Public Service Announcement – Mostly Fairy Tales

September 30, 2009 under metablogging

Given that I’m fresh out of real content, I’ve done some house-keeping instead.

Behold the Mostly Fairy Tales page… an index of all the Monday fairytales, without the annoying Part I – Part II – Part III baloney. As full blown pages on the site, each gets its own permanent link and is easily findable in the site hierarchy on the right.

Making these things pages has another benefit: WordPress has a nice and consistent url naming strategy, so it’s fairly easy to remember links to pages.

e.g.

http://thehappymoron.com/blog/mostly-fairy-tales/jack/

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Question of the day

September 29, 2009 under curios

Why am I not listening to more quality violin music?

It’s really not that hard.

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Gretel – Part III

September 28, 2009 under Uncategorized

I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is Hansel and Gretel, and we’ve lost Hansel… just not in the woods. This is Part III;  Part I. Part II. Part IV.

This was the beginning of a new life for Gretel. She could not leave the witch’s cottage, and, with no where else to go, there she stayed.

It was a sad and empty time. Some days she would think that she was only living a dream; everything seemed so strange, so unreal. Such a terrible, horrible dream – lost and stranded and so far, far away from home.

So Gretel stayed and was raised by the witch. She slept in the bed the old woman provided and attended to the witch as she demanded. Gretel was obedient and uncomplaining in all things, except one.

So far as she was able, she would not eat the witch’s food. She would never forget what she saw happen to the poor robin, even though it often meant hunger, or stealing something from the garden, or forging in the woods for whatever nuts and berries she could find. She would eat nothing prepared by the hand of the witch. After a time, she was given the run of the kitchen and garden, and tasked with preparing meals, and things became easier for her.

It was precious time that she spent on tasks and chores; the only things in any way familiar to her, real things from a real world outside her prison. She knew the broom, the garden and the wash line.

The witch worked the girl hard, small though she was. However, the witch was never directly unkind to her. The witch was evil, it must be said, but it was the hallmark of her malice that she scorned to waste it on petty, uncalculated discourtesy. The girl was hers, and broken, and the witch took delight in seeing her shaped and formed according to her own purposes.

The witch taught Gretel much; and she prepared many potions and medicines which she gave to the girl. On her part, Gretel avoided taking these as often as she could. Sometimes she was unable; they were nasty, horrible things. But she feigned obedience, and because of her quiet, unrebellous conduct, she gained some leeway.

“I must clean the cupboard, grandmother.” Gretel would say, “May I drink it after?”

So confident was the old woman that the girl was under her thumb, she would be content to leave the tray and have the girl return the empty glass.

I would like to tell you that living underneath the old witch had no effect on Gretel, but the truth is that the witch *did* have a great deal of power and influence upon her. For one thing, Gretel soon gave up all thought of escape from the cottage. It became familiar, and as the strangeness faded, so too did her memories and thoughts of her former home.

It was a terrible end she was being brought towards, but the insidious nature of her captor meant that if poor Gretel was aware of it, she never realized it. It was to be the work of many years, not days, or even months. Gretel was helpless.

Now, if Gretel could not completely halt the workings of the evil witch, the witch herself was powerless to stay the growth of grace and beauty. There was nothing the hag hated more; but Gretel was graceful, and Gretel was beautiful, and as she grew, she grew more so. With every passing year, the witch would curse, and brew a potion more malignant than the last… but to no avail.

So time went on, and Gretel grew, until she was no longer a little girl at all, or even a young girl.

No, for when the passing knight rode in upon the clearing, his eye was caught by, not a child, but by a maiden, a woman with a beauty that he had never before seen.

The good knight checked his horse within the border of the woods, concealed and transfixed. Who was the captive here? For if Gretel could not leave the cottage, well! Our poor young friend could not leave Gretel. That woman in the garden had him completely, and just to look upon her was enough for him.

I swear, he would be standing on that spot this very day, as rooted to the ground as all the trees around him, if, out of the cottage, the witch had not come forth.

The knight, surprised, let out a gasp at the hideous shape of the crone. He saw with clear, unhindered eyes the wretchedness, the unbridled evil. He could scarce believe it when the maiden in the garden stood up, and in a pleasant voice said, “I’m coming, grandmother.”.

She not only went to the awful creature, but gave the hag a kiss – a kiss! upon her cheek. The maiden’s beauty only served to make the witch the more repulsive.

This warranted some thought. As quietly as he knew, the knight turned his horse around and rode off. He would be back.

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Sorry, folks

September 25, 2009 under thehumancondition

Posting has been sparse this week. I’ve chewed through my entire backlog of postable drafts and so I’m left scrambling.

I did run across this story on obesity though.

The findings appear to be fresh evidence of a phenomenon that health professionals have long suspected: as those around us get fatter, our perceptions of our own size change accordingly.

Everyone lives in their own little world; the things around them become familiar, known… and normal.

From time to time something comes along that shatters our world and forces us to reconsider whether things were really the things we thought they were.

As people, our relationship with God has something of this character. God steps down and smashes our view of normal and acceptable. He tells us that we are not qualified to determine what is right and what is wrong, that we are incapable of determining because we are worldly.

That’s why we can’t always trust ourselves, our feelings, or our experiences.

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It’s just too much

September 23, 2009 under curios

Why did no one ever tell me about this stuff?

comments: 4 »

Gretel – Part II

September 21, 2009 under Uncategorized

I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is Hansel and Gretel, and we’ve lost Hansel… just not in the woods. This is Part II. Part I. Part III. Part IV.

Little Gretel was exhausted. After a long, terrifying, confusing day, she wanted nothing more than for some grown-up person to take care of her and make things safe. And she was hungry – so very hungry!

To her it all seemed like a dream: the magical house, the old woman, and the invitation to supper.

If the old woman was lying about the quality of supper she promised to the little girl, then Gretel was not the one to notice or to say a word. She eagerly ate the food that the woman put before her. There was good, solid hot food.. with meat. It was a rarity, almost unknown to her, and she ate it eagerly.

And there were sweets. Cake and candy and other confectionary delights; Gretel ate them all, and ate, and ate, until at last she was satiated. When it became apparent that she could eat no more, the old lady told her that it was time for bed.

This was quite an agreeable notion for Gretel. At this point she was fit for very little else but going to bed, and when the old lady led her to a small room with a bed in the corner, she climbed right into it and immediately fell asleep.

When the old lady saw that the little girl was asleep, she put some water on to boil so that she could make herself some tea. When it was made, she sat in a rocking chair, and rocked, and thought, and drank her tea, sitting alone in the night while the girl slept.

The old woman was a witch, and she was deciding what to do with the little girl she had ensnared.

She usually ate children; in most circumstances she would not have thought long, and Gretel would have quickly found herself in a pot or in the oven. But these were not ordinary circumstances.

The witch was growing old and finding herself less capable than she used to be, and thought she might take a servant. She finally decided that Gretel was young enough that she could raise her as a successor.

Gretel awoke the next morning feeling stiff and sore. She got up and felt her bed; the bedding was big and fluffy and very soft, but she ached all over as if she had slept on something hard and lumpy.

She found the old woman in the kitchen, making porridge. The lady told her to come and eat. Gretel said shyly that no, she was very grateful for the woman’s kindness, but that she must go home to her parents. Did the old woman know the way back to the village.

“I’m afraid not,” said the crone. “I’m very old, you see, and I don’t get about much. But you are free to go, as you like.”

Gretel thanked the woman again, and said that yes, she should go. With that, she set off into the woods to find her village and her parents.

She walked for what seemed a very long time, until at last she saw a clearing int the woods. She started running eagerly towards it, only to reach it and discover… it was the same clearing that she had left! There was the same cottage… and in front of it was the old woman, holding a bowl of porridge.

“Back so soon, my dear?” enquired the old woman. “Here, have some breakfast.” She held out the bowl of porridge, offering it to Gretel.

Gretel was confused and a little frightened. She wanted to go home, and was starting to become afraid that she would not be able to go home. She didn’t know what would happen if she couldn’t find her way back. Gretel stood, mute, before the old woman. Little tears started to form, dribbling down her little cheeks.

“I can see you’re upset, my dear.” said the old woman. “Well, if you feel like eating…” The old woman bent down and placed the bowl of porridge on the steps of the cottage, before turning and going back inside.

Gretel looked at the porridge. She *was* hungry. She was about to go and pick it up, but then she stopped. A little robin had flown down to the steps of the cottage, and was pecking around the edge of the bowl. Not wanting to frighten the bird, she held very still. It was such a pretty little thing.

But if she was transfixed in wonder, it soon turned to horror, for as the bird took down a beakful of porridge, before her very eyes… it changed! The delicate robin was transformed into a monstrous crow: a horrible, croaking thing with hard black eyes that seemed to bore right through her. Gretel stifled a cry and ran back into the woods.

Gretel ran so very fast, trying to get away. She wanted to be home, safe from the strangeness and the terror of the woods and the cottage. She ran, and ran, but to no avail; for when she came, breathless, to a stop, she could see the clearing and the cottage right in front of her. So she turned around and went back the opposite direction, away from the cottage again… and once more found herself arriving at the very place she was trying to leave.

Gretel didn’t have the strength to cry. She realized now that she could not go home; there didn’t seem to be anything that she could do but go back to the cottage.

The crow was gone, but the porridge was still there, just as she had left it. Gretel looked at it; hungry as she was, she was not going to eat it. Still, she did not want to anger the old woman, so she emptied the bowl underneath the steps, and went back into the cottage.

The old woman was sitting in her rocking chair singing softly to herself when Gretel came in. She didn’t say anything or stop singing, but she just nodded quietly.

Gretel looked at the old woman and then at the empty bowl in her hand. Feeling very empty inside, she went quietly to the kitchen to wash her bowl and spoon.

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Generalizations for life

September 18, 2009 under thehumancondition

We all make them. We can’t not make them. They’re how we make sense of the complexity of the world; how we understand what’s going on around us.

So when I saw this dude the other day, I immediately knew that he was going to kill me.

His attitude, his clothing, his swagger… They all told me I had just moments to live,  that I should make my peace.

Then I looked down and saw he had a book in his hand. Phew!

People who carry books don’t kill people.

One for the ages, folks.

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This story is brutal

September 17, 2009 under thehumancondition, theology

Because it highlights real world evil.

I guess I chose to post this one because it’s a system evil. More particularly, it’s a system evil which abuses the poor because the poor are easiest to abuse.

In computer software, it’s a recognized fact that unless quality is explicitly designed and maintained, it won’t just evolve. You have to plan it in and put lots of effort and energy into the system or you get a big bunch of chaos.

The same is true for moral quality.

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Mixed Messages Online

September 16, 2009 under Uncategorized

Online communication can be tricky. I think one of the reasons that it’s tricky is that the tools are so crude.

Think Twitter. A single tweet could be personal communication between two close friends. It could be a message between colleagues. It could be a broadcast from a famous person to a million people.

The same device is used for entirely different purposes and hijacked by each person for their own intent. As a medium, it’s flexible enough to be many different things but it’s not advanced enough to describe which of the different things it is. In the flat world of the internet, it can be confusing to sort out what is what. If someone asks, “Do you want to read a tweet?” the only answer can be the question, “What is it?”

Facebook found this out when certain users began to exceed the maximum allowed number of friends (I believe 5000). The users didn’t really have that many friends (that’s impossible), but they wanted that many friends, because a friend is not a friend is not a friend.
Facebook solved this problem by introducing a more complicated, more realistic model of things. Now important entities on Facebook have Pages and you can become a Fan of something (a weaker relationship). Problem solved.

However, in solving the problem like this, you kill a little bit of the magic of the internet, because there’s something magical about knowing that your name is alongside Oprah’s name in the same follow list. The flat internet is magical, because there’s something magic about a system that treats everyone the same, even when everyone is not the same.

We don’t want the internet to be exactly the same as the real world, because that would be boring.

Part of the problem with communication online is that in order to move something from real space to computer space, you have to describe it in some way. You have to model it.

Trying to describe something to a computer is a great test of understanding. If you don’t understand something, you can’t describe it to a computer. (Sometimes, even if you *do* understand it, you still can’t.)

The problem is, some things are indescribable. A conversation held online rather than in person doesn’t have body language or intonation or facial expressions. Sarcasm and intent get lost in the shuffle.

Sometimes (like being Oprah’s friend) there’s fun to be found in a broken model. Sometimes there’s discomfort. Sometimes there’s creepiness.

The secret, it seems, is finding the best representation of relationship. One that is not too restrictive but not too loose. How do you represent the fuzziness of friendship, while keeping the spammers out?

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Gretel – Part I

September 14, 2009 under Uncategorized

I’m trying out a little game I thought up. The game is to retell a fairy tale or children’s story while omitting one of the major characters.

This is Hansel and Gretel, and we’ve lost Hansel… just not in the woods. This is Part I. Part II. Part III. Part IV.

This is the story of Gretel. Some have called it the story of “Poor Gretel” or “The Unfortunate Gretel”, but I will call it only the story of Gretel.

Whether these other titles better fit the story, you must decide. I will only tell it, and leave all judgements to those best suited to make them.

One thing I will say, however, and that is that the story starts with a very poor Gretel indeed, for Gretel was born into an impoverished family. Her father was a woodcutter and a pauper.

Gretel was an only child, and although her father loved her dearly, her mother did not. Her mother was not her real mother; she was her step-mother, and had no extraordinary love for little Gretel.

Because of their extreme poverty, this wicked woman convinced Gretel’s father that they should abandon the girl in the woods. She told the woodcutter that they would surely starve otherwise, as they had nothing at all to eat in the house.

Gretel was surprised when her mother and father took her into the woods, but as she was just a little girl, she followed them quite willingly. When they were in the forest, her mother told her that she must gather firewood. Gretel had never done such a thing before, but she understood that this meant she was becoming a Big Girl, and she was excited that such an opportunity was being given to her.

Gretel went out eagerly through the forest, searching for any sticks of a size that she could carry. She soon had an armful (for little arms take only a little filling), and she hurried back to find the place where her parents had been.

But she could not find it. She found a spot that she thought must be it, but here mother and father were not there. In the changing light of the forest she could not be certain, and so she went on looking for the place.

She looked and looked, but she found only more forest; more trees; more strange places with strange noises. It was growing dark, and the shadows cast by the trees were very long and very deep. From time to time she could hear scurrying and rustling in the woods around her, but she couldn’t see anything.

It was not only growing dark, but cold as well. Gretel was tired, and hungry, and very, very frightened.

It was no surprise that when she saw a light in the distance, she ran hastily towards it, calling for her mother and father. But there was no mother or father to be found at the source of the light. Instead, Gretel found a cottage.

At first she was very discouraged and upset that her parents were not there, but this quickly changed as she realized she had never seen such a cottage before in her life.

The cottage was made of gingerbread and candy. It was no toy cottage but a real house! A great big house, all made of sugar and confectionary delight! Gretel could not believe her eyes. She dropped her bundle of wood and gaped at the the sight before her.

And then her tummy rumbled and she remembered how famished she was. All thoughts of her parents had flown from her mind; she ran straight to the cottage and began to yank away chunks, shoving them into her mouth as quickly as she could.

The poor little girl was really starving; she had never been fed well in the best of times, and so she might be forgiven for the manner in which she devoured those pieces of the house which she managed to break off.

But she was startled by the sound of the door to the cottage opening, and, frightened, she jumped back from the wall of the house.

An old woman – an extremely old woman – came out of the door.

“Why, my dear child!” exclaimed the old woman. “You must not eat my house, my dear. You must come inside, if you are hungry, and I can make you a supper. The sweets I build my house of are poor fare; I have much better that I can give you.”

Little Gretel backed away. She was sure that she must be scolded, having been caught so vigorously attacking the old lady’s house. The old woman, seeing her fear, laughed and said, “Do not worry about the house, my dear. See, it is already better!”

Gretel looked, and to her great astonishment, the corner of the house from which she had taken pieces was whole and sound, with no parts missing at all!

“It is a special house,” said the woman. “Now, if you will come in, I will fix you a supper.”

To the wide-eyed little girl, this was an incredible and marvellous thing, and, unable to say anything at all, she nodded and followed the old woman into the house.

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