Mm, monkey chow. Or rather, mm, ZuPreem Primate Dry Diet Animal Food.

There is really no way to dance around the delight you get reading the following:

On June 3, 2006, I began my week of eating nothing but monkey chow: "a complete and balanced diet for the nutrition of primates, including the great apes."

Does he learn and grow? Why yes, he learns and grows. It's like one of those horrendous '70s/'80s TV movies about teens, except instead of Annie taking drugs or Joe delving into radical politics, it's a healthy human trying to live from nothing but zoo primate food.

"Day 2.. Poop: pretty smelly." "Day 4.. Monkey-like Attributes: moderate desire to fling poop."

Succinct, but deep. Need I say more?

Our hero is blogging about it as well. (Yeah, I used the word as a verb; sue me, cheese. For the record, you've got to read some of the comments: "I just finished a five day fast to cleanse myself after binging on several illegal substances..I'd have given up a testicle for a bowl of monkey chow.") As a result, he drew the attention of The American Council on Science and Health.

The commented themselves. And then -- the hammer fell.

We search the Internet periodically for various reasons. In one of those searches we came across your web page, http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.758/news_detail.asp . We noticed your generic use of our valuable trademark CHOW with monkey. Your use of "monkey chow" seems to be referring to monkey food in general and not the MONKEY CHOW brand monkey food produced by Purina Mills.

And now it can be told: "the product Adam Scott claims to have consumed was ZuPreem Primate Dry Diet Animal Food."

You had your chance at free publicity Purina, but your lawyers blew it.

Haw, haw.

Check it out yourself

iambic@pigdog.org