People often ask me where I get my ideas. The simple truth of the matter is that I keep a dried monkey face in the top left drawer of my desk. Whenever I'm low on inspiration, I pull it out and gently stroke it with a damp, warm cloth. This awakens the spirit of the crazed macaque within, who then starts gibbering and ranting. Sometimes, it's in Assyrian, which is a real pain to feed through Babelfish. Mostly, though, it's intelligible (assuming you count half a high school education marred by crypto-fascist rhetoric as intelligible).
The story of how I came by this dried monkey face is itself quite fascinating. It was on a Thursday morning (the face claims that it was Tuesday, but it lies all the time) that I was cleaning my bicycle when a curious gentleman wearing a long coat and a top hat found his way into my basement in some manner. Being somewhat perturbed by this occurrence, I asked him just who he was and what he was doing here, as he was clearly not there to read the gas meter.
Most apologetically, he claimed to be lost, and asked if I had ever heard of Sir Arthur Sherlock Twain. When I replied in the negative, he said he was dreadfully sorry, but he appeared to have stepped into the wrong universe. If I could merely point him in the direction of the nearest washing machine, he would be gone as soon as humanly possible, and he would give me an aluminum doubloon for my troubles. I gestured to the washing machine behind him, but explained that aluminum was a curious metal for minting currency. After some discussion, it became apparent that the process for refining aluminum is a rarity among most dimensions, and that he would be willing to pay handsomely for the roll of aluminum foil I had in the kitchen.
We conducted the transaction, during which he handed me the worn lottery tickets which bear the winning numbers for the third and fourth weeks of May 2009 of the Xtremo-Ball lottery (which itself will not inaugurate until 2007). Not a bad catch for a common household supply I seldom even use. Afterwards, he stepped into the washer, set it to "Casual" and twirled out of sight.
After he was gone, I noticed the monkey face on the floor. It must either have fallen out when he was rummaging in his pockets or when he was being spun about. I went to dust it off, and that's when it began speaking to me. I've kept it in the desk since, in case the owner comes back for it. I'm not particularly eager for him to return for it, as I find it so useful. Likewise, the face claims its former owner never did clean him off properly, and he has no desire to go back to that stuffy old pocket now that he has a nice, spacious desk drawer.
