Wapatusset, MA - February 1, 2011 - Mr. York Benchley, founder/ publisher of the Tiny Mind Gazette, has hired Michael Calienes for the position of Resident Generalist, Micro-National Affairs – a position that remained vacant since Mr. Benchley’s olive baboon, Bill, passed away early last year.
Under ordinary circumstances, finding a replacement would have been easy; Bill, however, was no ordinary baboon. He was THE monkey of the Infinite Monkey Theorem fame* which states: a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.
“It was a dark day,” Benchley recalls. “When I broke the news to Bill that his latest creation, Romeo and Julio [sic], was yet another Shakespearean rip-off, only with an all-male cast, he was visibly distraught.”
Hours later, when Mr. Benchley returned from a morning of virtual acrobatic water skiing – the only activity that allows him to mentally disengage from the onslaught of today’s ongoing publishing struggles -- he found Bill crushed under his own IBM Selectric, a Padrón 1964 Anniversary Series cigar still burning in his ash tray.
After a painfully long grieving period, followed by an intensive three-day search, Benchley landed on Calienes because, “In all honesty, he was there.” Contract negotiations were complete after three personal Facebook messages and one tweet.
When pressed about his terms, Calienes said, “I can’t divulge the actual number, but there are a lot of zeros in it.”
Mr. Calienes joins an already-established team consisting of Doug Eymer, Sally Sisson, Morton Scrim Shaw the mysterious Dr. F, and Beau Doni. All three are reportedly human.
“We look forward to working with Calienes.” Benchley said. “We just hope he can beat Bill’s average of one article every ninety days. If he can’t, we’ll look into replacing him with an algorithm.”
*For privacy reasons, Bill always insisted that he be depicted as a chimpanzee.