The Writer's Life 2/5 - Monkies

Beginning February 8th, the Chinese will be celebrating The Year of the Monkey. I pulled the following paragraph from http://www.chinesefortunecalendar.com/2016/ "According to Chinese Five Elements Horoscopes, Monkey contains Metal and Water. Metal is connected to gold. Water is connected to wisdom and danger. Therefore, we will deal with more financial events in the year of the Monkey. Monkey is a smart, naughty, wily and vigilant animal. If you want to have good return for your money investment, then you need to outsmart the Monkey. Metal is also connected to the Wind. That implies the status of events will be changing very quickly. Think twice before you leap when making changes for your finance, career, business relationship and people relationship."
Well, the stock market has certainly made a monkey out of me, and I'm sure I have a lot of company. With all due respect to simians everywhere, a lot of humans qualified for Monkey of the Year. Does Peter Gabriel's song, Shock the Monkey, even apply anymore? In politics, take your pick among the hundreds (thousands?) in office. There are so many that, should a vote be taken, there would be endless recounts. I'm going with NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, who should be breezing toward re-election, given the city's record tax revenue, but commits blunder after blunder. In sports, Cleveland Browns QB Johnny Manziel seems on a path of self destruction. In film, it's a tossup between pseudo-journalist Sean Penn and director Quentin Tarantino, each great in his field but a blowhard away from it. In music, aka The Monkee, it's record company executives, the perennial champs -- or chimps. In journalism, it's MSNBC, which manages to stay on the air despite microscopic ratings. In science, it's Al Gore, who predicted the polar ice caps would have melted away by now. In economics, it's the Arab world, which deflects blame for its incompetence by scapegoating Israel. As for the anti-peace prize, the position is locked up for the foreseeable future by ISIS, Al Qaeda, and Vladimir Putin, a triumvirate axis of evil. Of course, there are always plenty of candidates among private citizens, such as the genius who yesterday crashed his drone into the Empire State Building and went inside and asked security to retrieve it, whereupon the police were called and he was arrested. And how can we not nominate the suicide bomber in the wheelchair who blew a whole in the Somali airliner and was sucked out to a fiery death, while miraculously only two of the other 73 passengers was injured? Okay, so who is the overall winner of the Monkey of the Year award? It's too close to call. I will be a surrender monkey and let you decide individually. If I asked for suggestions, I'm sure it would incite partisan rancor. Let's not have any of that and just accept the fact that Monkeys come from a wide spectrum.

A snowy morning evolved to a gorgeous afternoon. Unfortunately, the clearing came a little too late to set up the floating book shop. Besides, melting ice and snow was tumbling from buildings, fire escapes, wires etc.. It was amusing how people on the street were flinching as chunks plopped to the ground. None of it was solid enough to hurt anyone severely.

Vic's Short Works: http://tinyurl.com/jy55pzc

Vic's 5th Novel: http://tinyurl.com/okxkwh5Vic's 4th novel: tinyurl.com/bszwlxh

Vic's 3rd Novel: http://tinyurl.com/7e9jty3

Vic's Short Story on Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/k95k3nx
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Vic's 2nd Novel: http://tiny.cc/0iHLb Kindle: http://tinyurl.com/kx3d3uf
Vic's 1st Novel: http://tinyurl.com/l84h63j

Website: http://vicfortezzaauthor.my-free.website/