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Hi everyone.

Sorry if things are still a little messy around here. The ***monkey group has been working through the night, trying to get things up to snuff, but they're not quite there yet. Please, if you see any references to the word **** on the website, email JP to bring them to his attention.

This whole debacle began on Saturday, when I received a letter by courier The cease-and-desist letter received by ****monkey.com. from Cletus Harriman, Counsel to Kraft Foods North America. His message (which you can read in its entirety here) was terse and to-the-point. For the past two years of its existence, ****monkey has been infringing on Kraft's trademark of the word ****.

I'll ask you right now to pardon the frequent use of asterisks above, and throughout the rest of this article (and the website). These are standby measures until we finalize our move (outlined below), but for the time being, in order to avoid any further litigation, the tee-ay-en-gee word will have to be avoided. It's for the best.

At the time when we received said letter, I was basting a turkey in preparation for a round of turkey eating. The ****monkey Group has a tradition of eating as many turkeys as we can, each Passover, in order to commemorate the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. A turkey.It's a deeply spiritual bingefest, and my initial response to Kraft's dispatch was simply frustration at having been torn away from the Pesach Turkey Tussle set-up.

Still, I moved on, calming my nerves, assembling my faculties, and as I read the letter, my face fell. This was very bad news. ****monkey's brand recognition was very high. We couldn't just cut the **** from the monkey. It would be like cutting the tur- from the -key, the Fat- from the -Albert, the J- from the -P. That was it! I hastened to the telephone in order to contact ****monkey.com's other Editor in Chief, JP Davidson. The telephone exchange follows.

JP: Hello?
Me: ohmygodohmygodohmygod
JP: Oh, hey Sean. What's going on?
Me: ohhhh jesus. ohhhh god. fuck.
JP: (Laughing) Tell me about it. So what's up?
Me: JP... we just got a letter from Tang.
JP: From who?
Me: Kraft. The makers of ****.
JP: So?
Me: So they're suing us. Or they might. Cease and desist.
JP: What!? We're a legitimate Internet magazine. Freedom of the press!
Me: It's a trademark violation.
JP: We're Canadians!
Me: Cletus I. Harriman doesn't think that matters.
JP: Cletus who?
Me: Harriman.
JP: Who's that?
Me: Counsel to El- just a sec... Elizabeth A. Smith. Executive Vice President, Kraft Foods... General Manager, Beverages Division.
JP: You're shitting me.
Me: No - she really is.
JP: There's a "General Manager, Beverages Division"?
Me: Uh huh.
JP: And the Drink Master wants to cut the **** from the monkey?
Me: Yes.
JP: The tur- from the -key?
Me: I guess.
JP: Sean, that's like chopping the J- from the -P!
Me: I know! I know!


I read the letter to JP, but he decided that it had to be a fake - sent by our enemies at kool-aiddog.net, or something. I was pretty impressed by that colourful seal at the top, though.

JP: Okay Sean, you think it's so real, go check it out on the Internet.
Me: What, like try to find out if these people exist?
JP: Yeah. I bet they don't.
Me: How am I supposed to find out?
JP: I don't know. You're the self-proclaimed king of the internet.
Me: Mmm... Cletus Harriman's coming up with zilch.
JP: Ha! They're just trying to fool us. I won't be fooled! Nobody tricks the trickster! I bet you $50 that Elizabeth A. Smith is some made-up nobody.


JP now owes me $50.

Once we had figured out that this thing was for real, the next question was how to respond.My response. As you can imagine, we were pretty stumped. I mean, here was just maybe the evilest company in the universe (no offense, Mr. Harriman), the company that ruined Toblerone, the company that destroyed the reputation of real "macaroni and cheese", the company whose parent, Philip Morris, killed millions through its cigarette subterfuge, and now they were on our back. What to do!?

We called our lawyer, Raoul El Faez. Raoul's a good man, regardless of his ethnicity: he's responsible for the ****monkey ****monkey's lawyer, Raoul El Faez.Disclaimer (I don't understand all the legal mumbo-jumbo, but it sure looks official!), and he removed that wart from Zebulon's eyeball, not to mention the smooth way he dealt with EMI's attorneys after the Natalie Imbruglia incident. All this aside, Raoul's a mighty handsome man, as you can tell from the photo, and if there's one thing my ma taught me, it was to flee to the strong arms of handsome men when there was trouble.

So I phoned Raoul. "Raoul!" I said, "Kraft sent us a cease-and-desist letter! What should we do!?" There was a silence on the other end of the phone. A heavy, pensive silence. A handsome silence. "Cease and desist," said Raoul.

JP and I went to work. After about an hour of trying to remove all references to **** from the site, we got fucking tired and decided to 'cease and desist cease and desisting' (heh heh heh). Pretty hilarious, huh? Well we sure didn't think so when Kraft's "TanGoons" came and ceased-and-desisted our butts. Kraft's thugs. The TanGoons. Sore and bruised, we crawled out of the alleyway on our hands-and-knees, wincing as we took the escalators back to the ****monkey offices. Never have I been so thankful for my space-age orthopedic chair. As I hunched over the keyboard, once again doing my darndest to remove all traces of **** from monkey, I felt my ligaments healing themselves, my vertebrae realigning, all thanks to the plastic-and-fibreglass that housed my form. Ahhh, progress! If the Vikings had had such chairs as the Aeroglide 2100, they would never have been defeated! Just think, orthopedic chairs are all that separate us from a vast quasi-Imperial empire that subsists on a diet of raping and pillaging!

So this is where we are now. We are attempting to complete the changes to ****monkey before the TanGoons return, or another cease-and-desist letter causes my heart to stop from utter terror.

Some of you may expect us to be angry at Kraft. We are. But we decided it would be best to save our vitreol for an opponent that wasn't already so terribly aware of how much they sucked. The future of ****monkey!That, and we don't want to be beaten any more. Regardless, the ****monkey group has never dwelled on the past. Hakuna Matata, we say. And justifiably so. That said, we are making plans to vacate the ****monkey.com domain, in order to avoid further litigation.

We're thinking maybe pepsimonkey.com.

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