The Five Stages of –

There was this service that came with my credit card and it cost a certain amount of money each year (around $100). Now, I never used the service, so when they sent me a little note in the mail telling me that I had to call a number or they would automatically charge me for said service, I decided to call and cancel.

NOTE: The service in question was ‘monkey slapping.’ I have never felt a need to slap a monkey and honestly, if I wanted to, I would just find a monkey and slap him. I realize that some people, perhaps the old or disabled, might need someone to slap a monkey for them and if so, then they would be delighted with the service. However, at this point, it was not for me.

I realized from the get go that this would take courage and fortitude. Their phone staff was no doubt trained to keep people from cancelling, possibly with the threat of beatings or repeated viewings of ‘Battle Beyond the Stars,’ the 1980 Star Wars rip-off that starred John Boy from the Waltons.

I called the number and after navigating through the menu, was connected with Marsha, who did her utmost to get me not to cancel. She kept me on the phone for six minutes, as she offered a variety of upgrades and incentives to keep me as a customer. I realized, partway through, that Marsha seemed to be going through the Five Stages of Death – or rather – the Five Stages of Subscription Cancellation.

It went something like this:

Denial
“No,” Marsha insisted. “Don’t you realize the FANTASTIC savings we offer on Monkey Slapping? No one can claim to have a quicker, cheaper, or more efficient Monkey Slapping service. How can you not see this?”

Anger
“How dare you do this to me! After all these years of slapping monkeys! Why, poor Jeff out on the line completely wore the skin off his right hand slapping monkeys! He has to slap them left-handed now! LEFT-HANDED!

Bargaining
“Y’know,” Marsha said. “For the same, low, low price, we can offer Ape Pinching as well. Heck, just for you, I’ll throw in the whole Primate Agitation Package! That’s a $300 value! You get Monkey Slapping, Ape Pinching, and Lemur Strangling! You can’t go wrong!”

Depression
“Fine. Go ahead. They’re already warming up Battle Beyond the Stars again. No, no, don’t worry about me. I’ve already seen it 38 times. That’s not so bad. I mean, the nightmares have finally stopped, but its okay. I guess I don’t need to sleep for the next year or so.”

Acceptance
“You’re account has been cancelled and there will be no further charges. Please think of us for any future Monkey Slapping needs. Thank you and have a nice day .

Ultimately, the service was cancelled and I felt that I had achieved a minor victory. Sure, Marsha was now watching a desperately bad sci-fi flick and possibly screaming and / or being prevented from clawing her eyes out, but I felt okay with that. Weirdly enough, I kinda felt like finding a monkey and slapping it.

Cheers,
-Jason

Mornings

I don’t like mornings. Actually, I should clarify. Mornings are fine. It’s getting out of bed that’s the hard part. I’ve never been what you would call an ‘early riser.’ I have always been more of a ‘meander out of bed at around noon-ish’ type of fellow.

Even in the rare cases that I do get an actual decent night’s sleep, I still have serious problems simply getting out of bed. Once I’m up and moving, I’m fine, but the whole ‘actually moving out from under the covers’ is the hard part. Especially when it’s cold. Or hot. Or any temperature, really.

So, I was lying in bed yesterday morning and watching the clock. I know when I absolutely MUST get up, which is far different from when I SHOULD get up. I was playing the ‘five more minutes’ game, which is what happens when I wake up enough to actually look at the clock. Five minutes turns into ten, with turns into twenty, etcetera.

It occurred to me, as I was lying there, that there really should be some sort of device to get people out of bed. Alarm clocks are nice, but they’re simply too easy to thwart. What we need to some sort of . . . oh . . . dart based system. Preferably involving a monkey.

NOTE: The monkey is superfluous, but it seemed like a really good idea at the time. So, yes, there’s a monkey.

My first idea involved a monkey that lived in a little box above your bed. When the alarm went off, it would be prompted to shoot you in the butt with a dart loaded with Red Bull or some similar drink. The dart would wake you up. The Red Bull would keep you up. Simple, yes?

But monkeys are notoriously bad shots and what if you were sleeping on your back? Would the monkey switch targets? Would it wait for your butt to present itself? Would you really trust a monkey with a dart gun and a grudge from being forced to live in a tiny box?

Frankly, the plan seemed a little flawed. So I modified it. What if the monkey simply dropped a bucket of cold water on you? Aim wouldn’t be important and if you secured the bucket correctly, the monkey couldn’t drop it on you. However, there’s always the problem of the monkey drinking the water or peeing in it. In the first case, there would be no water left. In the second case, you really wouldn’t want it poured on you.

That idea was then nixed. What if the monkey lived under your bed and simply yanked the covers off? The monkey would probably be happier and you wouldn’t get a bucket of monkey urine in the face every morning. This seemed like the perfect plan, save that you’d have a monkey yanking your covers off all night when it was grumpy after drinking too much while playing poker.

Yes, monkeys play poker. Typically Five Card Stud (Texas Hold ‘Em hasn’t really caught on with the monkeys).

At about this time, I was forced to get up or be late for work, so I was unable to come up with anymore ideas. Consciousness does that.

However, what if I combined all three into some sort of monkey dart firing, water throwing, cover pulling mechanism? It could work.

Cheers,
-Jason