Salon.com > monkey

Donald Trump has “temporarily withdrawn” lawsuit against Bill Maher

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 15:20:00 +0000

Donald Trump, demonstrating the first act of sanity since Bill Maher challenged him to prove he was not the "spawn of an orangutan," has withdrawn the lawsuit against Maher--well, temporarily.

"The lawsuit was temporarily withdrawn to be amended and refiled at a later date," Michael Cohen, Trump Executive Vice President and Special Counsel, told TMZ.

Maher's orangutan comment and subsequent challenge had been a direct jab at Trump's October announcement, in which the real estate mogul challenged President Obama to release his college transcript in exchange for $5 million donation to a charity of his choosing. Maher then jokingly challenged Trump to prove he is not the offspring of an orangutan, which everyone took to be a joke, except human joke Donald Trump. When the Donald offered up record of his very human birth, Maher didn't pay up, and Trump sued, saying he “had an obligation to sue for charity.”

Is the Iranian space monkey an elaborate hoax?

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 22:31:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States expressed doubt on Monday about Iran's claim that it safely returned a monkey from space, saying it is questionable that the monkey survived — or if the flight happened at all.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said a lot of questions remained "about whether the monkey that they reportedly sent up into space and reportedly came down was actually the same monkey, whether he survived."

"The Iranians said they sent a monkey, but the monkey that they showed later seemed to have different facial features," Nuland told reporters. "He was missing a little wart."

Tehran blames the confusion on Iranian media for initially using a photo of a backup monkey. It says the monkey orbited and returned safely, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad added Monday that he would consider being Iran's first astronaut in space.

Nuland described Ahmadinejad's proclamation as an "interesting choice," but was more diplomatic than Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who joked about Ahmadinejad's ruminations earlier Monday.

"Wasn't he just there last week?" McCain said in a tweet and linked to a story about the space-orbiting monkey.

Weird news: Monkey wearing a coat found in Canadian IKEA store

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:23:00 +0000

TORONTO (AP) -- Shoppers at an Ikea store in Toronto weren't monkeying around when they reported a primate on the loose.

Customers spotted a monkey - clad in a pint-sized shearling coat - wandering around the store's parking lot Sunday afternoon. The baby monkey, named Darwin, made its way through rows of parked cars and ended up outside a set of store doors.

Ikea staff lured the primate into a corner before calling police, who contacted the city's Animal Services department, said Staff Sgt. Ed Dzingala.

"It was just outside the store, just in a corner area where the monkey had nowhere to go, but it was pretty scared," Dzingala said. He said the monkey had escaped its crate in a parked car.

The monkey, which reportedly wore a diaper as well, never made it inside the store and was picked up by Animal Services officers within half an hour. The animal's owner later contacted police and was reunited with the pet, Dzingala said.

Word of the incident sparked a flurry of comments and photos on Twitter, as well as two parody Twitter accounts which took on the persona of the wandering monkey.

8 reasons Crystal the monkey is better than you

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:27:00 +0000

Crystal is the capuchin monkey who is going to save NBC with the comedy "Animal Practice." Here are 8 reasons, quoted from Benjamin Wallace's article in New York, that she'll be able to do what neither you nor any other human can:

1. She has more money than you:

"Crystal reportedly earns $12,000 per episode of "Animal Practice," and she is a presence in every one, whether cheering on an illicit turtle race (a guinea pig riding on each turtle’s back) or crawling inside and animating a puppet to haunt a puppet-phobe. "

2. She can do more tricks than you:

"Over the years, Crystal has built up a repertoire of tricks, ranging from leaping like a pogo stick to pretending to smoke a cigarette."

Quote of the day

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 22:21:00 +0000

Elias Garcia Martinez painted "Ecce Homo" (Behold the Man) on the wall of a church near Zaragoza, Spain, over 100 years ago. The depiction of Christ has been a source of pride and inspiration for the Spanish town -- that is, until town resident Cecilia Gomez, who is in her 80s, sought out to restore the damaged fresco.

Of the unfortunate restoration, BBC correspondent Christian Fraser said, "The once-dignified portrait now resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic." (Punsters have taken to calling it "Ecce Mono" -- Behold the Monkey.)

But fear not, for the city has a plan. Juan Josi Ojeda, the city's culture council member, told BBC, "If we can't fix it, we will probably cover the wall with a photo of the painting."

Gomez claims the church’s priest gave her permission and told the BBC, "Everybody who came into the church could see I was painting."