my wildly creative daughter dropped me an ecard from careerbuilder.com, in which a monkey spake lines she had penned. always a sucker for talking monkeys (insert sociologist/criminologist joke here), i conducted my own experiments. i think talking monkeys could be an effective teaching tool. for example, please allow the primates to lay a little crim theory on you:

let’s start with some robert k. merton, from the oft-cited classic that hooked me on sociological criminology in the first place. if that does anything for you, check out edwin sutherland, my intellectual great-grandaddy. of course, one cannot present sutherland these days without offering a travis hirschi-style control theory rebuttal. labeling perspectives, such as those of edwin lemert and howard becker offer an alternative vision based on the societal reaction to rule-breaking behavior. finally, feminist critiques of male-based theories force a fundamental reexamination of the nature of crime, victimization, and survivorship.

well, that gets me through about 10 weeks of the semester. from now on, i’m delivering all my lectures via monkey. maybe someone could work up a li’l marx, durkheim, and weber for soc 101. why didn’t i monkify my own work? it doesn’t stand up to the classics. for now, i can only dream of someday writing a passage worthy of monkification.