Title: Power Monkeys
Date: 18 October 1999

I went to a Bjork concert, but it was almost empty... only about 20 people, so the band ended up getting off stage and chatting with us. It seems they were having power problems. I thought that maybe I could figure out what the problem was, so I took a few friends into the basement to investigate.

The room was like a long snaky corridor, and although it was well lit, it was obviously not kept very well. Sections of the wall were labeled "Ohio" and "Nebraska", and we found the section labeled "Concert". In each section there were a bunch of thick wires attached to the wall coming down from the ceiling, and attached to each wire was a small, thin monkey, hanging upside-down. The monkeys had brass mouth attachments. To generate power, you would place a banana between the monkeys mouths and a brass stand. As the monkey ingested the banana, power was extracted. The problem was that about 3 of the monkey's brass stands were empty. You had to get the monkey started with the banana, sort of like loading a film into a camera. It took a few tries, but I finally got them going. I was amazed that it only took a few monkeys to power all of Ohio.

I wondered how they powered New York.