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In This Issue

• Celebrate Our Appendix!
• Alternative Motherhood
• Gossip and Nudity: Interview with the Gossip
• Letters to the Feditors
• The Colombia Spectador
• Yowie! How the Brazilians do bikini wax
• Making Waves
• Am I Naked or Nude?
• Marauding Interviewer: Dwarves Fascinated by Own Pants
• Big Nudity Exam
• Point – Counterpoint
• ‘Is It Cold In Here?’
• News Briefs
• News Quiz: Do you know about the important events going on in your world?
• Eight Situations In Which I Am Naked
• Get Your Hands Off Me You Damn, Dirty Apes
• Naked Haikus
• Naked Horoscopes
• This is Not a Naked Santa
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 16.8

I have this recurring dream where I am at a large, patriotically-themed family reunion in Miami and Charlton Heston is there. He has had a few too many Zimas and is trying to part the sea by peeing on the beach. Then, right before I wake up, he realizes that he is the only one who is dressed, gets down on his hands and knees, and calls us damn dirty apes. Because that's what we are.

The simians in Planet of the Apes wore clothes. In my opinion, they were doing a fine job inhabiting the burnt-out planet until Chuck came and the sequel-dwelling albinos with ESP came along. On the other hand, my species, pygmy chimps or Bonobos, have never, in our hundreds of thousands of years on the African savanna, escaped the trammels of nudity. And I, for one, am sick of it.

If I had a nickel for every disgruntled colobine or traumatized macaque that came to me for solace, scarred by the humiliation, well, I would have a lot of nickels. But where, pray tell, would I put those nickels? I have no wallet, no pockets, nothing with which I can keep my affairs in order. Come to think of it, if I had a nickel for every nickel that lacking clothes has cost me, I might just break even. I am not saying that if I were king of the jungle (lions being revealed for the quadrapedal phonies that they are) that I would have all members of the distinguished primate order don Brooks Brother's suits and knuckle-walk off to join corporate America. Let's be realistic. I've been to Madagascar, and lemurs' birthday suits are perfectly suited for their solitary lifestyle. Similarly, nocturnal species have no cause for discontent, as far as I can deduce. It is I, and the other, greater apes that are socially paralyzed by our unfortunate aesthetic situation.

The fact of the matter is that without proper coverage, we will forever be suspended in a state of "nature." People might be tempted to think that nature is more noble than materialism, and we should be thankful for the simplicity that our nudity affords us. In the words of Aristotle, "Happiest is the man whose countenance reflects the soil from which he sprung. He doesn't have to wear underwear. Ever." Well, to them I say, "fuck the state of nature." How am I supposed to find gainful employment when I can't conceal an erection? Should I just ignore the hormones flooding my frontal lobe when-I see the massive sexual swellings of the fairer sex? And how do you think she feels? Damn straight.

Don't think we haven't been trying to cope. Some of my fellow species have been reduced to selecting for elastic cheek pouches and coarse, year-round coats. An entirely avoidable system of complex sexual selection has been prompted by shame of exposed genitals, something that makes me question if our human relatives have our best interests in mind. People today enjoy such innovations as edible underwear and candy necklaces. They sit back and watch as we are reduced to picking lice out of each other's hair for lack of a developed social infrastructure.

After great lobbying and unrequited attempts at reason, I can only assess that "human beings" see nudity as man's tool for, maintaining his slight evolutionary advantage over the monkey. To Charlton Heston and the rest of the "dressing species," I say this: Fear the day that world dominance falls into the hands of your four-thumbed relatives. We will not ride your evolutionary coat tails forever. We may be the 'clothed man's burden' now, but your nylons will take you down in their colorful flames, and when they do, no number of pumps on your fancy Reebok shoes will be able to save you from the wrath built up over 148 years of Levi's Jeans.