...or perhaps that should say, "dog-monkey," as the picture above is pretty damn sick, if you care to look at it for about half an hour and not many people would. However, that's when something is sick in a good way. Sick is popularly used in Australia by boys in the age group of five to forty-five as another word for good, great, fantastic, any word that can be used to express great delight towards something. For example, if a bloke gets his car fixed and back on the road, this will be considered by himself and all of his mates as sick. I've probably mentioned before that I wash dishes for a living. Perhaps I'm just imagining things. If that's the case, then I wash dishes for a living and I'll try not to tell you again. It was in this profession where I began to notice the overuse of sick in this way. A young apprentice chef that I once worked with, Garth, would use the word in almost any context:
"Hey Squeaky, we're gonna be running low on oval plates all through service tonight."
"No problem, as soon as they come back, I'll get them back over to your section."
"Sick. You'll wash them first, wont you?"
"Yeah, I'll wash them first. That goes without saying, really."
"Sick."
Unfortunately, right now, I am the other kind of sick. I'm so sick, that I couldn't go to work this evening which probably caused hassles for the kitchen staff, but I think I'm too sick to care.
What's the disease called where you throw up, have the runs, feel incredibly weak all over and have an aching neck and shoulders? Whatever it's called, it's that one.
Donkey Kong. A very funstrating game that's been around for...donkeys' years. Wow. I should totally write more when I'm sick. Shut up, Squeaky.
The story I had always heard about the game's weird name was one that I read in Mean Machines(click here) magazine: The title was a mistake due a blurry fax and that the game was actually meant to be called Monkey Kong. I went with this story all through my teens and twenties, sometimes even chatting up women with the story. You can probably imagine how many girls have slept with me because I told them the story of Donkey Kong. However, there are other stories, like one where DK game designer, Shigeru Miyamoto was trying to find a word in a Japanese-English dictionary to best describe a "stupid, stubborn gorilla" and "donkey" came up as a fitting option.
Also, there are aspects of the Donkey Kong game's storyline that don't sit very well with me. Apparently, the Kong character is supposed to be the pet of the then-carpenter, now-plumber, Jumpman who is now much more widely known as Mario. According to the storyline, Mario "mistreated" his giant pet gorilla and he started to go...apeshit...Squeaky, maybe DON'T write when you're sick. As part of his campaign of going bananas, Kong took "Jumpman's" girlfriend hostage up a few ladders, up a few slopes and finally to the very top. Presumably, this is where some sort of distillery or cellar happens to be located, as Kong certainly doesn't run out of barrels to roll down all those slopes towards our so-called hero, Mario. Jumpman. Whatever.
Let me get one thing straight. Anyone who mistreats their pets is no hero in my book. In fact, the only major flaw of the Donkey Kong game is that it's characters are the wrong way around. The hero is clearly meant to be Donkey Kong, the mistreated pet. But no, let's all bleed and cry for poor Mario who has put himself in this situation by being a total shit towards his pet primate. Having a pet is a big responsibility, Mario. If you neglect your pets, they run amok and will most-likely take your girlfriend hostage...Or are you just too "stupid and stubborn" to know that?
