Rock Me Dr. Zaius

by Tjames Madison

1999-05-26 01:30:13

Animal Rampage

Remember in the first "Planet of the Apes" movie (the one with Charlton Heston and co-starring a large chunk of the Statue of Liberty) how different types of super-evolved apes represented different types of Ape Planet social stratum?

For instance, there were the gorillas, I think (it's been a long time since I've seen this classic), and they were the enforcer apes and beat people up, and then there were the chimps (like Roddy McDowell) who were just the average ape citizens, just as average as an huge super-evolved ape can be. Finally there were the scientist and philosopher apes. They were orangutans. In real life, oragnutans are disgusting and scratch their butts a whole lot. But in Planet of the Apes, the orangutans were represented by the wise Dr. Zaius, who knew all sorts of stuff, like how to add to a jillion without using a calculator.

Anyway, Dr. Zaius now has his own website! You can ask him lots of questions about orangutan stuff, for instance, like why do you guys always scratch your butts? Or, how can you guys pronounce phonemes when your lips are rock hard and completely non-pliable? Or you can just read Dr. Zaius' observations about the strange human world he now calls home, like this one:

"Being a sentient, bipedal ape, I recently had the 'opportunity' to visit the state of Texas. I've been told that in Texas, everything is 25% larger, and this has proven to be the case. Even I was 25% larger, which made it hard to judge actual sizes. Luckily, I brought a 'Ruler of Space-time +12' along, which is immune to the 'Texas Effect.'"

Anyway, something tells me (perhaps it's the boilerplate) that this whole deal is less the product of super-advanced ape intelligence than it is Ben Sinclair (who "creates web sites like this, in an effort to create web sites,") but you should take a look anyway.

Check it out yourself

dunsmuir@pigdog.org