Page Two
   “THE NOOZ
        SPEAKS OUT AGAIN!”
           
As if we didn't already have enough to contend with, such as the lawsuit filed against us by Chris Shaw for continuing to use his name without permission and the city inspector's report that our building is dangerously unstable, we here in the cluttered and claustrophobic offices of Primate Nooz have recently been feeling the polished soles of upper echelon size 11 triple-E footwear resting ever so gently on the backs of our sunburned necks.  The Ralph A. Bennett Teasdale Corp., which publishes Primate Nooz, and which used to be a stalwart defender of journalistic freedom and primate causes, has been pressuring the editorial staff not to print anything that might reflect badly on it, such as the expose we were going to run on the fake fig fiasco and the Teasdale Corp.'s role in it.  We have struggled to maintain our independence and our composure in the face of these yawping superiors, we have tried to ignore their mewling criticisms and their absurd directives, and we have looked the other way when we saw them coming down the street, but now it appears that regrettably we too will have to accept the inevitable and bow to authority.
          Before this all happened, we had firm plans to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of the largest banana plantations in West Malaysia along with its endemic population of hairy-nosed proboscis monkeys, and we were going to assign our best reporter to cover the jumping spider monkey breeding program at the Urubupunga Research Station in the heart of the poison-filled basin of the ancient ant-strewn Amazon.  But now that the latest memo has unceremoniously drifted down the corporate grapevine, it seems that our plans are on hold, and we have a lot of time on our hands, with nothing much to do except putter about and water our plants.
  
 

TAR PITS TO BE DRAINED
FOR NEW CONDOMINIUMS

(AP)  Los Angeles, Ca.  The unique and well-known La Brea Tar Pits will be drained beginning next fall and the entire park cleared for a new condominium project, it was announced Monday. The million-plus bones of the Page Museum's world-renowned collection have already been sold to Uncle Chan's Apothecary Shop on Orchard Road in Singapore and will be leaving soon.  They will be ground up into powders and then mixed together to create exotic medicinal potions. Certain sabertooth cat bones, for instance, are reputed to contain a powerful aphrodisiac, while those of the long-extinct giant ground slug have lately been responsible for several dozen miraculous recoveries from Chinaman's Elbow on the islands near Taiwan. The Page Museum, named for the noted British philanthropist Sir Robert Wallace Etherington Biddle-Page, was constructed in 1936. The original building sank into a tar pool and had to be rebuilt in 1938.  The museum's collection includes such rare fossils as the California red eatanter and the great horned whistling gypsy moth. A number of the volunteers have also been sold.

SPOTLIGHT Cont. from page 1

Of course, he never gave a rat's ass for monkeys, but I do, so hang on to your hats because here we go with the hot hydrogen laser spotlight focused as best we can on the strange and mysterious island of Borneo.......

               SPOTLIGHT ON BORNEO

      Uh oh, it looks like we've run out of room.  That's the kind of thing that often happens with new features, so we'll just have to wait until next time to light up the world's third largest island. Bill Measely here.  Ciao!

      The discovery last week of a marsupial monkey in Australia has rocked the primatological world, according to our sister publication Primate Week. Until now there were thought to be no primates on the world's smallest continent, or at least not any that anybody cared about.  The species has now received the tentative appelation Avunculus australis. Although their numbers are apparently quite large, they have managed to remain undetected and unobserved all these years by inhabiting the basements of people's homes.

      Fake figs are still turning up by the score months after the news broke from Sumatra about the fig swindle.  The fake figs are not nearly as nutritious as real ones, and when they are found in large containers at local markets rather than in the trees themselves, it may be reasonably suspected that they are of the phony variety.  Primates who enjoy a good fig from time to time should be on the lookout for these fake fruit.

      The confusion in East Kalimantan last Friday was not caused by a rice shortage as was initially reported by our other sister publication PRIMATE LIFE, but rather by the crash landing of a large, helium-filled balloon piloted by the Scottish primatologists Teddy Bidwell and Robert Louis MacCown, who were in the midst of their long-term study of orangutan nose-picking behavior.  The balloon and gondola hung upside-down in a giant dipterocarp for two days before it and the scientists inside were found.  Both of the erstwhile Scots are recuperating nicely and are reported to be eating copious amounts of rambutan ice cream.  They expect to be back in the air in about two weeks.
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