Has Ph.D. Ape Met His Match!
Introducing Professor Kong! But Is He Real?
Ph.D. Ape, the super-intelligent primate and current campaign manager for Bat Boy’s presidential bid, was used to being the smartest guy in the room.
And then one day he found himself in a room with someone smarter.
“I was at work, at the Arbitrol-Massery Institute where I work and am highly paid,” said Ph.D. Ape. “I was putting finishing touches on an article that condemned the modern ego for unwitting self-annihilation, and was proudly walking it down the hallway of the Institute to the cafeteria. That’s my ritual: write, then eat a bunch of bananas and think about the architecture of the composition and what details might be added to give it additional flavor: sections, divisions, subdivisions, interpolations, exclamations, departures, digressions, revisions, and so forth.”
Ph.D. Ape entered the cafeteria and went to the Banana Stand — that’s the stall located at the Northeast corner that specializes in banana-based recipes, from banana bread to banana pudding to banana soup — only to find that they there were no bananas remaining. “I could not believe it,” he said. “My entire ritual, shattered. I felt my stomach drop and then felt my fundamental spirit of bravery, for which there is a Greek word but no good English equivalent, leave my body. No bananas? My word!”
It was then that he turned to his left and saw all the bananas, and also saw where they were—heaped on the tray of a giant ape he had not previously seen.
“Hey there, Tiny,” said the giant ape. “I’m Professor Kong.”
FAINTED
Ph.D. Ape fainted.
CAME TO
When he came to, he was sitting in a classroom on the Institute’s highly secret South-West Campus, and in front of the class was his new acquaintance, Professor Kong. “This guy was operating at a level that you can’t even imagine,” said Ph.D. Ape. “Imagine an experienced polemicist crossed with a superlative parodist crossed with a researcher crossed with a mathematical prodigy crossed with a giant ape. It’s like all the brains you can think of, and then that much brawn.”
Professor Kong, according to Ph.D. Ape’s account, explained astronomy through metaphors drawn from history, and then history with metaphors drawn from astronomy, all the while smashing a series of marble pillars. “My mouth was open,” he said. “My jaw dropped. The ape was agape. That’s all I had in my mind at that moment, that rather musical if foolish slogan. When this massive beast was done smashing boulders he went on to lift a car while reviewing the major movements in Danish intellectual history in the latter half of the 19th century.”
And then, the strangest part: “He had a bit of doggerel he sang while he smashed. ‘Right, right, wrong, wrong / No one smarter than Professor Kong / Right, right, wrong, wrong / This is the end of this short song.’ He only sang it once but it struck me at the foundation of my very being. What if I was not the smartest in the world, or even on campus?”
Ph.D. Ape was so exhausted from the encounter that he wandered home and went to sleep. “I blank-dreamed,” he said. “That’s when the mind is so challenged by what it has observed that it cannot immediately recover. The dream is something from Malevich.”
BUT IS HE?
Efforts to confirm with the Arbitrol-Massery Institute that Professor Kong had joined the staff were unsuccessful.
Let the mystery continue!
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