Shalampax Speaks

Peeps, we have a mystery on our hands! Our very own glamour-girl-in-her-own-mind and celebrity wannabe, Openfly, is missing.

Her disappearance was first noticed by Shalampax’s crackerjack part-time cop and full-time bartender, Buttertart. Well into his shift at the bar, Buttertart realized that Openfly hadn’t yet come in for her regular five pre-dinner cocktails or her four post-dinner liqueurs.

Buttertart was concerned because Openfly hadn’t missed a single one of her nightly drinking sessions for at least five years. Her absence was particularly disconcerting because she was responsible for a large part of the bar’s revenue.

Upon closing the bar four hours after noticing Openfly’s absence, Buttertart leapt into action in his role as Shalampax’s only police officer. By “leapt into action” I mean that he immediately hopped into bed for a restful night’s sleep so he could be fully refreshed when he began his investigations ten hours later.

After extensive, clever investigative police work, Buttertart deduced that Openfly had become extremely disenchanted with Shalampax recently and that she had, as a result, tried to leave the country. Buttertart thinks that if Openfly did make it off the island, she will try to take up residence elsewhere.

Buttertart came to this conclusion after interrogating Openfly’s best friend, Cherrytart (no relation to Buttertart). Cherrytart told him that she had been talking to Openfly last week. During that conversation, Openfly had said to her, “I’ve become extremely disenchanted with Shalampax lately. If there’s any way I can get the hell off this freaking island and I somehow manage to survive the journey, I’m going to live somewhere else.”

Fortunately, Buttertart was able use his superior deductive skills to read between the lines in order to come up with his hypothesis concerning Openfly’s disappearance.

In the unlikely event that Openfly does make it safely to another country, she may be not have to go into hiding. Although nobody realized it until now, Openfly is one of the few Shalampaxians—and possibly the only Shalampaxian—who doesn’t have a single international arrest warrant sworn out against her. It seems she has never actually done anything other than drink herself silly in Shalampax’s bar. Apparently, that’s not illegal here or anywhere else.

Naturally, being best friends, Cherrytart is very anxious to get any scrap of information she can about Openfly’s disappearance. Overcoming strong emotions, Cherrytart lovingly blurted out, “If Openfly is officially declared to be presumed dead, I’m going to try to take over her apartment. It’s so much bigger than mine.”

Well, that’s all the news I have for now. I’ll keep all of you up-to-date if I get anymore information. (Yes, you too, Cherrytart.) Stay tuned.

Peeps, if you’re regular readers of my column you’ll remember that a few days ago I told you that Openfly was missing. Well, she’s been found!

Actually, “found” isn’t quite the right word. “Heard from” is more accurate.

Openfly has Internet access and has been exchanging emails with her best friend, Cherrytart. In fact, it seems that this communication has been going on for a couple of days now. Cherrytart tried to keep it a secret because, as you’ll recall from my previous post, she was hoping Openfly would be declared to be presumed dead, freeing up her apartment to be taken over by Cherrytart.

The only reason I learned of Openfly’s emails is that Cherrytart inadvertently left her computer on, with one of the emails up on the screen, when one of her lovers dropped by. Cherrytart went into the bathroom, where she spent 45 minutes trying to make herself as aesthetically appealing as any Shalampaxian can possible make herself or himself look, which is still several notches on the hideous side of plug-ugly.

While she was in the bathroom, her lover du jour or, to me more accurate, lover d’heure, spotted the email. He read it and then went through Cherrytart’s inbox and read all of the other recent emails from Openfly as well.

As it happens, that lover is a good friend of mine. My reportage has been aided by the fact that, apart from the frequent sex, Cherrytart’s lover doesn’t particularly like Cherrytart. He couldn’t give a fig about keeping her secrets. As soon as he left her apartment he spilled the beans about Openfly to me.

Here’s what happened.

Shalampaxians will recall that, during one of those very rare periods when the winds almost approached calm, we spotted a large ship not far off Shalampax’s coast. We all were, of course, hoping that one of our regular horrendous gales would blow through and crash the ship up against the sharp rocks that surround our island. That would have allowed us, as is our custom, to plunder anything that remained intact on the ship.

Unfortunately for us, but fortunately for the ship’s occupants, that didn’t happen. The ship pulled safely away from our shores before the winds picked up.

But, prior to the ship’s departure, Openfly hauled out of storage and floated a double-hulled raft that she had fashioned out of used swizzle sticks that she had collected over her long drinking career. Openfly made it safely to the ship and immediately requested, and was granted, asylum.

The ship is a research vessel occupied by zoologists, marine biologists and three professional bagpipe players. They are on an around-the-world voyage of exploration to investigate the effect of bagpipe playing on the behavior of the world’s sea and land creatures.

One of the zoologists is interested in studying only how long land animals can listen to the relentless drone of bagpipes without developing severe psychosis. Not being interested in marine animals, he took advantage of the ship’s current lengthy time between ports-of-call to take a break from his research.

With time on his hands, the zoologist befriended Openfly. The two of them shacked up together for the first two days of Openfly’s stay on the ship.

This blissful arrangement ended abruptly, however, when the zoologist locked Openfly in a room that is normally used by the researchers to observe the interaction between land animals and bagpipe players. The bagpipe players mistakenly believe that it is the animals that are being studied.

The room is normally used only while the ship is at a port-of-call because the scientists never remove animals from their native territories. As a result, Openfly had it to herself.

The zoologist now spends most of his time observing Openfly through the room’s observation windows. He has not made any further sexual advances toward her.

Apart from being confined, Openfly is being treated well and has unrestricted access to the ship’s satellite-based Internet connection. What’s more, Openfly is receiving three meals a day that are, in her words, “1,000 times better than anything I ever tasted in freaking Shamlampax.”

Openfly, who insists that the only Shalampaxian she will communicate with is Cherrytart, told Cherrytart that she does not know why she is being held captive. Openfly may not know why she’s locked up—although I think there’s a good chance that she’s lying about not knowing—but I intend to get to the bottom of this, no matter what it takes. I’ll keep you posted.

Hey peeps, I have more news in what seems to be shaping up to be a continuing saga of Openfly’s flight from Shalamapax.

You’ll recall that in my last post I told you that Openfly refused to communicate with any Shalampaxian other than her best friend, Cherrytart. That was true. However, I found out that Openfly has been able to use her own email account while aboard the ship.

I sent her a message begging her to speak with me about her ordeal. At first she refused, but I  successfully bribed her to change her mind. I told her that if she ever comes back to Shalampax I will pick up her bar tab for a full week if she took me into her confidence.

I’m hoping she never comes back. I’m fairly wealthy, but I don’t have enough money to cover her tab for a day, let alone a week. And I don’t think anyone would be willing to loan me that much money.

The first question I had for Openfly was whether, as she told Cherrytart, she indeed had no idea why the zoologist locked her in the observation room.

I was right. She knew more than she had been letting on. (That is to say, she knew more about her predicament than she was letting on. When it comes to general knowledge, she is fully as ignorant as she appears.) True, she doesn’t know why she is being held captive, but she does know which of her actions led to the zoologist taking the action he took.

Before I get into that, so I can stop calling him “the zoologist,” allow me to give you his a name. You might as well allow me to do that because I’m going to give it to you whether you allow me to or not.

His name is Dr. Donald Rivers. He’s entitled to call himself “doctor” because he has a Ph.D. in zoology from Muddy York University. Generally, people just call him “Don.”

As Openfly tells it, things were grand at the start. For the first couple of days that she was on board, she and Don had sex four or five times a day. This was very exciting for Openfly because, being a zoologist, Don knew some really wild animal positions. Although, doing it in a dorsoventral position while swinging from a chandelier—like orangutans sometimes do, except they swing from branches rather than chandeliers—was quite a challenge for both of them.

Then, one morning, she told him she wouldn’t sleep with him for the next few days. Openfly refuses to tell me why she withheld sex from Don, but whatever the reason, that’s when Don locked her in the observation room.

At first Openfly thought it was petulance, jealousy or revenge on Don’s part. But, apart from holding her captive, he’s been very genial and civil with her. And he apologizes several times a day for keeping her in the observation room.

Besides, while Openfly does rank as, to use the street vernacular, “one hot babe” on the Shalampaxian scale of female beauty, that still places her only slightly above “repulsive” on any non-Shalampaxian scale. So it’s unlikely that withholding sex would drive Don to do what he did.

Openfly seems truly stumped as to why she is in the predicament she is in. She would like some answers. So would I.

Openfly gave me Don’s email address and I’ve dashed off a note to him asking for an explanation. I haven’t got a response yet, but I’ll fill you in if and when I do get one.

Well peeps, the ongoing tale of Openfly continues. And it just keeps getting weirder.

I mentioned last time that I emailed Dr. Donald Rivers (Don), the zoologist who is holding Openfly captive on a research ship. In my first email to him I asked him why he locked her up. Since then, we’ve exchanged a number of emails.

The email stream is much too long to paste in its entirety here. Instead, the following is a synopsis of our exchange:

Me: Openfly tells me that you locked her in an observation room after she said she wouldn’t have sex with you for a few days. Is that true?

Don: You have the chronology right, but you’re mistaken about the causation. I didn’t lock her in the observation room because she refused to sleep with me for a while. It was the reason she gave that shocked me. She refused to have any sexual encounters for a few days because she said she was fertile.

Me: Her reaction is perfectly understandable. I don’t know what things are like where you come from, but here there is nothing women hate more than the thought of bearing and, worse, caring for a child. It gets in the way of their napping.

The only time Shalampaxian women will agree to get pregnant is when they’ve been duly and fairly selected to bring the population of Shalampax back up to its full complement after a death. Even then, they patriotically go through with it only after several weeks of loud, nonstop whining and bitching about their horrid luck.

So you see, Openfly isn’t alone. Many Shalampaxian women refuse to have sex while they are fertile.

No birth control method is foolproof. Those Shalampaxian women who can’t control their sexual urges while they are ovulating don’t go on only the birth control pill. When they’re ovulating, they also insist that their partners wear three layers of condoms, just to be sure.

I always thought Openfly was of one of those women who has to have it when she has to have it, which is always, but it just goes to show you how much Openfly can surprise you at times.

Don: You have different customs and practices. I accept that. However, that’s not why I’m studying Openfly. (Did I mention she’s in the observation room so I can study her?)

The reason I’m studying Openfly is, when I asked her how she could be so certain that she was ovulating, she said, “Don’t be silly. Of course I’m certain. My vagina has turned a bright, bright red.”

Me: Yeah, so? All women’s vaginas turn bright red when they are fertile.

Don: That’s what Openfly told me. There’s just one problem. It’s not true. I’ve never heard of it happening to any other women. Never. And I did considerable research. There’s never been a recorded case of a human female’s vagina consistently turning bright red every time she ovulates.

The bodies of a number of other primate females do display some sort of signal when they are in estrus, but not humans.

Me: Estrus? Who is Estrus? I’ve never heard that name before. Did you mean Esther? Wasn’t she someone in your bible? And who cares if she displays something when someone is in her? That’s her choice.

Don: No, no; you misunderstand. “Estrus” is a term for the period of sexual receptivity and fertility in many female mammals. The vernacular for “in estrus” is “in heat.” The point is that, unlike most of the animals that are most closely related to humans, the female human body does not show any external signs of ovulation.

If you’re not sitting down, you might want to do so. And, if you don’t have a medical attendant standing nearby who can restart your heart if it stops, you might want to summon one before you read what I’m about to say.

My theory is that Shalampaxians aren’t Homo sapiens. If I’m right, they constitute a different, but related species.

Me: Don, whoa! I have to stop you right there! We consider “homo” to be a derogatory term. Shalampaxians are, by nature, very accepting people. (Although, that’s mostly because we don’t care much about anything whatsoever.) We call them gays and lesbians. I’d appreciate it if you don’t use the “homo” word in the future.

And sapiens? I don’t know what that is, but it doesn’t sound like a compliment.

Don: I’m sorry. You’re misunderstanding me again. Homo sapiens is the scientific term for the human species.

I’m going to have to ask you to be patient with me. Remember, it’s only a hypothesis of mine. But we’ll soon know for certain whether Openfly and, by extension, Shalampaxians are human. I’ve taken a DNA sample from Openfly. As soon as we get to a port I’m going to courier it to a lab that can analyze it for me.

Me: Now you’re totally baffling me. How can analyzing some pages from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy determine Openfly’s species? Besides, I didn’t know that Openfly read anything other than comic strips. Hearing that she has a book with her comes as a total shock to me.

Don: I see where you’re confused. In this case, DNA does not stand for Douglas Noel Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. Don’t ask. It’s complicated. Just trust me when I say that analyzing it will allow me to determine if Openfly is human.

That’s where it stands, peeps. Clearly this has serious implications for Shalampaxians. For example, if it turns out that Dr. Don is right and we’re not human, does that mean that eating humans who trespass on our little island would no longer be considered to be cannibalism? That takes away some of the thrill, doesn’t it?

Gee peeps, it’s beginning to look as if I’m never again going to have time to report on anything but Openfly’s ongoing escapade. I wish I could convince one or two of the other bloggers here at Shalampax Speaks to pick up at least some of this story. Fat chance of that.

Oh well, here’s the latest scoop.

The ship that Openfly is being held captive on has reached a port. Dr. Don refuses to tell Openfly or me where that is. He says he’s keeping his location a secret for “security reasons,” but I have no idea why he thinks he needs security.

As he said he would, Dr. Don couriered Openfly’s DNA sample to a lab to determine if she—and, by extension, the rest of us Shalampaxians—are Homo sapiens. He doesn’t expect to see results for at least a few days and possibly as long as two weeks.

One thing he didn’t tell me in his earlier emails is that, at the same time he contracted the lab work, he also requested that a docile bonobo be brought to the ship when it docked. According to Dr. Don, bonobos used to be called pygmy chimpanzees. I don’t know why they are now called bonobos. I guess someone thought that “pygmy” was politically incorrect. I’m told that people—and I guess chimpanzees too—are sensitive about that sort of nonsense these days.

Dr. Don sent me an email explaining why he wanted the bonobo. He worked hard to put it in language I would understand, but it was still gibberish to me. Rather than trying, and undoubtedly failing, to make some sense of it and then recounting it in my own words, I’ve pasted the body of his email below.

As you know, my theory is that Shalampaxians are not Homo sapiens. Although, even if I’m right, we are obviously still very closely related species. The similarities between Shalampaxians and modern humans are far too great for us to be too distant on the evolutionary tree.

With the possible exception of Shalampaxians, the closest animal relatives to Homo sapiens are bonobos and common chimpanzees. The current thinking is that the last common ancestor of those two species and Homo sapiens lived about 5 to 7 million years ago.

It is generally believed that Homo sapiens are the only members of the Homos genus not to have gone extinct. My theory is that that’s not entirely true. I believe that one of those other Homo species, I’m not sure which one, lived on and evolved into Shalampaxians.

If I’m right, bonobos, common chimpanzees, and Shalampaxians have all retained some of the characteristics of the last ancestor that they all shared with modern humans, characteristics that disappeared in Homo sapiens as a result of evolution. It’s Openfly’s estrus display that led me to this conclusion. Shalampaxian females share that characteristic with many other primate females.

From what I’ve been able to read about primates over the past couple of days (primates aren’t my area of specialty), I think Shalampaxians are closer to bonobos than to common chimpanzees, although my evidence for that is exceptionally weak. I base this hypothesis entirely on what Openfly has told me about Shalampaxian sexual behavior.

Like Shalampaxians, bonobos are quite casual about sex. In addition, both bonobos and Shalampaxians practice heterosexual, homosexual and autoerotic sex. Bonobos also French kiss and perform oral sex, just as Shalampaxians do, much to my delight.

There is one minor piece of evidence that suggests Shalampaxians might be closer to common chimpanzees: When common chimpanzee females are in estrus they typically copulate with many males in succession. When considering solely their promiscuity, they seem quite similar to Shalampaxian women.

Then again, baboon females are even less sexually discriminating than chimpanzees, but, despite sharing this trait with Shalampaxian women, baboons location on the evolutionary tree makes it almost impossible for them to be closer relatives to Shalampaxians than bonobos or common chimpanzees are.

Despite this one bit of sexual behavior evidence of link between common chimpanzees and Shalampaxians, I still think Shalampaxians have a closer relationship with bonobos. My reason for thinking this is that the females of the common chimpanzee species are typically sexually receptive only when they are in estrus. In contrast, because Shalampaxian women desperately want to avoid pregnancy, the only time they don’t have sex is when they are in estrus.

Bonobos, on the other hand, have a much longer estrus period. As I understand it from my reading, female bonobos are almost always sexually receptive. Shalampaxian women are much more like bonobos than common chimpanzees in this regard.

Finally, like Shalampaxians, bonobos use sex as a social instrument to make peace after a fight, seal contracts, bond relationships and so on.

To test my theory that bonobos and Shalampaxians share a number of traits that Shalampaxians don’t share with Homo sapiens, I plan to put the bonobo I brought onboard and Openfly in the same room.

You can put your mind at ease. I don’t plan to encourage sex between them. Instead, I will observe, compare and contrast their day-to-day behaviors to catalog their similarities and differences, purely for scientific purposes.

I’ll send you a report on my findings as soon as I’ve prepared it.

That’s where it stands, peeps. Openfly is going to be roommates with a bonobo for a few days. Paahlm help the bonobo. I hope it likes to drink.

Stay tuned.

Hi, peeps. As you have no doubt come to expect, I have more to tell in the ongoing Openfly tale. Dr. Don sent me a preliminary report based on only a couple of days of observing Openfly and the bonobo.

Unlike some of his other correspondence, I was able to understand this one. So, to save you time, I’ll encapsulate the report rather than reprint the whole excruciatingly long, boring document. (If this is only a preliminary report, we’re going to have to hijack more Internet bandwidth before he sends the full final report.)

Dr. Don opened with a warning that both Openfly and the bonobo were aware they were being observed and, as a result, their behaviors might have been inhibited. Recognizing Dr. Don’s fondness for Openfly, I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Openfly has never shown any sign of restraining even the basest of her behaviors when being observed, or at any other time.

Openfly told Dr. Don that bonobos issue a great many more distinct grunts, barks and shrieks than most humans are able to identify or that even the most sensitive of audio equipment is able to distinguish. What’s more, bonbobos use their grunts, barks and shrieks in a complex language with a vocabulary and structure that rivals English.

How did Openfly know this? Much to the surprise of Dr. Don, the bonobo, and Openfly, Openfly instinctively understood this language immediately. Dr. Don thinks that capability must be “hardwired” into the Shalampaxian brain.

Hardwired? I think Dr. Don is talking gobbledygook. Everyone knows there are no wires in brains. If there were, Shalampaxians would have extracted them long ago, melted them down and sold the copper on the open market. Then again, maybe we already have removed some critical brain wires and, in the process, erased all memory of us having done so. That would explain a lot.

Regardless of how Openfly is able to understand the bonobo, she and the bonobo are getting along famously. They chat for hours.

According to the bonobo, his name in the bonobo language is grrgageeeek. At least, that’s the closest we can come to spelling it phonetically in English.

Bonobos don’t have a written language, so it’s unknown if they would capitalize their names if they did. However, grrgageeeek thought they probably wouldn’t, so Dr. Don adopted the practice of leaving grrgageeeek’s name in all lower case unless it starts a sentence.

Openfly and grrgageeeek talked endlessly. Because of Openfly’s intellectual limitations, their discussions were mostly idle chit-chat.

It seems that Openfly and grrgageeeek have a lot in common. For example, they both enjoy reruns of old television programs like Superman, The Three Stooges and The Colgate Comedy Hour. Grrgageeeek, who has been living in captivity for most of his life, has long had open access to a television, a DVD player and an exceptionally large collection of old movies and television programs on DVD.

They also have their differences. For instance, grrgageeeek loves opera and symphony, whereas Openfly is a fan of children’s songs and country & western music.

According to Openfly, grrgageeeek frequently tried to lift the conversation to a higher plane.

At one point, grrgageeeek uttered a long speech explaining his views on the philosophy of Plato, whoever the hell he is. However, this was way over Openfly’s head. Consequently, she wasn’t able to do grrgageeeek’s words justice when attempting to translate them into English for Dr. Don.

Unprompted by either Openfly or Dr. Don, grrgageeeek issued a few choice words about the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). He expressed appreciation for the work they do to protect bonobos, but he wished that PETA would restrict their protective efforts to solely bonobos because, in grrgageeeek’s translated words, “Those other species are fucking assholes. They deserve everything they get, and worse.”

Dr. Don wasn’t certain whether grrgageeeek included humans when he talked about “other species.”

Dr. Don’s report also described the non-verbal interactions between grrgageeeek and Openfly. The report discussed the subject very discreetly and academically, but it seems that grrgageeeek, a male, and Openfly have had sex. Frequently.

Dr. Don isn’t certain, but he thinks there may be wedding bells in the future. Reading between the lines, I detected some sadness in Dr. Don over that. I think he’s more than a little jealous of grrgageeeek. He’s probably now regretting having brought the bonobo onboard.

I’m sure there will be more to tell in the coming days. And we are still awaiting the results of the DNA tests. So be sure to check back here frequently.