This will not be my hell anymore
Training monkeys, capital punishment, Maine, flags
They have a scanner at the entrance to CVS that erases one item you came here for from your brain instantly. No one will report on this.
The most recent Hell World was sent out to paid subscribers and can be found here:
Luke O’Neil
It concerned dead trees, getting lost in the woods, decaying ammunition bunkers and toxic waste, the ten best sentences I read that week, some new music, a couple new poems, and the news to be pissed off about. Read it and every issue by pressing this little button:
Our main thing today is an excerpt from the first issue of the new Ape Sh*t zine by Carrie McLaren out this week via OR Books.
"Ape Sh*t looks at the often sordid relationship between humans and other primate species," they explain. "This issue zeroes in on capuchins, and the bizarre American saga of the “service monkey.”
The piece here is an interview with a woman named Alison Pascoe. She worked with the controversial group Helping Hands who attempted to train capuchin monkeys to serve as caregivers for people with quadriplegia in the 80s.
Later on, Helping Hands said that they only extracted the front teeth and left the molars. Do you know if that’s true?
I don’t, but I find it impossible that they could place any monkey with any teeth anywhere. The monkeys would clamp down on you like a pit bull. I can’t imagine placing a monkey with any teeth safely. Even with no teeth, a monkey bite hurts! They know where to get you — they target the space between your thumb and forefinger, or hit your Achilles heel. I never met a monkey that didn’t bite. And it wasn’t predictable. If you take something away, they’d attack you.
You can read it down below or here:
Luke O’Neil
In other book news keep an eye out from these two forthcoming books from friends of Hell World: Where Is the Light Coming From: Essays on Art and Regular People by Dan Kois and Jolt My Electric Journey Out of Darkness By Ted Scheinman.
I was hiking in the audubon sanctuary along the coast of Biddeford and as beautiful as it all was the loop of the trail seemed to tie itself off rather prematurely about twenty minutes in. A couple was looking out over the rocky decline toward a lighthouse in the near distance holding camera equipment I had previously mistaken for hunting rifles and as I passed by them for the second time I wanted them to tell me if there were another path I was missing but all I could think of to ask was excuse me do you know if this is all that there is?
I’ve never been very good at identifying birds. I hate it when you see what you think is a cool colorful bird and you look it up later and it’s called like the Common Dumb Asshole. Birders throughout history have universally hated its guts the thing says. It cannot eat bugs right. Meanwhile I had thought I had seen an interesting guy.
I typically listen to music on my walks but I spent this time in silence. I kept thinking about the woman who had been set to be killed in Tennessee for a terrible crime she had committed thirty years ago. They asked her for a comment about her encroaching oblivion and she said something to the effect of whatever happens this will not be my hell anymore.
And she was right. It was now a new even worse hell they ushered her into by botching the fatal injections twice.
After none of the poison took they rushed the woman to a hospital which seemed counterintuitive to me. The state can ritualistically attempt to sacrifice a person on an altar with all of the villagers in attendance and fail at it then send them to the hospital for life-saving medical care after. Why not just strangle her to death there on the table? Do you want her dead or not?
Our friends let us stay at their home on the beach near the preserve for the weekend and I thought it would be a nice place to spend my brother in law’s fiftieth birthday. Just one little thing my beach friend said. Can you please take down the American flag in the yard for me. I forgot to do it before I left.
I already know you’re going to write a story about it she said.
In the yard leading up toward the waving brush of the dune there was a circle of mushrooms that seemed suspicious to me. All growing in a geometrically ideal circle. Big bulbous boys. I’ve never been very good at identifying mushrooms either but they disgusted me. I wanted to punt them into the ocean.
Is this normal I asked texting her a picture and she said she had never seen it before. Then I posted do any of you nerds know why these mushrooms would be growing in some kind of ceremonial nightmare ring like this and sure enough about a hundred nerds knew exactly why. It’s called a fairy circle they said. Don’t walk in the middle of it they said but it was too late for me.
People think that fifty is middle aged because we are very attached to the concept of one hundred but it’s not the middle at all. It is most likely two thirds if you are lucky. If all goes well.
I could not unravel the knot of the rope from the metal cleat on the flagpole no matter what I tried. This was embarrassing because they trained us to do this so many times when I was a Boy Scout but now I am nearly fifty and that was almost an entire lifetime ago.
I can’t do the proper math. Four sevenths of a life ago?
Just off in the near distance seals were popping their heads out of the water and looking around at the world we live in up here but I could never see any of them properly because I kept misplacing my glasses. There wasn’t a bird in the blue sky. Not even the ones you’d most expect.
I also could not get the wet firewood to light the night before and I used to pride myself on being able to do that too. None of us seemed all that interested in there being a fire as we sat there under the stars though so I gave up quicker than I might have if it were a life and death situation. I would have figured it out then. Leisure is less pressing than mortality.
The flag rope nearly cut my finger off in its intractable tension at one point and I realized why sailors are always losing so many limbs. Eventually my brother in law came and pulled one of the ends of the rope back like he was preparing to fire an enormous crossbow like we were sacking the adjacent vacation homes and we managed to find a slack point in the knot to set the lowering into motion. Working together.
Once it was finally and fully down I wrapped myself in the red white and blue and danced around the yard. Like a wrestler that was already scheduled to lose his match. Like it was all a big fucking joke.
The Bizarre History of the Service Monkey
An excerpt from Ape Sh*t: The Zine for Primates
by Carrie McLaren
She would grab someone’s face if she didn’t want them near my husband… well, unless it was somebody else she wanted, in which case she’d look him straight in the eye, grab both of his cheeks, and start drooling.
If Amelia was in her cage when my husband came home, she would literally jump her cage across the room to get to him! The Helping Hands cage was so small that she could jump hard enough to move it. [A male voice in the background says, “Yeah, that was a little unnerving.”] If another female came into the house, she’d attack to keep them away from him. So she got a hysterectomy — all of the monkeys had to get spayed.
Hellion was the first monkey successfully placed. No one ever spayed her, so when her breast milk came in, she would squirt it at the guy [her recipient].
Do you know when they stopped administering shocks to monkeys?
I don’t know exactly, but I was on Inside Edition talking about it, so it was after that. [The Inside Edition episode apparently aired in May 1991.]
We’d train monkeys by putting sticky white dots on things they weren’t allowed to touch. If they touched it, they’d get a warning, and if they kept touching it, they’d get a shock. That shock system actually worked in getting them to avoid certain behaviors. But if they were shocked, they’d have diarrhea. The monkeys were supposed to go back into their cages when they needed to go, but they didn’t always do so. When startled, they’d just go.
How do you think Helping Hands managed after they stopped using the shock treatment?
I have no idea. You can’t have a monkey not touch something. It’s IMPOSSIBLE.
While I was there, we had six successful placements, but they didn’t stay successful. Helping Hands would say they placed, say, five monkeys, but they wouldn’t mention that some of the monkeys needed to be placed 4 or 5 times because most of them didn’t work. There were cases when monkeys would put their fingers down the person’s trach tube and unplug the bladder bags.
Some monkeys became diabetic and couldn’t be placed because they had so many health issues. And a lot of monkeys became obese because they weren’t moving.
Some monkeys may be good in the house, but open a window and they’re gone. Henrietta was the first monkey I placed. She was a great monkey with a relatively low activity level, but she was on the 23rd floor of a New York City apartment building and once jumped across to another building. We had to go get her.
Quadriplegics had a tube that they could blow into, and a little treat would come out the bottom of the wheelchair. Judi Zazula and her husband designed the equipment. Henri learned how to grab [her recipient] Sue’s hair and pull it toward the straw so she could get extra treats. Sue was strong enough to thwart her, so we thought it was hilarious. Henri was a beautiful placement, really. Sue had a hard time finding caregivers, though. People getting paid minimum wage for that position don’t want to be cleaning up monkey shit.
I don’t mean to be so negative. Some of the placements were truly beautiful, and that was what kept me there for years. Some of the recipients formed a real bond with their monkey. The monkeys would groom the person and lick their cheek. It was life-changing and wonderful to see. If I were a quadriplegic, I’d want one too!
Tell me more about Amelia. If she couldn’t be placed, how was she used?
When media came to the office, Amelia was the monkey we used. The issue with her is that she’d attack women she didn’t like.
So you used the same monkey in a lot of media stories?
Yes. Whenever they came to look at our program, we’d use the same one. But no one besides me could handle her, which was the problem.
What led you to become upset with the program and decide to leave?
When I started, we were using unwanted and confiscated pets. MJ wanted to start a breeding colony, and that bothered me. She got a lot of foster homes from a Ladies’ Home Journal article. She would fly the monkeys out to people, and they’d have to sign a contract saying they would give the monkey up after 2.5 years. But they had to bring the baby monkey everywhere — like a guide dog — so everyone who was friends with these people would say, “I want a monkey!” And it sparked a fad for pet monkeys. We had two foster families disappear with monkeys. I started feeling that this wasn’t something I wanted to be involved in.
When I first started, we didn’t have the electronics that we have today. There weren’t remote controls and iPads then. The one really useful thing the monkeys did was pick up a mouth stick on the floor and pick it in the person’s mouth, but a dog could do that.
Back then, the laser pointers we used to train monkeys were the size of huge flashlights, with eight batteries. They were not like the ones you use with cats. Monkeys would either fetch whatever you pointed the laser at or destroy it.
What was your take on MJ? Early on, she was fairly candid about problems she faced. What kept her going?
She was getting a lot of grants and publicity. She believed in this program, but she was not an animal person. She didn’t care about these monkeys like I did. She didn’t live with them or get to know them. They were a tool for her.
How did you start unwinding your work with them?
I was very attached to the program because I was so close to the monkeys. I got pregnant, and MJ lost her funding from Einstein Medical School and was moving to Boston, so it was an easy out for me.
Around this time, someone who had seen a lot of the media about monkey helpers contacted us about making a movie.
That was Monkey Shines, right? About a murderous helper monkey. This must have been around 1986.
Yes, the movie people contacted MJ and asked her to consult for the movie, but she said Absolutely not! and threatened to sue them. I told MJ, “I’ll do it.” I said they were going to do the movie whether she wanted them to or not, and she can keep her name off of it. “Lend me some monkeys,” I said.
I told her I’d pay her $20,000 [to borrow monkeys]. I’d train them and return them to her. And so that’s what ended up happening. I trained the monkeys used in Monkey Shines. I had the Humane Society on set to oversee things… When MJ found out how much money I made, she lost her mind. She told me I owed her more of it. I said, “You had a chance to take the job, but you didn’t want it.”
She threatened to sue me and was making my life miserable. So that’s when I decided I was done ignoring the serious failings of this program. Also, I kept Amelia. Amelia didn’t know anyone besides me and had been ill. She was losing weight and turned out to be diabetic.
Anyway, MJ wouldn’t speak to me. I felt bad about it because we had a good working relationship. It was very emotional for me. But I was done with the program. I loved working at the program until I didn’t. It was such a stupid program! [laughs]
Have you been in touch with anyone who has worked there since?
No, no one would talk to me. After I left, people who could use their hands started getting monkeys.
Do you know why?
I assume it’s because they were running out of quadriplegic people who wanted monkeys. I’d say 50% of the people we approached offering a monkey were, like, Hell no! We approached the soul singer Teddy Pendergast, who had a bad spinal cord injury. Man, did he yell at us! [laughs]
When I worked at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, I saw the same thing. People who weren’t really blind were getting dogs so that the organization could say, “We placed X many dogs this year” and have the numbers for fundraising. And then the dog became a footrest.
Why do you think Helping Hands lasted so long?
I think because they were sequestered at Boston University. They were part of a university where there were no animal rights people and no people who knew about monkeys. Anyone who actually knew about animals, anyone working in a sanctuary, thought this was crazy.
You helped some people with Helping Hands monkeys find homes for them. Where did they go?
Primarily Primates, Chimp Haven… I became very active in placing monkeys for years after I left.
I’ve read that capuchins in the wild vomit a lot. Was that something you experienced?
No. But in the wild, capuchins will take ants that have some sort of acid, mash them up, and rub them all over bodies. It’s thought to act like an insecticide. So in captivity, they’ll rip cigarettes out of your mouth and rub the tobacco all over their bodies. Onions, too. If you’re eating an onion, they’ll grab it and rub it. You can’t smoke a cigarette around a monkey.
Carrie McLaren is a longtime zinester and media critic who published Stay Free! from 1993 to 2008. A few issues continue to exist at archive.org. Her book with collaborator Jason Torchinsky, Ad Nauseam: A Survivor’s Guide to American Consumer Culture, collected highlights from the zine. She lives in Brooklyn with two human and one nonhuman animals, and posts erratically on Bluesky @monkeywire.bsky.social.
Some further reading on the death penalty in Hell World:
Luke O’Neil
There’s no moral or practical justification for the death penalty no matter how you do it. It’s cruel and arbitrary and it doesn’t act as a deterrent. It brutalizes the people who carry it out and traumatizes the families of victims, and the pattern of its application is openly racist.
Luke O’Neil
The truth is that the United States has never had a system of clinical precision for executing the condemned. Instead we have a patchwork, pell-mell system of death contraptions devised by hobbyists and often built by prison labor, or staffed by volunteers in the case of firing squads. We shamble on, killing as best we can, ruining ourselves.
Luke O’Neil
“At least twenty six people in the United States have been wrongfully convicted as a result of bite-mark evidence, according to the Innocence Project,” as the Times notes.
“Dr. West became the first person to be suspended from the ABFO, and by 2006 he was forced to resign from the American Board of Forensic Pathology,” the Innocence Project wrote last year in arguing for Howard’s innocence among others. “Still, that same year, in response to an appeal, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote of Dr. West’s testimony in Howard’s case: ‘Just because Dr. West has been wrong a lot, does not mean, without something more, that he was wrong here.’”
And that’s the rigorous standard by which we send people to their death in this country. Some fucking dentist comes in and bullshits for a while in front of a jury and then a judge goes welp that’s good enough for me this person deserves to die.
Fuck A.I.
Ted Chiang
I’m not very convinced by claims that A.I. poses a danger to humanity because it might develop goals of its own and prevent us from turning it off. However, I do think that A.I. is dangerous inasmuch as it increases the power of capitalism. The doomsday scenario is not a manufacturing A.I. transforming the entire planet into paper clips, as one famous thought experiment has imagined. It’s A.I.-supercharged corporations destroying the environment and the working class in their pursuit of shareholder value. Capitalism is the machine that will do whatever it takes to prevent us from turning it off, and the most successful weapon in its arsenal has been its campaign to prevent us from considering any alternatives.
Chop the Head
When artists use generative AI, progress and experimentation are inherently absent from the process. Working organically, human artists insert their own selves. How they felt that day. Strange childhood sense-memories. The way only their hands can touch their medium. In this transference is the ancient and ineffable blood-pact of creation. An AI program can only ever replicate and combine that which it has already seen and, in the context of art, has already been expressed by human hands. AI can never push creativity forward because it has never broken a bone, grieved, or been loved. It has nothing to say that hasn’t been said.
Samantha Cole
A lawyer used ChatGPT to generate briefs that included completely made-up witnesses and testimony while representing a man accused of shooting his wife. When he was caught by the judges, the lawyer blamed it on his own “stupidity.”
Buddy if you want "personalized music" made just for you pick up a fucking guitar. Or else break the heart of someone who already has.
No one wants to put in the work of breaking someone’s heart any more.
Fuck ICE
Among the first to appear before the judge was Angel, a 13-year-old. He had no attorney. “Would you like to request voluntary departure, or should I issue a removal order?” the judge asked “I don’t know,” Angel said, bursting into tears: “I have no one. I have nothing."
Billal Rahman
During a June 18 interview with hospital investigators, Freeman admitted allowing the man to leave, the FBI affidavit alleges.
According to the government's account of the interview, Freeman said she knew the patient was in immigration custody but did not believe he remained in custody at that moment because immigration agents were not physically present with him in the CT room.
Freeman allegedly told investigators that she removed the man's IV and escorted him through the ambulance bay doors. The affidavit alleges she also said she disagreed with ICE separating people from their families and knew she "was going to set him free."
Fuck gambling
Would you look at that. Asshole magazine for shit heads with another heater.
Free childcare is for "elites" the same way they said student loan forgiveness was only going to benefit "elites."
All of you know this but any time some centrist loser starts talking about how a social policy will only benefit the wealthy what they really mean is they don't want anything to benefit anyone.
I do not have children but I would like the lives of parents to be made easier with the abundance of wealth we have in this country because, say it with me now, we live in a society. Thank you.
I continue my quest to walk around and look at weird shit in the woods. Here's some stuff I saw the other day.
Follow me on Instagram if you want to see about 10 videos a day of bogs and trees.
I wrote this one the last time I was in Maine in the fall. I forget if I shared it or not in here. It was originally in Flaming Hydra.
Luke O’Neil
October 18, 2025
The four of us stumbled out across the sand in the dark toward where the tongue of the water lapped at the high tide line and stood silently for some time listening to the collected absences. The universal and the personal. My god the stars are so close and low up here one of us said and we all looked up in unison.
I thought of the Laura Gilpin poem about the two-headed calf. Then the Vincent D'Onofrio tweet about the pig.
A dwindling bonfire up around the bend of the shoreline.
Should I put on some music someone said and we all said sure by which we meant please do not and that was that. It was well past the end of the season and going to be cold at this time of night either way but the call of the water was persistent.
How much would it take for you to jump in right now one of us said and we all thought about it for a minute or two. Calculating the relative severity of wind and squealing distance back to the cottage. I guess I would do it for like $200 one of us said and it was deflating because it wasn’t enough to be excited about. No one gets a little jolt up the spine over $200.
They really were quite close and low though. These stars. This is what everything is supposed to look like I thought. What it has always looked like. I never thought I was any good at spotting the Big Dipper but turns out it’s just right there. Has been this entire time. Looming like a postcard town’s church steeple.
I thought of one of those videos where they put glasses on a blind baby and it sees its parents for the first time. Everyone crying. In the video and the people watching at home too.
I felt the presence of my phone in my pocket whispering to me to try to take a picture of it all to alert the world to what the world actually is but then snapped to my senses and stood down.
I cannot translate this for any of you. Cannot break this news.
It’s no wonder that almost every story we ever told ourselves about creation came from people who drove themselves mad staring at all of this light above us.
I didn’t even get around to the full moon yet. Pregnant to bursting.
You could dream of something better even now if you looked at it all for too long. Maybe that’s why they had to dull the sky with toil and industry. A barricade against the divine.
Man it sucks being in a scenic place you’ve traditionally always gone for nice long runs in but you can't anymore becuse you’re injured. It’s like walking into a bathroom stall you used to regularly do coke in after you've quit.
This is very cool to me!
Drive-By Truckers reunited with Jason Isbell to play all of ‘Decoration Day’ last night. It was DBT’s first full show with their former guitarist/vocalist in nearly 20 years, and their first time performing the LP in its entirety. (Drive-By Truckers last played with Isbell on ‘Colbert’ last year.)
— Stereogum (@stereogum.com) 2026-10-05T02:56:23.131Z
Alright see you next time.
