You can always make fun of your own group, which is why I never miss an opportunity to lay the verbal smack down on men, Polacks, dorks, atheists, crackers, breeders, writers, jugglers, guys with beards, guys who use hair gel, sufferers of recurrent corneal erosion, people raised Catholic, and people with pet rats.

As an American, I also have a God-given right to make fun of English people. This right accrues to all Americans, whether we believe in an omnipotent deity or the tiny leprechaun that tells Ralph Wiggum to burn things. So I’m pleased to quote a Hindu saying that I found in The Dictionary of International Slurs. We can thank some creative Hindu person for thinking of it and Abraham A. Robackis for translating and collecting it.

Here it is: A demon took a monkey to wife—the result, by the grace of God, was the English.

Maybe I’m just looking ahead to the hot monkey love portion of this column, but the idea of a demon and a monkey getting Biblical makes me somewhat giddy. It also makes me wonder if I can find pictures of this unholy yet romantic union on the Internet… Best of all, this expression need not be limited to the motherfuckers of the mother country. Like all folk expressions, it can and should be altered to fit the occasion. For example:

A demon took a monkey to wife—the result, by the grace of God, was your face. A demon took a monkey to wife—the result, by the grace of God, was Terre Haute, Indiana. A demon took a monkey to wife—the result, by the grace of God, was Mark Peters. Burning ape-like romance

When given a choice between making whoopee, sinking the sausage, and doing the horizontal polka, I’d just as soon bury the ice pick... in my forehead. But if I had to choose between making love and making hot monkey love… I’d vote with my banana for the latter.

Thanks to Google, I now know that there are even more possibilities open to the romantically inclined. Depending on your mood, you could make red-hot monkey love, hot throbbing monkey love, or butt-naked hot monkey love. If hot sweet monkey love sounds a little too Sarah McLaughlin for you, then there’s always hot sweaty monkey sex.

If, like me, you’ve been settling for human love, self-love, and sheep love, these new possibilities feel like going from cave paintings to hi-def TV. And I’m even more impressed by these non-human versions: hot robot monkey sex and alien monkey love. Likewise, I’m sure that your mother will be impressed if, instead of closing your letters with a vanilla “All my love, Gwendolyn,” you close with style, using an expression your evolutionary predecessors would be proud of: All my hot buttered monkey love, Gwendolyn.

Fill-in-the-blank monkey

In addition to comparisons, such as He’s hunched over like a monkey fucking a football and proverbs, such as If you shave a monkey, she looks just like a human, monkey is often used like a suffix to describe just about anyone. Virtually any word can be grafted onto monkey to make humorous compliments, such as stud monkey, harmless insults, such as mogul monkey, and genuinely offensive insults, such as sand monkey and porch monkey.

Some of the most creative monkeys of this type have been spotted on television shows. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Xander Harris—after performing a love spell that went awry—feared becoming the cuddle monkey of every woman in town. In another episode, after playing the mystically controlled, bug-eating, syphilis-having fool one too many times, Xander swore he was done being everyone’s butt monkey. The Simpsons’ writers have used monkey in this way even more often. In various episodes, Moe calls a supermarket bag boy a sack monkey, Sideshow Bob calls a bellboy a brainless luggage monkey, Homer gets a job as a prank monkey, Krusty the Clown describes children as channel-hoppin’, Ritalin-poppin’ monkeys, and Groundskeeper Willie refers to the French as cheese-eatin’ surrender monkeys.

Any versions of X + monkey you’d like to share? Monkeys of all species are encouraged to write in with their research and improvisations for use in a future column. By Mark Peters

Though pet monkeys tend to be aggressive, violent, disease-ridden, and inconsiderate, the word monkey can provide years of safe, life-affirming fun.

Whether you’re a coke monkey like our president, a sea monkey in a jar, or a monkey’s uncle like my uncle, I’m sure you’ve noticed how flexible and accommodating this simple simian word can be. Here are a few of my favorite linguistic monkey mutations (which don’t include actual monkey mutations, like the Rhesus monkey that was crossed with jellyfish DNA 'til it glowed green).

As always, feel free to use these words at home, in the workplace, and during church services.