The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Chris Clairmont, et al, �X-men: Mutant Massacre�

Started September 6 � Finished September 7, 2004 256 pages. Posted 11 October 2004

This is part twenty three of a 25-part story about Hawaii. The story begins here. Part five is located here. Part ten is here. Part fifteen is here. And part twenty is here. Other parts you'll have to find yourself. So there.
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I don�t want to hear any shit about using this graphic novel as my X title. Can you think of anything that starts with X? Okay then.

It turns out that The Girlfriend capsized during this shoot down the tunnels as well, and she�s now banged up and bleeding fairly badly, hence why she�s in a shitty mood.

This will change soon.

We get back to the cars and people start passing around food for everybody to share. They also start passing out beers, and we stand around in front of the cars, drinking and eating while we wait for the others in our group to catch up. They went through the fence after we had decided to walk the distance when we first got there, and now they were delayed due to some car trouble.

Which meant more beer for us.

Eventually, the others catch up, and we all pile into various vehicles. Arlette and I are in the same monster off-road vehicle, and everybody has a beer in their hand with the lone exception of one nine-year-old girl in the backseat. The driver takes a long pull off his beer as we bounce along the road, and a sudden pothole shoots beer all over his face.

�Awwwww,� the driver screams, �It�s all up my nose!�

He pulls over to the side. He has, in fact, spilled at least three-fourth of his beer down his face from that bump, and the passenger (the Australian with the Speedo�s who has mercifully put his pants back on) jumps out and runs to the back to get us all fresh beers.

The driver, who is the father of the nine-year-old girl in the back, is good natured about the faux pas with his beer. But he also wants the chance to laugh at others misfortune, so he drives faster, purposely hitting potholes, trying to make the rest of us have accidents with our alcohol. We�re all professionals, however, and come out of the drive unscathed.

The last part of this expedition culminates in a potluck. Strangely enough, half of our group leaves, opting out of the free food aspect of the trip. They also take the rest of the beer with them.

Bastards.

It begins to rain. We embark on another small, frantic hike for a gazebo in the distance. As soon as we reach it, it stops raining. The girlfriend has since shed her shirt that she was wearing and is walking around in her bikini top. And she�s fucking gorgeous. Anybody who may have been too dumb to realize that before has no question of that now.

The Aussie, who ignored us for most of the trip, is now showing us the stream next to the gazebo, commanding us to follow him. We do so. We swim in the stream for a little while and then he points to the other embankment where he says we can climb up and jump off the side. The Girlfriend and I head for that side of the shore. I notice that the Aussie doesn�t follow, instead climbing back up from whence we came.

I jump in first, and she follows behind me. When she surfaces, all the men at the gazebo groan. �Aw, hell,� the Aussie says, �Her fucking top stayed on!�

It starts raining again � hard �. most of the people in this area are driving off road vehicles. I wonder if we�re going to be able to get our shitty Honda that�s held together by duct tape across the stream that we had to cross to get here in the first place.

This time, the rain doesn�t let up. We leave, our guide thankfully driving our piece of shit car through the stream successfully. Being in the car for the first time during a heavy rainstorm, I discover that laying the already damp books in the back may not be the best spot to have them dry out: this car has leaks everywhere.

We get back to our guide�s house, and she mercifully lets us use her shower. After the incident with the hippy hitchhiker, we�re both enthralled with the idea of using soap.

The rain continues, and our guide offers to let us stay at her house, in their spare bed.

Now, all of our stuff and the tent is still at the campsite. The campsite also closes tomorrow at 10 a.m. for cleaning by the city. If we stayed here, we�d have to get up super early so we could reach the campsite in time to tear everything down. It would be a huge, massive ordeal to try and do all of this.

But they have a real bed, and we quickly accept the offer.

We make it back to the camp the next morning and break down our site, packing the last of the stuff in the car just as the state employees arrive on site. We now have nowhere to stay, so we head to the only hostel on the island, located near Hanalei, or as we�ve come to call it, Hippy Central. As we�re driving along, we spot a woman in long white flowing robes who is beating on a tambourine, her head thrown back in ecstasy as she chants a mantra.

Oh fuck.

Both Arlette and myself have a lot of experience with hostels, and we both liked the experience. Everybody who stays there seems so eager to meet other people, swap stories, and generally socialize. As we�ve been fairly anti-social during our entire trip, this may be a nice switch.

It isn�t.

What happens instead, is that we feel like intruders. The hostel has separate rooms for men and women, so this will be the first night we�ll have to spend apart. I hang out in the commons area while The Girlfriend unpacks her stuff. Nobody acknowledges my presence. I pull out my book and start reading, having nothing else to do, despite the fact that I�m surrounded by at least eight people. The Girlfriend eventually joins me and feels the bad vibe scene put out by people who are supposedly supposed to avoid bad vibes. We end up leaving to wander the city.

We read by the beach, eat chiliburgers, and play skeeball and other dumb games for tickets, collecting our winnings to get some glow in the dark cutouts of sheep. When it became too late to do anything else, we returned to the hostel. We both decide to utilize the hot showers. I finish early and go back to the commons area.

There are even more people there now, which means that even more people are avoiding me. The Girlfriend joins me and we drink beer outside until 11 o�clock, which is the hostel�s �lights out� time. We go to our separate rooms.

There�s nobody in my room, and I�m not tired, so I read. And as I�m reading, I realize that people may have been avoiding me simply because I�m reading such a shitty book.


Rating: Worth working in a used bookstore and getting for cheap.

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