Dear fricking Lord

I am disturbed to my very core.

I have just finished watching a Channel 4 documentary called 'My Monkey Baby'. It was about strange American people who adopt monkeys and raise them as their children. Monkeys. As their children. It was just wrong on so many different levels. I didn't want to watch, but it was so morbidly fascinating, I couldn't turn it off. Before I knew it, the credits were rolling and I'd just wasted an hour of my life.

The documentary was focused on three families: an older couple whose names I've forgotten; an older woman called Mary-Lou...something like that...she was from Tennessee, it's all the same; and a young couple called Carmen and 'Hey-Zeus', but clearly his name was just Jesus.

Essentially, it was an hour about terribly disturbed people who adopt monkeys in order to make up for deeply-rooted emotional problems. Nameless Couple had six kids who all grew up and left home, so they got a monkey to deal with empty nest issues. Mary-Lou couldn't have children, but had two step-daughters who I think grew up (I was too busy mocking the programme to listen properly) and ended up with about five monkeys. Carmen and Jesus didn't want kids, so much so that he had had a vasectomy at 22. And the logical answer to all their problems is clearly - get a monkey. A monkey won't grow up and leave home. A monkey will give you an outlet for your maternal nurturing instinct. A monkey requires even more attention than a baby and isn't going to grow up eventually...so it is clearly the ideal for a couple who both said that they absolutely and categorically do not want children.

It was just so odd. These monkeys were wearing clothes and eating human food and sleeping in the same bed as their 'parents'. They were having birthday parties and going to ice cream parlours and being asked to leave diners. Mary-Lou even phoned an animal psychic whilst she was driving her big hillbilly pickup truck along a road to ask her monkey if he had eaten some of her hormone pills. The psychic was all, "He says he didn't eat any...he says he wants you to know that" and rather than question this woman's sanity or integrity at scamming innocent morons, Mary-Lou just went "Oh thank you so much". I'm surprised she didn't die considering the fact that she was driving a truck and on the phone and had a monkey wrapped around her arm all at the same time. Maybe she was more intelligent than I had given her credit for. Somehow, though, I doubt it.

Seriously, these programmes make me lose my faith in humanity, they really do.

And don't even get me started on 'Sex Change: Him to Her' - another real programme, I swear to God.

Bye

<3