Somewhere in the world...
Somewhere in the world, there is a rut with me stuck in it. My good pals
Laziness and Stupidity are in there with me and we're having a gay ol' time.
No, the rut is not on Brokeback Mountain.
The past couple of weeks have not been all that great. Some seriously
crappy crap has gone down these past couple of weeks and as a result, I
have been feeling seriously crappy. Crappy enough to have written "crappy"
four times, twice in each of two sentences. But looking back though,
many of those things weren't all that bad. I think I tend to let the bad
things in life affect me too much. The way I see it, if I let the all
the bad things slide, then I'm bound to repeat them. On the other hand, if
I dwell on the negative points too much, I'm bound to repeat them also,
but I also miss out on all the good things that go on. The way I tend to
live leads me to soak in a puddle of despair because, well, at least I'm
soaking. Makes no sense? Good. Feeling sorry for one's self rarely does.
Is there a point to all this? No. Throwing words on a web page rarely
has a point.
In more gruesome news, they say that the original fairy tales by the
Super Grimm Bros. are actually very violent and really not suitable for
21st century children. (Yes, humans have become quite soft lately. By the
time the aliens to come to take over the Earth, we will have evolved into
a formidable pillow fighting force. Take that E.T.)
Project Gutenberg has the text
in a variety of
formats.
Here's an example of the horrific tales the Grimm brothers wove:
THE STRAW, THE COAL, AND THE BEAN
In a village dwelt a poor old woman, who had gathered together a dish
of beans and wanted to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth,
and that it might burn the quicker, she lighted it with a handful of
straw. When she was emptying the beans into the pan, one dropped
without her observing it, and lay on the ground beside a straw, and
soon afterwards a burning coal from the fire leapt down to the two.
Then the straw began and said: 'Dear friends, from whence do you come
here?' The coal replied: 'I fortunately sprang out of the fire, and if
I had not escaped by sheer force, my death would have been certain,--I
should have been burnt to ashes.' The bean said: 'I too have escaped
with a whole skin, but if the old woman had got me into the pan, I
should have been made into broth without any mercy, like my comrades.'
'And would a better fate have fallen to my lot?' said the straw. 'The
old woman has destroyed all my brethren in fire and smoke; she seized
sixty of them at once, and took their lives. I luckily slipped through
her fingers.'
'But what are we to do now?' said the coal.
'I think,' answered the bean, 'that as we have so fortunately escaped
death, we should keep together like good companions, and lest a new
mischance should overtake us here, we should go away together, and
repair to a foreign country.'
The proposition pleased the two others, and they set out on their way
together. Soon, however, they came to a little brook, and as there was
no bridge or foot-plank, they did not know how they were to get over
it. The straw hit on a good idea, and said: 'I will lay myself
straight across, and then you can walk over on me as on a bridge.' The
straw therefore stretched itself from one bank to the other, and the
coal, who was of an impetuous disposition, tripped quite boldly on to
the newly-built bridge. But when she had reached the middle, and heard
the water rushing beneath her, she was after all, afraid, and stood
still, and ventured no farther. The straw, however, began to burn,
broke in two pieces, and fell into the stream. The coal slipped after
her, hissed when she got into the water, and breathed her last. The
bean, who had prudently stayed behind on the shore, could not but
laugh at the event, was unable to stop, and laughed so heartily that
she burst. It would have been all over with her, likewise, if, by good
fortune, a tailor who was travelling in search of work, had not sat
down to rest by the brook. As he had a compassionate heart he pulled
out his needle and thread, and sewed her together. The bean thanked
him most prettily, but as the tailor used black thread, all beans
since then have a black seam.
This particular tale had PETIO (People for the Ethical Treatment of
Inanimate Objects) up in arms. Apparently, the twisted brothers had
forgotten to tack the usual disclaimer of "No straws, coals, or beans
were harmed in the making of this story" onto the end of the original
manuscript. Shortly after the first public beta release of this story,
PETIO lead what was probably the first recorded mass protest in response
to a fairy tale. It consisted of one massively overweight man rambling to
himself in the town square. He was probably drunk and lying in a gutter.
Not long after, the local bean farmers and tailors unions were engaged in
a bitter dispute. The bean farmers blamed the tailors for the black seam
and the tailors claimed that they would never sew up a burst bean with
black thread. Additionally, all the straw in the vicinity filed an
official-looking complaint condemning the propagation of the stereotype
that straw is weaker than coal. This act, however, went largely unnoticed
because of the final atrocity committed by this fantastic tale: it has
no point.
It's no wonder that publishers of children's books don't print the original
fairy tales. It would discourage today's youth from becoming bean farmers.
Instead, they would all become bean tailors and there would be no Holy
Frijole Mambo Combo with black beans, cilantro, and hot sauce for here.
On a more constructive note, I've stopped drinking caffeinated beverages for
the time being. I found myself drinking 3 or 4 Diet Cokes or Diet Cherry Coke
brand carbonated beverages every day for the past week or so. I need to lay
off so the Caffeine Monster can recharge its mana. The last time I had a Diet
Coke was on Friday, so it's been three days. Incidentally, I have been
having some horrible headaches these past few days. It happens every time
I'm away from my beloved stimulant for too long.