Thursday, July 31, 2014

Snow White - Revisited

The Peter Pan Saga I posted here a while back had a not entirely unexpected after-effect on me, which is that now all the weird things in kids stories are harder and harder to ignore.  I'll try not to belabor the point as much as I did with Peter Pan with this one... I know, I do that... anyway here goes.

Snow White
Originally by the Brothers Grimm - Revisited by Me, Zach


Long ago in a faraway kingdom there was a princess named Snow White.  Her father the king had wanted to name her Snow Yellow, but his lovely wife the queen had talked him out of it at the last minute.  Then she promptly kicked the bucket.  The king remarried, and picked the hottest woman in the kingdom as a wife. This proved to be a terrible idea because he promptly kicked the bucket too, leaving Snow White with an evil narcissistic biotch of a stepmother.

The new queen, who had no qualifications whatsoever for ruling a kingdom as far as anybody knows, was a beautiful rotten bastard of a woman.  As Snow White entered into adolescence, growing prettier every day, the queen got jealous of her to the point of obsessive insanity.  She made Snow White dress in rags and toil endlessly, day and night, much like every other person in the kingdom except for her.  Snow White didn't even bitch about it.  She kept it real, because she knew how to handle situations like that since she'd read Cinderella already and recognized that her story was exactly the same sans the ugly stepsisters.

She knew that all she had to do was wait, and a rich handsome guy would pop by and abscond with her to a better place.  Little did she know that the queen was also somehow a sorceress with a mirror that talked and whatnot.  Every day the queen stood before it and asked it if she was still the choicest piece of tail in the kingdom.  The mirror, which had been hanging in that same room for a ridiculously long time and hadn't seen any other women besides her and Snow White, had no friggin idea.  It was a talking mirror, not some omniscient being that could see everybody and somehow understand beauty on an expert level, so it just said "Yep, you still got it sister".

Time passed, and one day the queen was standing there asking the mirror the same stupid question, but the mirror was a little bit hung over from partying the night before and wasn't in any kind of mood to have to keep up a crazy woman's ego.  The queen asked "Mirror mirror on the wall, do I have the most devastatingly gorgeous butt-cheeks of all?"  And the mirror, in an irritated voice, said "Are you kidding me, with that saggy butt?  It looks like a shovel, so no.  No you don't.  The other chick who walks around here in rags though, lemme tell you there's some junk in that trunk baby, that booty pops!"

And the queen was furious, because she'd been doing yoga and eating spinach salads for lunch every day and it wasn't paying off, so she picked up a vase to throw at the mirror and the mirror was like "What are you gonna do lady, break me?  That's seven years bad luck, and ain't nobody got time for that"  The queen was like "Dammit!" and instead decided to take out her rage on the princess.

Naturally, if someone is better looking than you, the only logical thing to do is to kill them violently, so the queen called for the huntsman.  There was only one huntsman, evidently.  He showed up thinking the queen had worn out her squirrel-skin thong again and wanted a new one or something, and was surprised when she ordered him to kill the princess, cut out her heart, and bring it back in a little jeweled box.  That seemed odd, but orders is orders so off he went to talk her into going on a trip out into the woods.  She went with him, which was a terribly irresponsible decision on her part if you think about it.

Once out in the woods, Snow White was dancing around in a field of flowers and butterflies and stuff, and she looked all innocent and beautiful so the huntsman decided that he'd rather not murder her just then.  Instead, he told her to run aimlessly around in the forest with no supplies or survival skills at all, and never to go home.  She took off into the trees in a panic.  The huntsman needed a heart, so he slaughtered a pig, cut out its heart and put that in the little box for the queen. She was pretty stoked about it, and sent the huntsman on his way.

The mirror had no idea that Snow White was supposed to be dead, it just figured she was down in the kitchen still looking all fine, so when the queen approached it with that same old nonsense it said "What?  No!  It's been like a day, you haven't had time to whip that ass into shape yet.  Snow White's booty is still better, why don't you get on a stair-master and leave me the hell alone!"  The queen was mad, and hungry, so she quickly fried an egg on her forehead and went down into her meth lab to cook up some sorcery.

Meanwhile, Snow White rampaged around in the woods until she exhausted herself and passed out in a heap on the ground.  Woodland creatures like rabbits and deer and chipmunks and such came over to see if she was edible, but she woke up suddenly and then they were all friends.  The animals led her to a cottage, which was small and quaint and had a thatched roof and a chimney, which seems unsafe.  She knocked, but nobody answered, so she took a page from Goldilocks's playbook and went in anyway.

The inside of the house was wrecked.  Dust and dirty dishes and flies and moldy, child-sized boxer shorts were strewn around everywhere.  It was obvious that some horrible squalid little children lived there, unsupervised and feral like in Lord of the Flies.  Snow White, being desperate and having no real other skill set, decided that she'd clean the place and see if she could live there as the maid.  The animals helped her clean, because that makes no sense whatsoever.

When she finished with the downstairs, she went upstairs and saw seven little beds, each with a name carved in the headboard.  The names were:  Giddy, Tired, Pissed-off, Sickly, Introverted, PhD, and Dumb-ass.  "What funny names!" she said, and immediately passed out in a random bed, inadvertently inventing a new version of drunken hooker roulette that doesn't involve getting the clap.  She didn't know it, but they weren't children at all who lived there, they were dwarfs.  Miners, rather than minors, as it were.



The dwarfs had toiled all day in the mines, presumably for some harsh overlord.  When they got home and found the place clean, they flipped out.  Then they noticed that there was soup in the cauldron over the fire, and ascertained that somebody might be upstairs.  Nobody wanted to go investigate, despite the fact that they were all armed with pick-axes, so they sent Dumb-ass because he was mentally challenged and the others considered him expendable.  He poked his head up to see what was going on, and found the hottest girl in the kingdom passed out in his bed.

Soon the room was full of dirty little men with digging utensils staring at Snow White.  She woke up suddenly, sat up in the bed, and somehow wasn't terrified at all.  Because each of the dwarfs had only one characteristic by which they were named, she knew who they all were.  Like any group of seven dudes in a house in the middle of the woods who come home and find a beautiful woman who wants to move in with them, they said "Fuck yeah you can live here!"

Snow White made them all bathe, and they then proceeded to bust out accordions and penny-whistles.  Then there was some dancing, laughing and general merriment, and Snow White went to bed after writing "Interesting day - more dwarf-bathing than usual" in her journal.  The next morning, the dwarfs went off to work and she kissed them all on the way out.  They told her to be careful and not to talk to strangers as if she were six years old and random passers-by were a regular sort of thing out in the middle of the woods.

Back at the palace, the queen had been hard at work coming up with an overly elaborate plan that didn't make any sense.  She knew where Snow White was, so it probably would have been pretty easy just to roll out there and stick a pitchfork in her head, but instead she concocted a potion that once taken would transform her into an old hag so Snow White wouldn't recognize her.  The potion also turned her robes into rags, so that was some pretty powerful stuff.  Then she dipped an apple into some poison that she'd brewed, and talked to herself the whole time saying things like "When she bites into this apple, she'll fall into a deep sleep and can only be woken by loves first kiss" as if she knew that there was a hidden camera in the room.

The queen failed to realize that putting Snow White to sleep isn't the same as killing her, and technically she'd still be rockin' the bumpinest booty around, so the problem wouldn't be solved at all.  Oblivious to that obvious fact, the queen hobbled her raggedy ass out to the cottage, rolled up to the window and offered Snow White an apple.  Snow White ignored the dwarfs advice, took the apple, took a bite, and crumpled to the floor like a pair of silk panties.  The queen buggered off, and the forest animals went to get the dwarfs for help.

The dwarfs rushed back to the cottage and found what they thought was Snow White's lifeless corpse on the kitchen floor.  This pissed them off, and they chased after the queen.  A thunderstorm rolled in, lightning cracked across the sky, rain pelted them, and still they chased.  The queen chose a mountain path for her escape, and tried to kill the dwarfs by crushing the life from their wee bodies with a boulder, but that didn't work.  Instead, she slipped on some schmutz and plummeted to her splattery death on the rocks below, and nobody felt bad for her at all because two wrongs DO make a right and we've all been trained that revenge killings are okay, especially in Texas.

Back at the cottage, the dwarfs decided that Snow White was too beautiful to bury, so they put her on a slab and put a glass dome over her so that they could watch her slowly rot.  Despite the fact that they only knew her a single day, the dwarfs are debilitated with grief, and sit in a circle around the corpse-display case with their heads bowed day and night.

After a while, for no discernible reason, a prince happened to pop by.  Not just some regular Joe-bag-o-donuts asshole on a donkey.  A prince.  He spotted the circle of sad little bald and bearded men through the trees, and noticed that there was a dead chick in a glass bubble there.  Naturally, he does what any self-respecting necrophiliac would do in that situation.  He opens up the glass dome, probably letting out all kinds of body funk that would have been trapped in there like little farts and bad breath and whatnot, leans in, and plants a juicy smucker right on her lifeless lips.  That seems pretty normal.

The prince didn't know about the convenient caveat in the evil queen's apple spell about love's first kiss.  He's about to make a clean getaway when up she pops, all fresh and alive and smiling despite the fact that she hasn't moved or eaten or peed in who knows how long.  He doesn't even freak out.  Neither do the dwarfs, they're just relieved.  She gets on the horse, thanks the dwarfs for not embalming her and putting her under the lettuce patch, and rides off with the prince proving once and for all that as long as you're pretty enough, all you have to do is wait and some rich guy will take care of you for the rest of your life, even if he thinks you're dead.

Nobody thanks the forest creatures for anything, even though they facilitated a lot of what went on.

The seven suddenly-unberieved and friend-zoned dwarfs are left standing in the woods with an empty above-ground coffin, proving once and for all that if you let a girl move in with you, play music for her, give her food, worry about her, become a vigilante killer for her, and devote your life to mourning her if she dies, she'll leave and ride off with the first rich necrophiliac who happens to pop by on a horse.

We're led to believe that everyone lived happily ever after.

The end.



Monday, July 28, 2014

The Jabberwocky - Revisited


For the small target audience who will appreciate this, may I present:

The Jabberwocky 
By Lewis Carroll - Revisited by me, Zach.  


The wabe was awash in the sort of gimbleing and gyreing that so often permeated the slithy toves, especially on a balmy, brillig kind of a day such as it was.  Even the borogoves were mimsy, and despite their usual cantankerousness the mome raths were positively outgrabe.  

"Keep yer eyes peeled for the Jabberwock!" said the old man, teetering precariously from the porch railing.  He gestured with a gnarled cane. 

"It wields not just the slavering jaws that'll bite ye, but also the claws that make with the catching of yer sorry behind.  Beware!  And he ain't alone.  The Jubjub bird'll be worth shunning, and that forever frumious wanker of a Bandersnatch as well!" 

So not to venture unarmed into the proverbial belly of the beast, he rooted around in the back of the closet for his vorpal sword which he took in hand before yay verily buggering off to parts unknown.  He was gone a long time indeed, as he sought that manxome foe.  

After much seeking and little finding, he at last partook in the ancient and time-honored craft of loafing, this time against a Tumtum tree, whereupon he commenced to thinking.  

As he rested, uffishly contemplating his next move, what should come whiffling through the tulgey wood but the Jabberwock, burbling tremendously, presumably fresh from a comfortable couch in Colorado given the flame-like state of its eyes.  

It was at this juncture that a fierce battle commenced betwixt the Jabberwock and he, the likes of which the world had never borne witness. 

He closed his eyes lest he see what he was doing, and waved the vorpal sword with reckless abandon furiously about in the air.  In order to distract himself, he counted as high as he could. 

"One, two!"  He yelled, and upon realizing he'd reached the highest number known by him, he started over.
"One, two!"  

Little did he know it, but the vorpal sword had pierced the monster through, and through again as he flailed around wildly.  It had perpetrated a little snicker snacking of its own.  The Jabberwocky was headless when he left it, and quite dead.  He wiped the goop from the vorpal sword, sheathed it and galumphed back with the head in a smelly burlap bag.  

"Did ye smite the Jabberwock?" asked the old man.  

No answer was necessary, as the head of the thing was clearly mounted on a pike next to the porch stairs, opposite the hummingbird feeder.  

"Give us a squeeze then, ye beamish whelp!  'Tis a frabjous day indeed, this!"  The old man was riddled with joyful exuberance, and yelled "Callooh!" and "Callay!" alternately, in between mirthy chortles.  

The wabe was awash in the sort of gimbleing and gyreing that so often permeates the slithy toves, especially on a balmy, brillig kind of a day.  Even the borogoves were mimsy, and despite their usual cantankerousness the mome raths were positively outgrabe.  


The Jabberwocky 
 Lewis Carroll

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"


He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!


One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.


Image and Reference: http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/jabberwocky.html