Take Pride in the Small Things

I'd like to take a moment and brag about the amount of bullshit that just gracefully flowed from my mind down through my fingertips into a Word document containing my end-of-semester research paper. The paper is on "The Rose Elf," a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. "God, that's easy, how difficult is it to write about a little kid's bedtime story?" Well, there are two things wrong with your condescending inquisition.

1. This is by no means a 'little kid's bedtime story'. The general plot? Girl likes boy, boy likes girl, girl's brother doesn't like boy, brother stabs boy to death in the woods and chops off his head then buries him under a tree, elf sees this and tells girl, girl digs up body but is too weak to carry the whole thing so she just takes the head home, girl plants head in flower pot, plant grows from head, girl dies of sorrow, brother takes nice looking plant, elf and plant join forces to kill brother, the end.

2. No, it shouldn't be that hard to write about this, you're right. The catch is that you're told to write a ten page researched paper with multiple sources on a three page fairy tale. Yeah, it's a bit of a stretch, hence the large amount of bullshitting involved.

But I'm not here to whine about school, as I'm sure that blog post will come soon enough. (Most likely in the next day or so, so get excited!) I'm here to rant and rave about the 1.5 double-spaced-times new roman-twelve-point-font-one inch-margin pages that I just churned out in no more than 20 minutes; all of which is complete (excuse my language) hogwash and contains no intelligent or awe-inspiring revelations. Then why am I so proud of myself? Well, you see, these 1.5 pages of complete bull contain no interesting information according to your everyday, sane, average Joe. One must remember one's audience. I am writing this for a Scandinavian Literature guru, one who, every time we meet in discussion, is taken aback that we don't make the connections he does between the wording of a sentence and the political and religious goings on of the time. (Personally, Andersen was writing fairy tales. Yes, they had lessons, all fairy tales do, but come on, you're making this WAY more difficult than it needs to be.)

20 minutes later

And I've just taken a slight break from the computer and no longer have any real desire to continue this post. And I'm hungry. But the point is, I'm darn good at making things up. Go me. Rah rah.