That's Aesop out of the way, next time it'll be Salinger.

Hey- my friend just asked me about some comic artist, and I was worried I wouldn't be familiar with their work at all- but good news! Finger on the pulse man, finger on the pulse.

As though it wasn't clear already, I prefer to read a book and then comment here. I wanted to get this one out of the way for the past few days, even though I didn't actually finish the thing until this morning- a collection of Aesop's Fables as translated by Laura Gibbs.

It's nice to just sit back and be reminded of some bits of worldly wisdom, but with all the foxes that get eaten by lions, and all the lions that befriend foxes, peacocks wanting a voice, nightingales wanting the feathers, mercy leading to doom, mercy leading to sweet reward- the only lesson that is really consistent is that you have to think things through and judge the individual situation as best you can. Which almost defeats the purpose of having illustrative frame works of potential scenarios aka fables.

Almost. I guess the only time a fable would be told to someone would be as a sort of corrective measure- like say a kid is really reckless around something dangerous and he's told a fable about some similarly reckless creature that ends up stung (usually to death) by bees. That reckless kid doesn't need the corresponding tale about how it'd be bad to be too timid, because timidity isn't the problem his nature has to deal with.

So I suppose it's just silly to sit back and read through a whole bunch of these fables at once when they just negate each other... so I'm the silly one.

I had to post one fable, here's Aesop and the Writer
A man had read to Aesop selections from a badly written work in which he stupidly boasted at length about what a great writer he was. The man wanted to know what Aesop thought, so the writer said to him, 'Surely you do not think I have too high an opinion of myself?' 'Not at all', said Aesop, who was utterly exhausted by the writer's wretched book. 'I think it is a very good idea for you to praise yourself, given that no one else is likely to do so!'

Aaw, snap!

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Ah birthday time. I'm trying to decide which time of the year requires the lower expectations to survive through- birthdays, or Christmas time. Probably Christmas- that's a whole season.
***

In general I take a long time to switch over from summer to fall clothes, fall to winter, winter to spring... well I kept my regular busted shoes until- Was it Febuary? Yeah, probably.- when I had a perfectly good pair of boot-shoe things to wear that would have kept my feet, you know, warm.

But I resisted! Because those boots were too nice, and it wasn't that cold, and I'm always running, so the boots would just make that harder, and with my shoes I just slide them on, while with the boots I'd have to employ that duplicitous art of shoe tying.
Eventually it snowed and I threw on the boots. And yeah, they were awesomely warm and I pretty much immediately regretted how long it took me to make the switch over.

Then on the occasion when I just had to slip out of the house to get some milk or something I used my regular shoes for quickness sake. I was pretty amazed at the difference in my heel- these shoes had no heel left! I shouldn't have been too shocked, the heel is where I always get the holes worn through first, but it felt really weird to go from a good shoe back to an old bad one. It's the reverse of the natural shoe wearing order. For me, anyways.

There was a short little interview with Daniel Lieberman in Tuesdays Metro Health section, a professor of human evolutionary biology, about barefoot running, which accomplished a few things in my head.
It pointed out the proclivity towards mashing ones heel down in most kinds of foot wear, apparently with a force "equivalent to someone hitting you with a hammer on the heel with 1.5 to three times your body weight"- that most shoes are designed to accomodate this action, making it relatively comfortable for us, instead of encouraging us to run on the balls of our feet, thus weakening the overall structure of our feet- what with the fallen arches and whatnot.

Also, the article said humans were made to run- "We can outrun just about every creature in the world over long distances" which I think is awesome. Sure, we're supposed to be a really smart species, but sometimes you're just dumb enough to miss that last bus- and when that happens all there is to do is run for it.

P.S.- Pretend like I ended on that last note, because that would have sounded cool... but I forgot to mention that the article also brought up the Tarahumara tribe in mexico, these guys I had previously learned about thanks to the Daily Show, who are insanely good long distance runners. So... hey! I recognise that word in the paper.