Living in this trouble-fraught world of today, it’s altogether too easy to get caught up in worrying about the challenges and difficulties of the day to the extent that we forget to ask the big questions that really define us.  Why are we here?  What’s up with cars getting progressively uglier?  Did Josef Stalin ever try to create an unstoppable race of monkey men?  Well, if you were wondering about the first two, I’m afraid you’re out of luck, because while I, omnivorous demigod of eternal verities that I am, know the answers to both of them, I’m not gonna tell you tonight, maybe later, if you’re good.  But as for question number three, I can say with certainty and downright gleeful abandon that Josef Stalin was in fact responsible for what authorities are calling the most far-reaching and officially funded monkey man breeding program of the 20^th century (but not of all time, of course, if one takes into account Albrecht Durer’s monkey man program of the mid 16^th century, which for over a dozen years consumed the entire gross national product of the Holy Roman Empire).  So how did old Uncle Joe do this anyway?  Was it merely a case of keeping up with the Joneses after Adolf Hitler announced his plan to create a race of Frankenstein zombies with gatling gun arms and cheese helmets?  Or was there more here than meets the eye?  All these questions, except for the one about the cheese helmets, shall be explored here tonight.  So batten on your learnin’ trousers, its time for a magical voyage back to the heyday of the Soviet Union as we take a look at just a few of the possible scenarios that could have brought about Stalin’s monkey man plan.

            First, the Charleton Heston Theory:  It is possible, though not at all likely, that one night as he lay dreaming in his bed shaped like a fur-bearing trout, that Josef Stalin received a vision from the 70s, when a rift in the time-space continuum fortuitously beamed a late night showing of Planet of the Apes directly into his little commie skull.  Taking it to be a foretaste of things yet to come; an age in which apes would rule over men, Stalin decided that if apes were indeed to be the eventual masters of mankind, then at least they would be soviet apes.  So, after kidnapping a young Roddy McDowell, getting him really drunk, and putting him in a room with a bunch of chimpanzees dressed up like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders, Josef Stalin merely sat back and waited for nature to take its course.  Unfortunately for him, chimpanzees hate the Dallas Cowboys with a passion beyond all description, and instead of submitting to Stalin’s evil schemes, drunken Roddy McDowell and all the chimps hatched a brilliantly wacky escape plan, stole a jet, and proceeded to embark on a truly epic misadventure which was later turned into the motion picture, Titanic Saves Christmas.

            Next, the Christopher Lee Theory:  While we generally accept the fact that Tolkein (whose name Microsoft Word is too malevolently ignorant to accept as being an actual word) drew most of his storylines from ancient history and folklore, but what if in fact, he was merely harkening back to Josef Stalin’s monkey man project during WWII?  Perhaps Stalin in fact sought to cross orcs with goblin men deep beneath his magical fortress of Isengard?  They would not know pain, they would not know fear, they would taste man-flesh!  When his great monkey man army was at last complete, Stalin would gaze once more into his Palantir and then deliver a stirring speech to his assembled forces before marching off to assist the Dark Lord Sauron (Charles de Gaulle) in his quest to dominate all Middle Earth.  And he would have gotten away with it too, had not Winston Churchill carried Franklin Delano Roosevelt up Mount Doom and cast the One Ring into the unquenchable fires within, thereby saving mankind from the monkey man menace.

            And finally, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Theory: Deep in his Technodrome beneath Moscow, Josef Stalin schemed away looking for a way to augment his massive army of robo-ninjas.  As fate would have it, he stumbled across a supply of radioactive mutagen, a chemical capable of transforming any human or animal into an awesome premise for a cartoon series.  After an unfortunate series of events which culminated in Nikita Khrushchev getting turned into a bear that was also on fire, Stalin finally enlisted the help of Krang, evil brain from Dimension X and Lost Backstreet Boy, to help him concoct a diabolically stupid plan to make monkey men.  Unfortunately for him, the FBI was just then putting the finishing touches on their Army of Robot Richard M. Nixons and in serendipitously-timed battle involving a faming blimp, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, and a basket of very distraught pygmy marmosets, Stalin’s monkey man army was no more.

            As long as there have been men, there have been monkey men, and indeed, who among us can claim to truly know the truth behind Stalin’s vile plans to twist nature into a tool of human suffering?  Actually, I can, because I’m pretty sure that what really happened was the second one up there, the one with the orcs, though I wouldn’t want to just rule out either of the others out of hand.  Really, the important thing is, that my internet connection is finally fixed, so instead of having to put this online at work, I’m sitting here late at night in my pajamas drinking Super Chill Cola and writing this, which, in the end, is really the most important thing of all.