Once there was a rich man who had two watchmen for his hen houses. One was diligent and one was lazy. The rich man left for a few days to sell his produce at market. While he was gone, the lazy watchman knew the rich man wouldn’t catch him so he slept at night when he should’ve been watching his hen house. A wild animal broke in and stole eggs and ran off several hens. When the rich man returned, he discovered what had happened in the one hen house but yelled at both watchmen.
While, for a few days, the lazy watchman actually stayed awake to watch his hen house, he soon returned to his old habits and began sleeping at night. Soon enough, the wild animal was back to stealing eggs and running off hens. The rich man was furious but he was afraid to fire the lazy watchman because he worried about how long it would take him to find a new watchman. And that meant he would have to be the one staying awake to watch the hen house.
So the rich man decided to have the watchmen walk around the hen house twice as often. The lazy watchman kept falling asleep while the diligent watch man tried to keep up with the extra work. The rich man didn’t pay either man much – not even enough to buy the eggs they watched. The lazy man didn’t mind because he had to sleep anyway. The diligent man didn’t mind because he had some time each night to weave baskets he could sell at the market. But now, while the lazy man still found time to sleep, the diligent man no longer had time to make his baskets.
Soon the diligent watchman quit and found another rich man who needed his hen house watched. However, the rich man had great difficulty finding a second watchman and soon grew tired of staying up to watch a hen house. So, he asked the lazy watchman to guard both hen houses. The lazy watchman demanded to be paid 50% more but argued he was doing the work of two men so it was quite a deal for the rich man. The rich man, while he at first resisted, soon agreed to the lazy watchman’s terms because he could find no other watchman worth hiring.
A FairyTail with Spelling Errors
Deal with it it got attitude
Once upon a time, there were three people who actually spoke Twitter. Because it’s a strange and somewhat puzzling idea to actually speak Twitter, they were quite famous to two OED editors, five lonely comp lit professors, the three known Ingrids in both Hollands and most of the inhabitants of an online forum known by an unwieldy acronym that was a joke about not being an acronym that, as it happens, only half the inhabitants of the online forum got. Well, these Twitterspeakers not only spoke Twitter out loud (often at inappropriate moments) but they were quite obsessive about pronunciation. They even argued about whether ‘#’ was pronounced ‘pound’ or ‘hash’ or ‘sharp’ or ‘number sign’. Well, that’s not exactly it, at least when it came to whether ‘#’ should be called the ‘number sign’. It’s more like they argued about the best way to make fun of people who called ‘#’ the number sign.
In the middle of sorting out the best way to make fun of people who called ‘#’ the number sign, they mercilessly taunted a Twitter troll for having the incredibly bad timing to taunt them by saying only idiots called ‘#’ anything but the number sign just as they were sorting the whole thing out. Of course, most people would’ve told the Twitterspeakers to get a life but this was a troll. And not a terribly bright one, either. How else could you explain someone who didn’t even speak Twitter, even a Troll, arguing in a tweet about how to pronounce ‘#’? A bright Troll knows you’ll never start a good flame war arguing about something that only three people care about.
The Troll (ink on paper) by the author
Well the Troll, he hated… Wait. Right. I should explain why the Troll is a He as opposed to a She or some letter in the range LBTGQN. One should never assume, after all. Well this is, of course, a FairyTail. And in FairyTails, all things are politically correct. And not just any kind of politically correct but the good old fashioned sexist variety of politically correct. One of the rules (C-I.6.18) in Good Old Fashioned Politically Correct Composition (Clements, et al.) is that “the She Villian must wear an anachronistically weird but charismatically enticing hat” and Trolls never ever wear hats. Therefore, Trolls by definition must be He’s in FairyTails. Now, while several guilds are pushing to modernize FairyTail political correctness, even if I thought I could sneak a more current flavor of political correctness, I can’t. Disney put out another casting call and all the She’s in FairyTail Land are down in casting being fitted for crowns and practising to read from the Director’s couch. I filed a complaint but, deadlines being deadlines and our executive producer being a stingy jerk, even our Troll extras have to be He’s. Heck, I’m happy that casting let me have one She to cast as a Twitterspeaker. Otherwise the marketing demographics people would’ve killed the whole deal.
Well, returning to our Troll, He hated all things related to English class because a teacher once did the very un-PC thing of flunking him. To be clear, he wasn’t flunked because he was an idiot (which he most certainly was). He was flunked because he was an idiot and he didn’t even pretend to try and, worst of all, he shot spitwads at the teacher. The teacher wasn’t as dumb as the Troll looked so when the teacher turned around after getting beaned, it didn’t matter who the Troll pointed at. The teacher knew exactly who interrupted the details of where not to use prepositions. Of course, this being a FairyTail, the Troll got his proper consequences and comeuppances and was grounded for a good portion of three days. He even had to stay inside for two hours until his Mom went to play bridge and drink dry martinis. The Troll stewed on how cruel the comeuppers and consequats were for the entire two hours. Of course, all Trolls know how to stew but this Troll could get his stew to a boil in minutes flat.
After two hours of boiling and splattering all over the ceiling, the Troll hated with a special kind of hate, a hatedly hate. He hated English teachers and English classes and all things related to English class. For instance, he hated the OED editors because he’d heard the D in OED wasn’t just a grade one notch higher than the Fthat Teacher gave him but it actually stood for something. Having something stand for something, for anything, was bad enough. But this D stood for Dictionary. If there’s anything this Troll couldn’t stand it was anyone who stood for something, especially a thing that include a letter that stood for Dictionary. It just wasn’t right.
And these people who stood for a word that was an acronym that had a letter that stood for something… these Twitterspeakers had made fun of him.
Then it sunk in. These Twitterspeakers had real followers. Actual real people who listened and retweeted and even responded. Granted they only had 653 followers between them but he only had 23. And, except for Leftie’s Pizza (which didn’t deliver to him) and a a car wash in Moscow (called Автомойки упасть на вас), they were all porn bots. And car washes and pizza places and porn bots don’t even listen. He didn’t get retweets or comments or any of that. All he got were pictures that can’t even be shared in a FairyTail. He realized these Twitterspeakers were worse than English Teachers. No one listens to English Teachers. But, people actually listened to the Twitterspeakers but talked about what they said.
The Troll didn’t just hate these these these Twitterspeakers, he despised them. So he ate them.
