of Time's July 19 Top 10 Militant Animals list. For whatever reason humans are not on the included.

Hey, we didn't kill the slender loris after all!

Scientists thought the slender loris was extinct. But apparently it isn't. So hooray for humans for not killing something for a change. Granted, it's probably only a matter of time. :(

Win a gorilla, my ninjas

You know, I totally wasn't even going to go to the annual Gathering of the Juggalos this year. Until, 20 seconds into this video I saw that you can win giant stuffed gorillas there. And they show them again at about 10 minutes and 57 seconds in. Also there will be seminars? Because it's like college? I don't know. All I know is I've got to get me a Juggalo gorilla.



Via Videogum.

If "Howl" were written today

A really awesome "Howl" parody over at McSweeney's. Though calling it a "parody" really doesn't seem right. You'll see.

Via Buzzfeed.

Monkey guns for hire

Taliban fighter monkeys? Is this real life?



Don't they know that by giving monkeys guns they're only hastening the monkey world take over?

Via Buzzfeed.

Fluffy specimens

There is, no doubt, a monkey to be found somewhere on this shelf.

Ginsberg on film

Actually it's James Franco as Ginsberg in Howl, the new Allen Ginsberg biopic, but still. Also stars David Strathairn, Alan Alda, Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Paul Rudd and Jon Hamm. Looks okay, though I fear it will be ham-fisted and overly long like, say, Kinsey.


Via Videogum.

Gorilla rugby hunk

A rather awesome photos posted in the comments section on Videogum. I've never understood rugby, which is why it makes sense to hand the game over to gorillas.

Monkey puppy

Via Videogum.

Vs. verse

If you like poems about sports, here are a bunch of them courtesy of Carol Ann Duffy. She is, after all, a lesbian and a poet, which automatically makes her an expert.

Added bonus: apparently kids these days use the term "verse" as a verb. As in, "I'm going to verse you at recess." If only this meant that they were having little poetry slams. That would be the best.

Monkey and Poetry Convergence: Joe Henry edition

In his new book Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us, Steve Almond mentally connects Joe Henry, whose 1999 album Fuse not only opens with a song titled "Monkey" but also features a photo of Henry with a literal monkey on his back, to the Iliad to Faulkner, which may just be a first. This results in the epiphany that,"The connection in my head being that all language began in song and that the best stories inevitably return to song, to a state of rapture. For years, I had assumed that throwing beautiful words at the page would make my prose feel true. But I had the process exactly backward. It was truth that lifted the language into beauty and toward song."

As they say in French, c'est possible.

Almond, a huge Joe Henry fan, then writes about the time Henry sent him a poem to read and asked for feedback. Almond thought, "Holy shit, Joe Henry just sent me something to read."

The poem, writes Almond, started out good. But then "the poem's pathos sputtered into rage. There was a lot about how stupid Americans are. Red Bull was cited, as were the ravages of global warming. I was reminded (unpleasantly) of my own writing. And thus my next thought: I'm going to have to tell Joe Henry that his poem kind of sucks."

Thankfully he didn't have to. Henry turned the poem into song lyrics, the resulting song, according to Almond, capturing "the dream of America as a holy wilderness whose decline is properly understood as a cause for lamentation, not sermons."

You can listen to a demo of Joe Henry's "Our Song" as part of Almond's "Bitchin' Soundtrack" to his new book. It's a really good way to spend 5 minutes and 46 seconds of your life.

The nicer the baboon the longer the life

Whether or not you believe in evolution, it pays to not be a dick.

Thanks, Laura, for the tip.

Get those Steampunk monkeys out of Pleasantville!

Get our yer crayons. This should take you awhile.

Via Boing Boing.

Thanks, Laura, for the tip.

Monkey and Poetry Convergence: Kyle Stone edition

Kyle Stone, a children's book illustrator and the man behind The Tickled Ape, did the paintings for the 2005 book Please Bury Me in the Library, a collection of poems for children about reading by J. Patrick Lewis.

Stone is also kinda friends with my sister's girlfriend. Small world, eh?

His art is really awesome and you should check it out. On his blog he has several posts about the Please Bury Me in the Library art, including models, cover art, and drawings (and more drawings).