Posted by BarbaraCat on September 12, 2003, at 15:14:58
In reply to Live Long and Prosper, of course » BarbaraCat, posted by KimberlyDi on September 10, 2003, at 7:33:35
> 100 Monkeys could pound out Shakespeare eventually. My ADD/ADHD brain wonders "Who taught the monkeys to type?"
>
**The latest theory is that one day a FedEx box washed ashore an island beach containing one 'Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing' program originally meant for overnight delivery from Amazon.com. Tom Hanks was out cold on the beach but another box washed up on shore as well - this one containing a manual typewriter.Tom tried to teach the monkeys how to type since there wasn't much else to do, but it was difficult to convey a concept of such complexity to them and neither he nor the monkeys knew sign language.
Mavis Beacon did not help either, unfortunately, because the typewriter was manual and did not have a CD drive or even a monitor. So Tom eventually gave up because his hunger pangs were becoming insistant and learning how to spear crustaceons took precedence (little known fact - Tom did go on to type the first draft for Castaway on that typewriter using coco-palm papyrus!).
Being resourceful monkeys who DID NOT GIVE UP and were committed to doing their part for evolution, they looked at the pictures in the Mavis Beacon Users Manual and this was enough for those of superior simian minds to make the eye-hand coordination connection.
At night, when Tom was asleep in the cave, they took to teaching each other to peck and then finally got up to speeds of 45 wpm on that typewriter. Just try that on your old Olivetti at home! It wasn't a coincidence that the Maker saw fit to give them brute strength and opposable thumbs.Eventually Tom rigged together his makeshift raft and was ready to leave the island with his hapless friend, 'Wilson'. He made the difficult decision to leave the typewriter behind. It was rather cumbersome, although it would have passed the time while on that long ocean voyage.
You can imagine the monkeys' delight at now having the typewriter to themselves as they set about recreating one of the Bard's classics before moving on to their own opus. However, it must be said that the learning curve was steep. Discouraged with the verrrrrryyyyy slow progress of 'King Lear', one monkey while on typing shift thought it would be an amusing diversion to see if sweet potatoes, their staple foodstuff, could float - much like the raft that was observed carrying away Tom Hanks and Wilson.
Thinking to impress the other monkeys with the spiffy look of the first of the 'Tater Flotilla, as he called it, he washed and spit-shined it. Needless to say, the other 99 monkeys were indeed impressed to see this 'Tater Flotilla coming 'round the spit and sought to outdo each other with the creativity and cleanliness of their nautical spuds.
Monkeys communicate through 'hive' mentality, known in higher primates as ESP so it's not surprising that their enterprise was conveyed to other islands. The rest is history. Unfortunately, Shakespeare was abandoned - for now.
Psychologists are still speculating on the motives behind Tom's inexplicable choice of befriending a basketball rather than the company of the infinitely more interesting monkeys. Perhaps he thought they were a delusion, made up by his fevered brain. Perhaps they were.
So, you're ADD/ADHD,eh? How has that been for you and has anything helped? I tried that route recently thinking my manic disorganization was ADD, but Ritalin made me feel AWFUL, even though I enjoyed meth. - Ciao, BarbaraCat
poster:BarbaraCat
thread:5582
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030912/msgs/259418.html