Brass Monkeys, Balls, Star Wars & Orcas

Can penguins stand heat? Well, with no kitchen to get out of, we'd have to, wouldn't we?

At first it seemed an odd question. I mean of course we can, we get summer in the southern oceans just like everyone else. We just need to able to get into water every now and again. No different to you then, with your holidays in Miami or St Tropez. But then I thought that we are so emblematic of penguins in general and the only time you see us is when we're all huddled down bleating our pathetic little defiance to the elements, in weather cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, that perhaps it's not so strange. Having said that, we are at the extreme edge of penguin survival. Most penguins breed much closer to the ocean or on southern atlantic islands so have nothing like the conditions to face that we experience.

In any event most zoos around the world have a little colony of penguins usually gentoos, macaronis, chinstraps, rockhoppers, the smaller ones, though you occasionally see the odd king. Only Sea World in America (land of the free, unless you happen to be a dolphin or an orca..... or a penguin) has emperors, we need that much more space if we are to breed in captivity.

Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against zoos per se and their claimed programmes of captive breeding to preserve 'nature' but in a lot of cases it must surely be simply putting off the inevitable. The chances are that in 50-100 years time the only place we will be breeding is Sea World but then even if you keep the species alive, you'll create such a genetic bottleneck that even if we could ever be realeased back into wild, most of the diversity will be gone and we'll still go the way of the dinosaurs, won't we? Mostly I think you keep up this pretence for purely selfish reasons. You want your children and their children to be able to see what you see, as though we were bits of architecture or toys!

And Sea World? How you can possibly think that taking some of the most wide ranging and intelligent animals on the planet, putting them in the equivalent of a large box and teaching them to perform tricks to get fed is a good idea just demonstrates your arrogance, yet again. "Oh but they love it, they really look like they're having fun." Yeah, right! They just take what little pleasure they can wherever they can find it! Not much else they can do without opposable thumbs and no way back to the sea.

Now orcas and dolphins are hardly what I'd call my friends but even I find it hard to credit that you can get away with this. Oh, and remember the film 'Free Willy', the orca that the little boy rescued from captivity? That lovely shot at the end as he clears the barrier? And what did they use? Yep! A captive orca! Oh such irony amongst the cutesy! And I doubt most of you even began to get it!

OK, rant over. I just have to let off steam sometimes. Maybe ET will come and put you all in boxes and ask you to perform differential calculus before you can get fed. Only fair, I think, but then God does not exist so miracles, I guess, are off the menu. Always.... such tiny, tiny hopes.

Oh George, George, what have you done? The Clone Wars? Animation? Why didn't you listen? We told you the second three weren't as good as the first three. We told you you shouldn't have made them if you were going to be so reliant on CGI. So why now ALL CGI? Oh George, you have ruined everything. For what? More money? You surely don't need it? That's the great thing about artists. They always know when to stop. Ah well, perhaps was it too much to expect that George had more in him than the genre defining opening shot of Stars Wars.

Oh dear the rant didn't quite stop earlier. Sorry. Must be anxious about Fricka, I guess. I will therefore lighten the tone with another copyright breach but only a very short one. Now I love Roger McGough. He's an English poet/performer whose work is so deceptively simple and yet captures the very essence of what it is he is writing about that I live in awe of his talent. So a very brief poem by Mr McGough about the perils of being human. (And if you've ever been there, I think you'll know exactly what he's talking about. If you haven't I bet you know someone else who has!)

Out of work
Divorced
Usually pissed
He aimed low in life

And missed

And brass monkeys? Well, the balls seem to have been added in the US in the last century. It seems likely that originally it was the tail that fell off. And if I tell you that a monkey is also an early ship borne cannon and it was aimed by pulling a lever called a tail, well it would be a bummer to have had that happen just before you were going to engage an enemy, especially if it was cold! Funny though, there's actually a site called brassmonkeys.co.uk which repeats the 'pyramid stacked cannonball' hypothesis for which there is absolutely no evidence (and would have been VERY dangerous on a rolling ship).