Monkeying Around

A hand in the bush is worth two in the bird...

Or something like that. Not only do I enjoy mixing metaphors, I enjoy mixing up a metaphor. You can take a drink to a horse but you can't get him watered. A doctor a day keeps the apples away. Living fast in the life lane. Evil money is all the root.

Are those metaphors or idioms? Or could they be both? Taking a horse to water is worth two in the bush. Now that's a mixed metaphor. I think... Is there such a thing as a mixed idiom? How about an idiot's idiom?

The internet does provide the answers if I should look. But that would be cheating. When I tell the Jeopardy answers to my TV, I do not Google the answer first. I derive a smug satisfaction when I get the answer correct and the contestants do not. You should see the way I gloat and stick my tongue out at the Jeopardy players. I yell at my TV set, "You nimrods, I just told you the answer! What the hell is wrong with you?!!" For some reason I assume the people on television can hear me when I talk to them. I don't really, but yet I do. It's like I feel they should have some mental connection to me, even though the program was recorded weeks ago. It's kind of like when I watch The Godfather. I know Sonny is gonna get shot dead at the toll booth, but every time I see it, I warn him not to stop his car. I feel like maybe one of these times he will hear me and avoid the ambush.

Speaking of movies, I saw "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" this weekend. I must say it was well worth my time. I liked the way they reworked the explanation for intelligent apes. In the old 1970s movies, the intelligent apes of the future come back to our time and start the race of smart monkeys. This is a paradox. How can a creature give birth to itself? If time travel was possible, could you go back in time and kill your younger self? If you did, you would not exist to go back and kill your younger self. You would still live. So you could go back and kill your younger self. So you would not be alive to go back in time. Your young self will live on. Et cetera, et cetera...

Anyway, back to this new version of the ape movie. The explanation for creating an intellectual monkey is from pharmaceutical testing. Scientists working on a cure for Alzheimer, use monkeys to test experimental drugs. Thus we are responsible for giving smarts to the apes. That is a more plausible interpretation of how the future will be taken over by apes. Since the reason was reasonable, I was able to get lost in the movie. But why take my word, go see it yourself. If you don't enjoy it, you can put in a requisition to have your time reimbursed or compensated. Of course if choose to have your time given back, then you will have to wait until we complete a functioning time machine so we can send you back to moments before you shell out the bucks for your ticket. Of course, you will have to sign a waiver not to kill your younger self. I've already explained the complications that that could bring.