APE: Sea Monkeys

[Tom Russell]

What's wonderful about this story (besides Apes and Monkeys, of course)
is the sheer randomness of it.  The characters, the plot, and even the
prose itself has such a wonderfully improvised vibe-- full of surprises
and left-turns and out-of-left-field observations.

> And written on the white door with the white handle in large letters
> was 'ANTHROPOMORPHIC APE SMELLS FUNNY LIKE POO'. But because the
> writing was white too, Anthropomorphic Ape didn't see it, and so (to
> his shame and dishonour) allowed the insult to pass.

It's such a strange, surreal detail, so meaningless and yet so
hilarious.  It reminds me a bit of Arthur's trippier writing and some
of my own Master Blaster specials, very much in a gonzo, pure-funny
style.

It also (again) reminds me of some early LNH stuff, particularly the
weird informal asides that wReam used from time to time.  And I've said
it once, and again, and again, and I'll probably keep saying it again
and again and again: Mitchell is writing in the vein of the classic LNH
story.

And that's pretty awesome.

> Coco the Powder Monkey looked away distressedly. So distressedly that
> 'distressedly' became a word. But it was only a baby word still, so
> whenever anyone said 'distressedly' for a while, it just came out as
> 'waaagh, waaaaaagh!'. "Aah... ooh."

But not as awesome as the baby word "distressedly", and the fact that
Mitchell's not afraid to use the same basic paragraph twice.

Does this mean that Anthro. Ape & Coco are the parents of the baby
word?  Sexual subtext!  That's not just awesome, it's Jawsome!

==Tom