I love cheese. It is my friend. I just received several cheese-consumption-related gifts for my birthday. And I have two new favorite cheeses:
Carr Valley's Cocoa Cardona and Ilchester's Cranberry wensleydale.
Mmm...cheese.
posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments
Once there was a fama who was very rich and had a maid. This fama would use a handkerchief and then throw it in the wastebasket. If he used another, he would throw that in the wastebasket, too. All of his used handkerchiefs went into the wastebasket. When he ran out, he would buy another box.
The maid collected all these handkerchiefs and kept them for herself. But as she was very shocked by the fama's behavior, a day came when she couldn't contain herself any longer, and she asked him whether he really wanted to throw all those handkerchiefs away.
"You idiot," replied the fama, "you shouldn't have asked." From now on you can wash my handkerchiefs and I'll save my money.
Trade
The famas built a factory for making garden hoses, and they hired a bunch of cronopios to coil and package them. The cronopios had barely made it onto the factory floor when a great happiness broke out among them. There were green hoses and red ones, blue hoses, yellow and purple ones. They were transparent and once you laid them out you could see the water running through with all of its bubbles and occasionally a surprised insect. The cronopios began to whoop loudly, and they wanted to dance the tregua and the catala instead of working. The famas were infuriated, and immediately invoked Sections 21, 22, and 23 of the company regulations, in order to avoid any recurrence of such behavior.
But because the famas are careless, the cronopios awaited favorable circumstances and took off in a truck with a bunch of hoses. And when they came upon a little girl, they cut her a piece of blue hose, and prevailed upon her to jump rope with it. So that soon, on all the corners, there were most beautiful blue transparent bubbles with little girls inside them, like a squirrels in a cage. The girls' parents hoped to take away the hoses so they could water their lawns, but soon realized that those tricky cronopios had punctured the hoses so that the water leaked out of them and they couldn't be used for anything. After a while, all the parents got tired and the girls went back out to the corners and jumped and jumped.
The cronopios used the yellow hoses to decorate various public monuments, and they used the green ones to lay African-style traps right in the middle of the municipal rose garden, so that they could watch the esperanzas fall in, one after another. The cronopios danced the tregua and the catala around the captive esperanzas, and the esperanzas reproached them for it, saying,
"Cruel, cruel cronopios! So cruel!"
The cronopios, who didn't wish anyone any harm, helped them out and gave them pieces of red hose. That way, the esperanzas could go back to their homes and achieve their greatest desire: to water their green gardens with red hoses.
The famas closed down the factory and gave a huge dinner full of morose conversations and waiters who served the fish course amidst enormous sighs. And they didn't invite a single cronopio, and only the esperanzas that hadn't fallen into the traps in the rose garden, because the others had gotten pieces of hose and the famas were annoyed with them.
Charity
The famas are capable of acts of great generosity. For example, a fama once came upon an esperanza who had fallen while trying to climb a coconut palm. The fama took the esperanza home, nursed him and offered him peace and relaxation until he was strong enough to try climbing the tree again. The fama felt very good about himself after all of this, and in reality, he was very good, except that it never occurred to him that in a few days the esperanza would fall out of the tree again. So while the esperanza was laid up at the foot of that palm tree for the second time, the fama was out at his club, feeling great about himself and thinking all about how he helped the eperanza when he found him fallen for the first time.
The cronopios are ungenerous on principle. They walk right by the most moving sights, such as a poor esperanza who doesn't know how to tie his own shoes and sits crying on the curb. Those cronopios don't even look at the esperanza: they're too busy watching a newborn spider sailing along on a bit of webbing. Being like that, the cronopios can't really practice charity, and so all the foundations and philanthropic institutions have famas as officers and boardmembers, with an esperanza for secretary. Acting from these positions, the famas lend a lot of help to the cronopios, who don't even notice.
posted by Reen |link| ...talkety...0 comments
