Willy the chimp is lonely, but then he bumps into the gorilla Hugh Jape, and though the two of them are different, a touching friendship grows between them. Hugh protects little Willy from the attentions of Buster Nose, and Willy can read to Hugh and save the day when a hairy spider comes along!
Willy wouldn't hurt a fly - he even apologises when someone hits him. The suburban gorillas call him Willy the Wimp. Then, one day, Willy answers a bodybuilding advertisement - with hilarious results
One warm, sunny day, Willy the Chimp decides to go to the park. There's not a cloud in the sky--well, except for just a little tiny one. It doesn't bother Willy too much at first. But as the cloud follows him, it grows bigger and bigger and becomes harder and harder to ignore. Pretty soon the cloud is all Willy can think about, and he has no idea how to make it go away.
In a remote Catholic mission station in war-torn Sierra-Leone, renegade Irish alchemist, Father Jack, has succeeded where so many before him have failed. With a donation of the necessary body parts from Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel, General Butt Naked, he has constructed a small legion of grotesque bio-robots. Anxious to be rid of his creations before problems arise, he tries to sell his Homunculi to the Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo. When this fails, Rindert, a disillusioned South African mercenary, takes over marketing. The volatile political situation erupts as peace talks between political factions disintegrate and the RUF attempts to seize the capital while it is under environmental attack, suffering the most violent storms in the country’s history. Against this turbulent background, a homunculus auction is arranged. With the capital, Freetown, in anarchy, Liberian radicals poised to invade and drug-crazed soldiers terrorising the countryside, a particularly unsavoury group of buyers is invited, with inevitably exciting results.
"Raise your glass to Randall Grahm. Long may he tickle our fancy."—Kermit Lynch, author of Adventures on the Wine Route “Long a fan of Bonny Doon, it cheered me to find Randall Grahm's writing just as irreverent and delicious as his approach to wine.”—Kathleen Flinn, author of The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry “Randall Grahm is the Willy Wonka of the wine world, and Been Doon So Long is intelligent, insightful, and mischievous. It's a work of genius.”—Jamie Goode, author of The Science of Wine "If Donald Barthelme had studied philosophy and oenology he might have written like Randall Grahm. He's a provocateur, a punster, a philosopher, and jester. As entertaining as Grahm is, he also manages to edify, ultimately surprising us with contrarian common sense and a flamboyant defense of tradition."—Jay McInerney, author of Bacchus and Me and A Hedonist in the Cellar