Cartoon Essay:

I enjoyed writing a small essay over the cartoon so much last time that I decided to do it all again. This cartoon is near and dear to my heart -- and despite being a student at a major public university, I witness this mistake far too often.

What makes this cartoon funny? First of all, the inclusion of an elderly couple in any subject immediately makes it a little funnier and a little more adorable. There is something about old people that makes them hilarious. They don't hold back thoughts, and they have enough experience with this mortal realm that makes their responses completely palpable. Now to dive in to the cartoon itself. The conversation begins with an innocent question: Are you making a New Year's Resolution? This response in itself is plain, and doesn't appear to be loaded whatsoever. Next, Opal reveals that she often finds herself criticizing her husband. It is not disclosed what the husband's resolution was, but I like to think it was something about dieting or physical health.

 The following sequence is where the grammar travesty is committed. Either he says "your" in such a way that it could never be understood as "you're", or the Opal in the cartoon just knows he is missspelling and misusing the word in his head. My girlfriend and I actually argued over this for a few minutes, whether part of the point of this cartoon was to show the woman's flaw in assuming her husband would use the incorrect word or if it was to solely show the irony in her original resolution.

The cartoon finishes with a little more of its adorable charm, with the old man quirkily responding, "We're both great." This is a nice ending in which he continues on his path of blissful ignorance.

Storytelling Week 12: Make Friends, Not War

Quail from Wikipedia

A great bird hunter lived with his wife in the Fowl Forest. When the man and his wife first moved to the forest, they thought it was a beautiful place to start a family. Before starting work on building their new cabin, the hunter decided to fetch some easy game from the nearby creek. He ventured along the edge of the creek for only a few minutes before he encountered a wild flock of quail. He knew that these birds could be easily harvested with a simple net. He manufactured the net from some of the wild grasses and thatch from the brush piles nearby.

The net was quickly tossed over the covey. It was expected that some of the quail would escape, and in the violent thrashing of their wings at least two-thirds of the winged dinner escaped. The hunter was happy with his catch, and hiked home proudly to help his wife prepare their delicious dinner.

The next day started much life the one before, and the hunter decided the quail would be an easy catch for him again. He packed his net and roamed over to the creek once again. The capture was not nearly as smooth this time. The quail appeared to work in unison, and tossed the net off within seconds. He only managed to corral one of the fowl by catching it out of the air.  He sulked through the rest of the forest in an attempt to find more prey, but to no avail.

His wife gave him a kiss and wished him good luck on the third day of his hunt. Luckily they saved some of the first day's catch or else they would have gone to bed hungry. The man happened upon the covey once again. As he prepared for his ambushed, he noticed that the quail all were watching him this time. One of them had its wing up in the air much like a general does to signal a charge. The hunter was perplexed by this, and decided it was best to slightly change his course of action. He engineered his net so that it was weighed down substantially burdensome stone weights. He approached the quail again and tossed his net. He was ecstatic about the catch he was about to have, filled with so much excitement that he did not notice the group of quails catching the net in mid-air and dropping it upon him. The quail then proceeded to pin down the hunter under the confines of the net.

The leading quail peered through the net with a pleading look in his eye. Words were obviously not exchanged, but the hunter understood everything completely. The hunter nodded his head in concession. He was then freed from his own trap, and the quail quickly escaped the scene. The hunter decided it was best to never hunt these creatures ever again.

Author's Note:
I wrote a modified version of this story: Quarrel of the Quails. I decided to tell the story from the perspective of the hunter instead of the quail The other significant change was that I made the quails work together to "defeat" the hunter. In fact, in my story, there was really no quarrel between the quail at all.

Jataka Tales: Reading Diary Week12

Link to untextbook selections: Link
Link to Jatakas stories: Link  

Jatakas
These stories are considered the birth stories of buddha, especially in the previous incarnations. Each unit was its own short story.

Monkey and the Crocodile
 I actually already really love these stories. They all read like little story tales from childhood.
The crocodile is clearly the villain in the story, but a good job is done to make one turn against the "greedy" monkey. I thought it was cool how interestingly scienftific the story was. Crocodiles do often drown their prey and then use the jaw to snap their bodies. They usually use the jaw to first immobilize the prey, and then properly drown them. It's also clear pretty early how much smarter the monkey is than the crocodile. Remember the size of a croc brain? It looks like a pea. I think the resolution of the story is quite clever and deep because of how the monkey hears the crocodile's surrender of pursuit, and yet the monkey agrees to never stop looking out for the crock.

How the turtle saved his own life
How hilarious it is that the boys were that scared of a turtle. I hope it was at least a large snapping turtle -- those are probably best to be feared.   Otherwise, the introverted turtle seems less like a demon than some of the fish I've seen. The turtle does a grand job of playing along with the old man's plan to save the turtle. I was confused at first, honestly. I thought the boys were planning to throw him on to the rocks near the lake, not into the lake.

The turtle who couldn't stop talking
 Negative exemplum - when we are supposed to learn a lesson by observing someone's foolish mistake. Very common in fables.
I imagine a really sassy turtle, probably similar to the first story. "Do I look like I can fly with you, you idiot geese?" I say all of this, and the turtle agrees to be suspended above the earth by the grip of his mouth and the talons of the geese. This story is pretty sad compared to the first two.


The ox who won the forfeit
 This man is so proud of his ox, but I never hear of any rewarding of the ox for its great strength. Man only seeks to benefit. This trend rings true whenever the ox refuses to comply because of the harshness of the man's commands.

Quarrel of the Quails
  I read this, and it sounds so familiar to me. I probably have read this before, although I'm unsure where. I think the story characterizes how stupid the quails are. Despite them clearly fighting for their lives each day in the net, they cannot overcome the petty quarrel that occurred.

The Foolish, Timid Rabbit
 If I read this story from another source without the preface that Laura Gibbs included above, I'd have assumed that it was a knock-off of the chicken and "The sky is falling!" It's interesting to know that the origin of the story dates much farther back than previously thought. The lion is smart in this story, but to only assume that the rabbit simply heard a coconut fall. What if a piece of sky had also fallen? I think that might be a dangerous assumption to make!

Banyan Deer
 Another golden deer! The indian storytellers do tend to love their gilded fawns. What a strange relationship between the king and his subjects. The people of his kingdom seem to be taking care of the king, and not vice-versa. The king is also not apparently very smart because he decided to longer hunt either deer population, which according to the story were becoming huge and probably needed to be hunted in order to control the budding numbers. Oh well.

Princes and the Water-sprite
  Even though the promise was made for a different reason, this sounds a lot like what Kaikeyl did in the Ramayana. She wanted her son to receive the kingdom and thus asked to exile Rama. I think it's strange that the eldest brother had this small poem prepared as his answer to the sprite, and it was apparently the correct answer. I think this might have been all a great ruse to teach the younger brothers a lesson.