The Corrections

Well, there it is - a week's worth of blog entries. One more week under the belt and I'll announce the existence of this magical place to the wider world (well, to whoever is on my mailing list). In the meantime, I'm stone beat: many large, heavy and downright nasty objects were moved today, not least of which a refrigerator from the basement that everyone involved felt sure was not going to come out. Then why even try? Because when you have a refrigerator halfway up the stairs and the only thing that's going to prevent you from being crushed when it falls back down is getting it the rest of the way up, why, the fridge miraculously moves! Up, that is.

Other things moved and or touched by me today: carpet and pad that's been not merely damp but soaking wet for a minimum of two weeks; bottom of the sawed off water softener; old bathrobe; part of my comics collection; a ruined "Tron" puzzle book (goodbye, eBay money-maker!); the sharp leading metal edge of a suspended ceiling support (this one touched by my forehead, and touched rather hard); a half-full litter box; many, many pieces of damp, mold-slathered wood; $100 worth of water-fused acetate; a bin full of about 200lbs of salt; lamb vindaloo.

So, I'm tired, and this entry will be brief. But I felt I should take this moment to thank "you" for reading, and to renew my pledge to keep this engine running - even when, as today, the fuel is low octane and we have knocks and pings. I also felt that this would be an ideal moment to clear any misconceptions or inaccuracies in my blogging over the last week.

1) In the entry dated Thursday, May 3rd, I related the oft-told tale of the introduction of Coca-Cola into mainland China and an amusing mistake in nomenclature. While not at any point factually inaccurate, I should note that a) this took place in 1928, so the distinction of "Mainland China" was pointless, b) this supposedly wasn't the mistake of Coca-Cola itself, but some local shopkeepers who produced advertising (which seems a little unlikely to me - wouldn't the locals better know what the thing was going to read than the foreign corporation with the totally different alphabet and grammatical structure?! But I digress.), c) Another notable translation of the character series would be "female horse fastened with wax." Okay. What's the fixation with the wax? And d) Coke immediately corrected the mistake and chose a different series of characters that both sounded like "Coca-Cola," and also translated a little more palatably, into something like "allows the mouth to be able to rejoice." Which seems like it's overstating the experience of drinking a Coke by a pretty wide margin, but, hey - who am I to judge?

2) In the entry dated Wednesday, May 2nd I falsely stated that I had class that night. This is untrue; I have no class, ever.

3) In the entry dated Sunday, April 29th, I state that Yesenia does not like Star Trek:The Next Generation. This, she informs me, is untrue. She likes it a lot, but I offer in my defense the observation that while watching it, she sure falls asleep quite often for someone who claims to like it. I'm just sayin'. Anyway, I correctly reported her negative feelings towards Voyager.

4) In all entries, I have maintained the facade of a native-English speaker from suburban New York. This is untrue. I am actually a million monkeys in a room in an undisclosed location in the Southern Hemisphere with a linked server-side Google Blog editor, randomly generating this blog by hitting keys in response to certain unethical stimuli.

5) In the entry dated Friday, May 4th, I stated that I am a million monkeys. This is untrue. I am, in round numbers:
- 150,000 Howler Monkeys
- 72,000 Gibbons
- 35,000 East African Plains Apes
- 12,200 Bonobos
- 11,000 Ring-Tailed Lemurs
- 9,700 Common Chimpanzees
- 7,300 Orangutans
- 2,100 Uncommon Chimpanzees (don't ask)
- 350 Western Lowland Gorillas
- 45 Pithecanthropus Errecti
- 8 Unclassifiable Chordata with surprising manual dexterity
- 3 Drifters with acute memory loss

The total participants in the study comes to just under 300,000 primates and related members of the same Phylum. I assure you that when the project was started, all positive motion was put towards securing the use of 1,000,000 monkeys. Budget cuts are partly to blame for this shortfall, but the real culprit is poor management of resources and a faulty air conditioner.

I apologize for any distress the above stated inaccuracies and misleading statements may have caused you. Please do not let this dissuade you from continuing to read, and rest assured that I will continually strive for factual reporting, completely vetted and fact-checked, and only of the highest standard. I will also strive for bananas.

D.