Things that are scarier than bears

So, I've graduated. Somehow, I feel the same though, only a little more embarrassed, because after graduating, I had a Marilyn Monroe moment on a subway grate downtown. Well, a Marilyn Monroe moment minus the holding it down part. Classy. And I was only afraid I'd fall on stage. Apparently in 22 years of education, I was never taught how to not make a fool of myself. Or I missed that class. Or I was there, but daydreaming about monkey butlers. Actually, that's probably it, because those with monkey butlers need not worry about things like subway grate drafts. Monkey butlers are good that way.

Speaking of monkey butlers, in addition to being a recent graduate, I also became a groupie about a month ago. I wasn't sure that I could actually be a groupie, because I'm pretty tame, but I was told that all types of groupies are needed (all the colours of the rainbow, from skanky to tame). So, I'm a groupie, for a band. A real band. Not in my head at all. The reason I bring this up now, is that they are having a show in June where they have promised dancing monkeys. Although I had already agreed to be a groupie, and thus was obliged to attend, I was also pulled in by the dancing monkeys. However, I'm also concerned about this promise, because, seriously, dancing monkeys? In downtown Toronto? Is that even legal? I'm going to say no.

I'm told that they're working on the dancing monkeys though, which is good, because that's not the kind of promise you should just throw around. People take dancing animals very seriously, and monkeys even moreso. Maybe they have access to a research lab I'm not aware of, and they're going to sneak the monkeys out under a giant lab coat. I hope they've thought this plan through though, because monkeys do not respond well to being shoved in an over sized sleeve, especially if that sleeve contains an arm. It's all the worse if that arm is that of a band drummer, bulked up from excessive drum banging, because lab monkeys like their angry revenge-for-being-shoved-in-a-sleeve meat as lean as possible. Because they've heard about heart health. Overall, animatronic monkeys might be a safer bet. They should try to stick to songs you can dance the robot to.

Today I gained a new fear, one unrelated to terrible bears. Apparently, there were fish going missing in an aquarium and the owners weren't sure what was happening, so they watched nighttime security footage and found out that the octopus in the tank across from it was climbing out of his cage, walking (wait, do they walk, or just sort of shuffle) across the catwalks and eating fish. This is friggin' terrifying, because if an octopus can climb across a catwalk to steal fish, it can climb across a catwalk to drop on my head and suck out my brains (I think that's what they do.) Then, for good measure, a bear will probably jump out to maul me.

In the same conversation where I learned that octopi are evil geniuses, we were discussing the zoo and the degree of awesome that it has. One person mentioned they'd grown up walking distance from a zoo. I thought it was cool, unless a tiger escaped (I believe I may have mentioned this theory in the past). Then, another person said to their mother, "Was it a polar bear that escaped from our zoo?" And I thought, "Holy crap." I don't think I need to add any more to that story at this point, because holy crap.

So that brings me to a happy song. This task seems easier some days than others. To comfort myself about the idea of polar bear escapes, I'm going to go with At the Zoo by Simon and Garfunkel. I don't think it needs anymore explanation than zoos are automatically happy (assuming all the cages are intact) and the zoo keeper is apparently drunk.

I was about to publish this post, when I realized that bear and octopus in the same sentence seemed strangely familiar. Then, I remembered that a few months ago a friend introduced me to the existence of the bear-shark-octopus, but I blacked it out (for obvious, terrifying reasons), until this unfortunate post. Now it's all flooding back, and I'm never sleeping again, which is probably good, because I'll have time to get a lot more done. Of course, most of that time will be spent trying to figure out how to escape a bear shark octopus mauling/biting my arm off/brain sucking. I know that you're supposed to make noise for bears, and hit sharks in the nose, but I haven't heard about octopi. Maybe you just have to somehow confuse them so they tie knots in their many tentacles. It would work in the cartoons, so it would probably work in real life.