Barrel monkeys. Free in the wild.

Lock your doors.

I still have no time right now. So the days of slack bloggertude shall continue apace.

I do promise to return with incredibly time-wasting stories of cookies and kitty-cats in the near future.

But for now, allow me to present to you, my lint-trap cleaning readers… monkeys riding bikes:

(My Lovely Wife sent me this. I love her.)

• Cute Overload: “Stop and smell the orangutans”

No. I have not returned from my self-imposed, “OH CRAP! I’M GONNA COLLAPSE UNDER THE WEIGHT OF ALL THE FREAKING CRAP I HAVE TO DO! NURSE! I NEED DELICIOUS LIFE-SUSTAINING COOKIES! STAT!” sabbatical.

Posting this picture was a condition of getting my little sister (the villainous blackmailing poo-eating desperado that she is) to feed the Large One and the Small One while we are away for a week in August.

Thus has my obligation has been met.

Now, please allow me to return to my panic and flop-sweat.

• BBC NEWS: “Monkeys ’string words together’”

The first evidence monkeys can string “words” together to communicate in a similar way to humans, has been found.

Putty-nosed monkeys in West Africa share the human ability to combine different sounds to mean different things, according to researchers.

Yeah. Fine. Putty-nosed monkeys can talk.

But do they listen?

I mean, really listen.

Oh yeah, fine, so the putty-nosed monkey can form primitive sentences by ignoring “the usual relationship between an individual call and any meaning that it might convey under certain circumstances”. Well, la-dee-da.

But late at night, when life just seems so hard, and you need a shoulder to cry on and a friendly ear to pour your fears and insecurities into, will the putty-nosed monkey be there for you? Really there for you?

When you find out that your boyfriend has been seen at the movies with that blonde bimbo Angie from Marketing, the one that he said was “way too plastic” when you asked what he thought of her, and now he’s broken your heart into a million pieces and yet you still want to take him back, will the putty-nosed monkey hold your hand and tell you that you’re too good for him?

When your mother calls and tells you all about Sandra Ostler from down the street the one that used to wear the retainer who’s married now to a nice pediatrician and has a lovely little boy and are you still seeing that lovely Robert and why haven’t you come to visit, will the putty-nosed monkey show up at your door with a bottle of Pinot Noir and stay and listen to you bitch about your mother for the rest of the night? Will the Pinot Noir be any good? Or will the putty-nosed monkey just show up with a cheap Merlot and tell you that you have it easy because putty-nosed monkey’s mother was trampled by a rhino so you shouldn’t complain and can we just watch Grey’s Anatomy and try to have some fun?

Ladies and gentlemen, I say the jury is still out on that.

Putty-nosed monkey: Great talker, shitty listener

• YouTube: “monkey & cat” (via Screenhead)

Yes, I am coasting today. As I always say, why work when I can have unsuspecting and hilarious animals do it for for me?