Daily Blog Thingie
Spud guns.  Should they be illegal?  Funny article about it here. Actually the article isn't funny, just the last paragraph is, when you find out that the ex-cop who is trying to get them banned is anti gun control.  So he'll defend to the death your right to own an AK-47 or other toys of the deranged office worker or school yard mass murderer, but he wants potato guns made illegal.  Guns don't kill people, potatoes do.

A truly funny article, probably the hardest I've laughed at anything in weeks is here.  It's semi-gross, graphic descriptions of poo, but tastefully done, if that makes any sense.   "Tastefully" in a metaphoric sense, of course.  The premise is that a UK writer and his photographer (though there aren't any pictures with the story?) went on a week's retreat to a purification clinic in Thailand.  Where they endured the regimen of fasting for 7 days, consuming tons of roughage and supplements, and having dozens of enormous enemas.

The human digestive tract is not evolved to deal with the volumes of flesh most humans consume, our bodies can't digest it that quickly, and cubic feet of it back up over time.  Yes, literally feet.  It's a not-uncommon procedure for older people or fat people with intestinal problems to have pounds of crap and partially-digested flesh removed from their lower intestines.  Most anyone could lose 10 or 15 pounds in a few days, all of it just garbage in your intestines.

I've not done it myself, and I've not eaten much flesh for the last decade or so, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to have a go.

Anyway, the article isn't exactly evangelistic about the process, but it's very funny.  Humorous and well-written, with some great lines.  Some of the guests dealt with the fasting better than others.

"It was of little consolation to Mez, whose hunger had now assumed epic proportions. She was considering eating her apricot moisturiser, she told me."

The descriptions of what they evacuated must be read to be believed.

At least I could contribute to the increasingly competitive enema discussions. Someone had always passed something harder, brighter, more bizarre. Margaret's chopsticks had unearthed some gristle, about a foot long, and hard, black pellets. She was so impressed she took a photograph. A few chalets away, Mez had passed "rubbery brown, fat worms" with a strange purple glaze, which she insisted on showing to me in her bathroom. But the clear winner was Anthony's 22-year-old marble. Perhaps the most bizarre thing, which I didn't appreciate until days later, is that it all seemed perfectly normal at the time.

But I sort of like the concept of it for these main page rambling things.

Of course now I need something to ramble about here, or I'll be breaking format.  And we can't have that.

Reading Grimm's Fairy Tales, old book of them I got for $.50 at the book sale Sunday. They are awful.  Not "awful" in the "God that's so cool!  So orr-ee-buuul!" way, but just bad.  Poorly-written, poorly-conceptualized, and often nonsensical.

The way magic and spells rule everything is interesting, but it's totally arbitrary.

There are talking horses, but most horses can't talk.  The ones that can aren't in any way special or different, they can just talk, and have human intelligence.

There are talking animals, but again for no reason.  Sometimes they are people who have been ensorcelled into lycanthropic troubles, but often they are just magical talking animals, with no explanation given for how they have human intelligence, how they can talk, or how they usually know nearly everything about how to break a curse or save a princess or what not.

There are spells here and there, but hardly anyone can cast them.  Though some people can, but there's no mention how they can or why or what their motivation is.

There are totally random and arbitrary killings and great cruelty, usually by kings and princes towards each other, or towards commoners, or whatever.

Basically the world is totally anarchistic and arbitrary, and no one behaves with any logical motivations.  I'd hate for an alien civilization to learn about earth through Grimm's, they (the aliens) would probably just want to wipe us all out on general principles.

One cool/horrible thing in the last one I just read. It's entitled The Goose Girl.

A king found out a maid had betrayed her princess and taken her place, and after telling the story of it (in hypothetical terms) at a banquet, the king asked the betraying nurse maid what the punishment for such a person should be.  The maid (who was married to the king's son, through subterfuge) said:

     The false bride answered, "No better than this: he must be put stark naked into a barrel struck with nails, and be dragged along by two white horses from street to street till he is dead."
     "That is your own doom!" said the King, "and the judgment shall be carried out."
     When the sentence was fulfilled, the young Prince married his true bride, and they ruled their knigdon together in peace and happiness.

So the false bride/ex-maid didn't see that one coming at all, eh?  I mean it's her life story from the last month.

It is a particularly horrible punishment.  Think of that, big barrel, nails poking through probably two inches every foot or so, and you are sealed inside of it, and it's being dragged behind horses.  Not just horses, white horses.

So depending on how they attach the barrel to the horses, it's going to be rolling over and tumbling at least a little, bouncing up and down, and you've got nowhere to brace yourself without being punctured by nails. Hands, knees, sides when you roll over, back etc.  But they are just nails, so nothing approaching a quick death.  Agonizing death by exsanguination and excessive bruising.  I'd predict closet casket burial.

In fact here's the story online. Somewhat different translation than the version I have.

I'm sure there are scholarly papers about how Grimm's Tales reflect on the society at the time they were written.  And in fact here one is.  They were writing in the early 1800's it looks like.

1814. Volume two of Kinder- und Hausmärchen appears in print, pre-dated 1815, adding 70 stories to the previous collection. This famous work will see six additional editions during the Grimms' lifetime. In its final version it will contain 200 numbered stories plus 10 "Children's Legends." It is destined to become the best known and most influential book ever created in the German language.

The tales interest me in how odd they are.  Fragmentary bits of story, with no character development or anything other than stock characters and a quick, usually violent, plot.  Dis Harry Potter all you like, but kids today certainly have a better selection of tales for them than they did 200 years ago.

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