Reading the gay Thailand message boards, I’m often reminded of the ‘infinite monkey theorem’ that states a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. And I’m often convinced the simian output would display a more rational intelligence than most of the frequent posters do.

Recently, after trying to decipher one of the infamous LMTU’s posts, reviewing several of Fountainhill’s posts at the suggestion of Mitch (and I will get you for that), and noting once again that Jabba The Butt is unable to pass on the bait dropped by his best buddy’s ass even after his iron fist has ruled, “No more!” I realized the infinite monkey theorem is simply not true. That impossibility is proven daily on the gay forums.

Turns out some fools with too much time on their hands and too easy access to government grant funds have put the infinite monkey theorem to test over the years. Most recently a researcher claimed success in his test using virtual monkeys. His results, however, were underwhelming to the rest of the world. The best he could do was generate blocks of 9 characters segments that eventually added up to a narrative poem that was published as an appendix to a book of Shakespeare’s sonnets. That’s like claiming Boo-Boo’s often displayed use of over-blown and cliched phrases puts his writing skills at the level of Tolstoy.

In 2004, another researcher’s computer program managed to hit upon a 19 letter sequence from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, after running the equivalent of 42,162,500,000 billion billion monkey-years. And a website called The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator took a mere 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years to produce a 24 character match for a partial line from Henry IV, Part 2. I’ve no doubt that if the website ran their virtual monkey crew against the posted works of Beachball, they’d be able to name that tune within two monkey-weeks, max. (And Google could do it in one try.)

Moving out of the virtual world, and producing a more relevant result, scientists at the University of Plymouth, reported that they had left a computer keyboard in the enclosure of six monkeys at the Paignton Zoo for a month; not only did the monkeys produce nothing but five pages consisting largely of the letter S, but attacked the keyboard with a stone, then pissed and shat on it. Which accounts for the posting record of other gay Thailand message board luminaries such as Thai Dyed, Combat, Scottish-guy, and pretty much the entire gene pool at Baht Stop.

Yup, my bad, I’ve been spending too much time reading the forums lately. So I’m obsessing. Usually I tend to drop in and check out the thread titles about once a week, realize it’s mostly just the ranting of a bunch of disenfranchised queens, and vow to get that monkey off my back by not visiting again. But then it’s a lot like driving by a car wreck: you know you shouldn’t look but can’t help but sneak a peak anyway. It’s a shame with almost a half dozen boards serving gay Thailand aficionados that at least one isn’t capable of balancing the inane with the relevant.

There are a handful of posters who contribute content of interest, but I’ve noticed those threads always fall away quickly. That leaves the constant run of bitchslaps, which I really don’t have a problem with. It’s just that you’d think that a group of gay men could manage to be a bit more witty in their attacks. It’s enough to make a grown man yell. “Fuckstick!”

Jinks, or his handler over at SGT, just came up with a brain fart that he hopes turns into gold: for a mere $20 you can become a Gold member and avoid seeing the advertisements between posts. BTW, that’s to “help the board survive,” so I’m sure Beachball will be asking his parents for an advance on his allowance to ensure his life doesn’t cease to exist.

I’d think if SGT really wanted to make a few bucks, they’d run an bidding war for poster removal. For a top bid of $39.95 you could rid your on-line life of the more tedious of posters. And then Beachball could join the rest of his species in trying to duplicate Shakespeare’s works.