Primate Nooz Issue 24

“NOT
JUST
FOR
MONKEYS”

       In a secret duel held last Saturday out by the Used Tire Reclaiming Yards on the outskirts of Hellmouth, New Primate Nooz publisher Arnett Putney, III fired a bolt from an antique French crossbow, striking executive editor Widen Lundale, Jr. on the left knee. The wounded Lundale dropped his weapon and collapsed on the ground, whimpering in apparent discomfort, according to the account given by Barney Breedglove, his new second. Publisher Putney turned his back on the man who had heretofore been his closest confidante and most-trusted associate and stalked rapidly off, saying only “Don't be late on Monday.”
        Although Mr. Putney declared a news blackout on information about the duel, the Nooz has been informed that the two men had experienced a serious disagreement about advertising policies, and that Mr. Lundale had called the publisher a fathead, a name the senior executive has always taken exception to. Mr. Putney was frequently referred to as a fathead when he attended sixth grade at Mt. Sydney Middle School, and he has developed quite a sensitivity about the name. He was called other things too, like 'four-eyes' and 'dumpy' and 'peabrain,' but for some reason it was 'fathead' that really set him off. Once he pushed a bullying kid who used the term into a zazu bush at the Hellmouth Botanic Gardens, and one time he stuffed some dermititus-causing leaves down the shirt of a fellow field-tripper on a school visit to Mt. Cheesequake County Park. His interest in botany was then already developing.
        When a challenge was issued for a duel to settle the matter, the two checked their leather-bound appointment books and discovered that they both had Saturday free from 3pm to 4pm, following a tennis match at the Hellmouth Tennis Club and preceding a social engagement at the Antlered Animals Lodge Hall. Their drivers delivered them to the agreed-on place and carried their crossbows and bags of bolts. The sun was just going behind a cloud when the two old friends stood back to back and paced off the correct distance, then turned and, raising the heavy crossbows, fired.
        And thus we have come to an uncertain crossroad in the life journey of these two publishing giants, an intersection of principle and disloyalty with no street signs around, between these two men who have blazed across the skies of primatology like Halley's Comet, lighting up the darkness in towns from Hummingbird Junction to Mary's Wells, and leaving only a slight smell of ozone in its wake. It remains to be seen to what extent this formerly-brotherly pair can repair the damage of this falling-out and learn to work together again. The rest of us here at the New Primate Nooz sincerely hope that they can, and we wish them good luck.

The New Primate Nooz is published whenever the Iron Chef goes on vacation by those clever folks down at the Takeshitahara Corporation, Kashihara Takeshitahara, CEO and General Manager. Copies are shipped to every major zoo and animal testing facility in the U.S. and Japan, and e-mailed to much of Africa, Asia and South America (except Costa Rica). We are overflowing with back issues and would like to get rid of them. Please write to: The New Primate Nooz, c/o The Hellmouth-Nagasaki Friendship and Primatology Association, 220 Pineview Avenue, Hellmouth, AZ. or visit www.webnooz/backissues.

(Africa News) Libreville, Gabon. Nine years after a major volcanic eruption apparently buried the Makokou Bluetail Guenon Study Site in the cloudy, fault-ridden Makanza Mountains region of Gabon, the scratchy yet still strong voice of Dr. Professor Oondóué M. Boué came unexpectedly last week over an intermittently-working phone line from Libreville. It turns out that the words that were thought at the time to be his last, and evidence that Makokou was being bombarded by lava bombs, were just some lines to a play he was practicing with his six children. The play, written by playwright Demba Lusangi and called “Disaster in Djimbala,” involves a small research center in a town near a volcano which erupts one day and buries the entire area in hot lava while many of its residents are practicing for a play they are putting on about a volcanic catastrophe in an unsuspecting town.
Apparently, Dr. Boué was not aware that his words and those of his excitable children were going out over an open radio link and were being horribly misinterpreted. It further appears that Dr. Boué has spent the past nine years wondering why his mail hasn't come and his electricity has been turned off, and he finally grew tired of waiting for an answer and has taken direct steps to find out. Of course, he has also been working, and has developed some fascinating new theories about bluetail burrowing proclivities, but we do not have the time or space to go into much detail about that. Suffice it to say that we are glad that Dr. Boué was not turned into a cinder, and we expect that he will be visiting Hellmouth sometime soon now that he has resurfaced.

RAINFOREST RESEARCH CENTER
DECLARES NEW ICE AGE COMING

(SW News) Hellmouth, AZ. The weather guru at the Hellmouth Tropical Rainforest Research Center has put his reputation on the line with his latest prediction, based on variables too complex to go into here, that a new ice age is coming, and may begin as soon as next week. At least two dozen families have already announced that they will be moving south to avoid the rigors of the cold that will soon engulf the muddy Horntoad River Valley. The last prediction of a new ice age was made by the Flekkesund College Global Climate Studies Department two years ago and was eventually proven to be false.