R.I.P. Travis.....

And I'm not talking about the band 'Travis' from Scotland, although whatever happened to them??? - they were great!

Travis the Chimp has been on my mind all this week, (I have been eating bananas like nobody's business), at the time of writing this, it has been about 5 days since the 14 year-old, 200 pound Chimpanzee viciously attacked the 55 year-old friend of his owner and was subsequently stabbed and shot until he was no more.

Some are saying he was sick with Lyme disease, some say he was confused and aggravated, and others claim that a lifetime of essentially being raised as a human caused the horrific encounter - and while I have no expertise with which to add any useful analysis - it's that final point that does get my head-buzzing.

Travis, for all intents and purposes, WAS raised as a human - he was a movie and TV star, he wore nappies, he apparently even knew how to navigate the Internet.....but here's where the problem lies; Travis never basked in the glory of an acting career like a human would, he wasn't spared nappies after his first few years of life - like humans are, and when he discovered the audio of Christian Bale's outburst on the Internet- he had no way of communicating this the way a human might.

My point is, if you're gonna raise an animal as a human, you better be able to give them all the experiences and opportunities a human gets - from eating and sleeping, to paying overdue fines on late DVDs and uploading wacky photos to face book.

The case of Travis the chimp made me shudder for more than the obvious reasons, it also made me think of a situation in 1982 which could've so easily gone the wrong way. That year - a boy named Elliott discovered a visitor in his family's shed, at first, his brother Michael thought it was an iguana, it wasn't - it was an unknown species from another planet. Elliott befriended the creature and christened him 'E.T.'

There were plenty of circumstances here that most likely parallel Travis's situation; E.T. was dressed up like a human, taken trick-or-treating, and developed a love for M&M's, Beer, Bert & Ernie as well as Gertie's 'Speak and Spell'. E.T. was absorbing human behaviour at an alarming rate and worst of all Elliott wanted to keep him - Hell, I wanted Elliott to keep him. But who knows where this may have lead, if Elliott had had his way who's to say that in 1996, (when the alien was 14 years into living like a human) E.T. wouldn't have suddenly flipped out and torn Elliott limb from limb because he had never been allowed to use the phone to call home - like a human is allowed to.

I don't want to colour your impression of E.T. - I don't think it would've ever come to that....but maybe that was the tragedy of Travis....no-one thought it would've ever come to this.

Thrifty Thrills In a Time Of Recession....

Unless you've been living under a rock, (and let's face it who does that other than the Fraggles?) you will know that there is a recession happening, (this will mean the Fraggles will no doubt receive a nasty surprise the next time they come above ground for doozer sticks and radishes.)

The recession, the 'R'-word, the credit crunch, the economic down-turn - whatever you want to call it's fair to say that it's a double-whammy of suckiness, firstly it destroys people's livelihoods and secondly it consumes our nightly news to the point where we can no longer rely on a 'feel-good' human interest story at the end of the bulletin about pandas, dolphins, kakapo or Chris Brown.

One moment we are being told to save our pennies, the next we are being told to spend at large to get the economy going again - I have no idea what the hell to do - if I did I wouldn't be sitting here writing a blog about it.

When times get tough, if you can, you should seek to enjoy the little things in life, and by 'little things' I'm not talking about smelling flowers, listening to birds singing or children playing - I'm talking about your cars' indicator.

I've come up with a little game, that works best when waiting on a red-arrow at the traffic lights. The idea is that you search through your pre-set stations on your car stereo and keep going till you find a song that matches the beat or rhythm of your indicator, it's not always easy, but then again neither is the board-game 'Operation'.

On Tuesday I found a song that matches my car indicator perfectly - Kings Of Leon's "Sex On Fire" did the trick and the timing, the symmetry - EVERYTHING was there! Now - don't get too discouraged if the Kings' ode to firey intercourse doesn't work for your car, keep persisting - you'll find your song. (Although if your indicator matches anything by The Prodigy or Meatloaf - that may be a sign your car is about to fail it's next warrant.)

The best part about all of this is that this game costs you only a few drops of the overpriced petrol you put in your car....petrol which is probably gonna get even pricier thanks to the 'R'-word....time to come up with a new game.....