The Rabbit and the Bricklayer

Once upon a time, in the little town of Le'Oiseau Bleu, lived a hardworking bricklayer named Robert LeMaçon. Now, Robert, being very a very busy bricklayer, decided to plant a vegetable garden out of necessity to his family and a fascination for the way things grew.
So it was in the smallish field behind his smallish home in the smallish town of Le'Oiseau Bleu that, after work he removed the grass and rocks, and tilled the soil until it would become fine and soft. He built even rows of black soil mounds, and sowed the few seeds he bought with his meager pay to grow a smallish garden. He watered the soil diligently everyday. He eagerly waited for the greens to pop through the well tilled soil.
His lazy neighbor, Monsieur Cheval Ane laughed, as Robert LeMaçon, the bricklayer had attempted a garden of this sort before.
Now, it came to pass with the sun gently beginning to warm the Earth that through the soft ground came sprouts of green in neat little rows on top the soft, black soil that Robert LeMaçon had created.
He pointed to the little sprouts with great excitement and exclaimed to the family du LeMaçon, "Nous aurons les haricots, les carottes, le chou frisé et le chou. Ne voyez-vous?"
La femme du LeMaçon smiled at her husband and went about her business tending to everything else that Robert did not obsess himself with.
One day after working in the hot sun, Monsieur LeMaçon came home to see a tiny rabbit belonging to Monsieur Cheval Ane in his garden. Robert was enraged to find that Lapin had eaten the top green leaves off of his bean plants, his carrots, his kale and his cabbage.
He stomped forward with his angry feet, and then he yelled, "Sortir de mon jardin, bébé lapin stupide!"
The rabbit, Lapin, quickly took to foot and ran through holes in Robert's old wired fence. And as Lapin took to the path behind Robert's house, with his belly full of delicious greens, he laughed and laughed.
That evening, skipping his evening meal with much protest from his wife, Robert went to task repairing his fence and building a stone wall, all the while smoke poured from his nostrils in anger.
When he finished, he stood rubbing his sore and calloused hands together, and noticed that Lapin had fortunately not eaten all of his plantings and he was no longer angry. His plants would surely be safe and grow well.
The next day, Robert awoke and looked out at his garden as the sun rose. And in the corner of his proud little garden, hiding behind the remains of green tops of his beans stood Lapin, only the rabbit had grown twice its original size.
Enraged, Robert sent out Chien.
“Tuer ce lapin stupide!”
Chien beared its sharp yellow teeth, and quickly ran towards Lapin. But Lapin was very smart indeed and found a spot in the stone wall through which to escape. Chien, with all of her speed hit the wall. Defeated, she howled and whimpered back to Robert.
Robert set to task repairing any holes in his stone wall. He dug a deep trench surrounding the garden and poured water into it, hoping that Lapin could not swim.
Robert’s neighbor, Monsieur Cheval Ane yelled angrily at him for making such noise and for trying to keep Lapin out of his garden.
“Mon Lapin devraient être autorisés à être dans votre jardin! Quelle injustice!”
Lapin belonged to the lazy Monsieur Cheval Ane, who never worked. His property was overrun with weeds and pieces of his house had fallen. The house smelled of fetid fat. And Monsieur Cheval Ane refused responsibility for Lapin.
“Lapin est le vôtre. Pourquoi devrais-je nourrir Lapin? Lapin est de votre responsabilité!”
Monsieur Cheval Ane raised a fat fist at Robert and went back into his house.
Monsieur LeMaçon considered his neighbor and no longer wondered why Lapin would rather stay elsewhere.
Robert was covered with mud. His back, legs and arms were sore, and his yard had become significantly smaller and made filthy by flattened green grass because of the moat he had constructed; however, his remaining vegetables were now free to grow. And he smiled.
But that night, the very clever Lapin, had gotten into the garden as Robert slept. Lapin ate his beans, carrots, kale and cabbage to his heart’s content and with his stomach full, fell into a deep sleep on the very soft soil.
Robert awoke early that morning for work. The sun had yet to show its face and the lights in his neighborhood were still dark. He put on his boots and walked out the door. He looked over to his garden, and saw the black silhouette of Lapin sleeping on the soft soil where once stood the efforts of his garden.
Lapin had grown two times three times four times his original size. He had become a very fat rabbit indeed.
Robert slowly walked up to Lapin, so as to not scare him away. But Lapin, full of vegetables that did not belong to him, could not awaken. Robert, the bricklayer, quickly built a wall of mortar and stone around Lapin, and topped it off with an enormous capstone with two large points on top to keep Lapin from ever escaping.
“Si vous ne pouvez pas empêcher de ne pouvez pas entrer le lapin, je le garderai dans”
As the sun slowly rose to greet the town, the capstone with two large points, cast a shadow on Monsiuer Cheval Ane’s property that looked like Lapin.
And like the shadow moves across the land and disappears – so too will Lapin.
-Fin-

Responsibility Dialogue

What’s the cure for this disease?
You’re asking me?
Yes. And stop answering with a question. That really drives me nuts. Do you understand?
Well – wasn’t that a question?
Yes, but…
You get to answer the questions with questions. So why can’t I?
Because – I am the one who is supposed to be asking them, right?
Right? What gives you the right?
Can you just answer the question?
Which one?
The first one. What is the cure for this disease?
You’re asking me?
Look.
Where?
Stop it.
What?
You know what?
I…
What’s the cure?
I…
I…
… don’t know.
What do you mean you don’t know? You started this whole thing.
Did I?
Yes.
They did. Not me.
So, you’re not responsible?
No – No.
So. Who is then?
Responsible?
Yes. Who is responsible?
These questions are hard.
Life’s hard.
Yeah, but…
It just keeps getting harder.
How?
Take some responsibity.
Responsibility?
It used to be the norm.
Responsibility? Getoutahere!
No seriously. When men were still men, and not these namby-pamby, pantywaists obsessed with six-pack abs and designer enemas, men did such brazen activities as honing up to it.
Honing?
A little archaic – true, but it meant bearing the brunt and ramifications of what they had done – both good and bad.
Bunt and ramming – I don’t get it.
Ah! A good example would be your general lack of understanding.
I blame the teachers.
Why?
I don’t know. Maybe my parents.
Why?
Well they were the one’s responsible for teaching me.
Teaching what?
These are hard questions.
Life’s hard.
Getting harder?
Yep.
What about your type 2 diabetes?
Fast food restaurants. McDonalds, KFC… I am hungry.
Restraint. Try it.
Retrain?
Restraint - it means to wait or to hold back. And this case I am refering to your need for instant gastrological gratification.
My what? Man am I hungry. Can you spot me a few dollars?
You have no money?
No money. Right!
Why?
Those evil credit card companies. They...
They what?
They keep taking it.
Well - you know that big screen television.
The one that hangs in that rat shack you call a home? Yes.
I bought it. And now...
ANd now what. Who bought it?
I did.
How did you buy it?
This credit card.
And you bought it?
Yeah.
With whose money?
Well - mine eventually. I mean - come on, it's a monster HiDef television.
So?
I have to make the payments, and if I want to watch the dang I have to get HiDef capable cable or satellite. And that costs -
So?
That cable company they keep threatening to shut off my cable programs if I don't pay - so I pay, and then I have to pay for my TV.
Why did you get such a big and expensive TV?
The neighbors -
The neighbors? Really?
Yeah.
Your neighbors just got foreclosed on.
Those greedy banks! Taking property that does not belong to them.
Really? How do you figure?
Ummm.
Your neighbors signed a note saying "in good faith" that they would pay to the bank a monthly fee called -
A mortgage.
Right. And they defaulted.
Well, their rate jumped.
Adjustable rates do that. They chose to get in at a nice low rate, in the hopes that it would go even lower. It did not pan out. They too much house and invested in a gamble and lost.
Yeah, but...
You ever go to a casino?
Yeah. Vegas baby!
Who always wins?
That depends.
The house always wins.
But...
Always! When you gamble you are taking a chance against "the house".
And they always win, right?
Right. Those people who lost an entire life savings on Wall Street?
Hmm. I lost a lot too.
There are those little words near where you place a signature that state that there is no guarantee that you won't lose it all.
I did not see those words.
Small print.
Yeah. Alot of small print.
Didn't read them did you? Well - had you read them you may have realized the risk. And perhaps realized that there are no guarantees on Wall Street, at your job if had one, and you home and...
Stop!
Do you understand what I am saying to you?
Yes!
Tell me.
I am fat, because I am a lazy food junky who has never held anything heavier than a 40. I am broke and in hock becasue nothing I have I bought with my own money. I don't have a life because I am in so much debt that I can hardly see straight. I lost my money in stocks and am a big fat baby becasue I was too dang gone stupid to understand the small print.
Should I feel bad?
No. It's my fault.
You are responsible?
Yeah.
It'll be okay. By the way, I have this bridge you see and it...

For America - It's not GW's fault, not Clinton, Reagan, the other Bush - nope it's yours. You spent, you trusted, you lounged, and it all grew like a mold, until it encompassed the country. There is an old saying from a great book discounted today because it's hard and mean. It says that if you can not take care of you, someone else will. Thank you America, someone else is now in charge and it is no longer you.

The World According to... Six

In an age of such great access to intellect, one may come to believe that reason and wisdom would follow short in tow - that these two characteristics would surely accompany freely this age of automated know-how. It would only make sense to fully compare this age to the great enlightenment or another renaissance, perhaps as late as through the 1700's and well into the 1800's, during a much romanticized Bohemian period in Western history, and perhaps even further back to Descartes, during a time when doubt and reason walked hand in hand.
In this age of freely passing information, stand rhetoric and inflammatory conjecture as a high art; a void of mostly emotional argumentation with rarely a shred of fact, history or empathy. Media driven "town-criers", who are no more than self prophetic doomsayers, display themselves, often as opposing authorities. Their power is as strong as the people's lack of will to contest it. Their facts are as valid as their admirer's ability to cast away bias.
It has been said however, that history is written by the victors and that truth is theirs to be had - regardless of validity. In a republic-democracy, in which the power is to belong to the people, that same sad truth remains. Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "History is a set of lies agreed upon." Generally, in a government of the majority, truth is a matter of greater percentages. The greater the majority, the greater the slice of truth. The minority, in this case, struggles over the scraps of that percentage, and should their hearts beat loudly enough, continue to drum their axiom until a very fickle people hear that cry.
As a general rule, those who gain power and wishing to remain, go to the youth, as they are seen as the most naive and willing to succumb to those who present them with gifts of truths that they deem valid. Where as the older generation, only a bit wiser are portrayed as curmudgeons who though desiring the same care and gifts are not as maliable - or forgiving. Nor are they as subject to populace opinion, which in a leader's view may be subject to sedition should they be standing is direct opposition of that particular truth.
One need only look to history to catch glimpses as to the power of controlling the truth.

He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.
All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.
Adolf Hitler

In an age and land of free and quickly accessable information, one must guard and live The Truth. Descartes would have us question every aspect of our surroundings and those in authority, and those protecting that authority by delivering those truths.
Believe not without question, because even one's own heart is a vile snake, bent solely on preservation.