Saturday 2 August 2008

Insomnia and Fairy Tales

I haven't really adjusted to the jet lag yet, and my guesthouse is in the middle of Malate and that means Beyonce and Soulja Boy until the sun comes up, which is why I ended up sitting on the patio on the roof of the guesthouse at 5am drinking green tea and reading Grimm's Fairy Tales. (Behold, the finite joys of hostel bookshelves.)

These are awesome (especially Prudent Hans, where the Brothers Grimm take a stab at dialogue and the whole thing ends up sounding like it was written on LSD), but my favorite opening hands-down is this:

"Once on a time, a mouse and a bird and a sausage lived and kept house together in perfect peace among themselves, and in great prosperity. It was the bird's business to fly to the forest every day and bring back wood. The mouse had to draw the water, make the fire, and set the table; and the sausage had to do the cooking."

At 5am, that seems like an eminently sensible arrangement.

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