Miso and the Wolf

Miso and the Wolf
A Children's Story

Soundtrack by Sergei Prokofiev

One fine May Day Miso was out gallivanting, enjoying making pretty thingies and chattering to all the other animals in the forest when she heard the twitter of many birds telling her that a Wolf was on her track, oh noes!

She laughed, telling the birds that surely she was not afraid of a Wolf, especially because she had spent a great deal of time investigating the history of this particular forest and was well-acquainted with the Wolf in question, who actually used to make sensible speeches long ago before unsuccessfully trying to blow down the 3rd Little Pig's house because he was too dim-witted to tell a brick house from straw. This incident seemed to break something inside the Wolf's mind and begin a long spiral into the Wolf's present-day madness.

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This Wolf was a pitiful thing. Despite bragging about going to the finest schools, the Wolf's conversation was filled with not only unsupportable slurs but obvious fabrication, dissemblings and assertions that were easily shown to be false and in language that most educated people would consider a very low-class sort of speech, fit for scurrilous tabloids, sailor's bars and the questionable tracts of unbalanced zealots and crazies [Miso wondered if the Wolf kissed her mother with that mouth].


For instance, the Wolf claimed that Miso was a chatterbox (which was well-known to all and sundry, so 2pts for obviousness) and that Miso chattered much, much more than the Wolf; the Wolf insinuated that this made anything she said suspect and questionable, because persons of good taste, like the Wolf of course, tried for succinctness in their verbiage. Miso thought this hilarious [having suffered through some pretty swampy and stenchy speeches by the Wolf] and she called her magical Word Count Fairies to come and judge the truth of this matter.

She allowed the fairies complete freedom, opening her Diary to them and pointing them to the Wolf's own voluminous speeches and asking for a fair account of word usage. After a bit of time, the fairies returned with the following results of their meticulous counting of recent entries in both the Wolf's and Miso's diaries:

Miso's longest entry to date had been 3,456 words [this was a big Dear Diary day!] but the Wolf's entry complaining about Miso talking so much was 3994 words. "Ok," thought Miso, "this was kinda close. Maybe the Wolf has a point." The fairies cracked up, hooting and guffawing so loudly that they disturbed a Bear, who was trying to wake up after the long winter nap and hadn't had coffee yet and was grumbly. The fairies entertained the bear with the Wolf's story, continuing to report their results:

MS: 2146
Wolf: 4610

MS: 1602
Wolf: 3344

MS: 1048
Wolf: 9426

"Wow!" said Miso at that last one, "And I thought I was a chatterbox!" And she looked ruefully at her Chatty Cathy Charter Club Member Card that she usually displayed proudly. This made all the birds, fairies, elves and even the grumpy Bear laugh [which is what Miso liked to do, make her friends laugh]

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The Wolf, hearing all this fun and happiness, came stumping through the woods, growling and snapping. "What's all this ******* fun about?!?! You are disturbing my rentals, which bring me money, money, money with your technocommunist babbling!" The Wolf proceeded to make one of his usual windy speeches in which he claimed many absurd and impossible things, such as being able to read Miso's mind and that in true democracy [as envisioned by the Wolf] people like the Wolf would be free to express their opinions on anything, irregardless of conflicting facts and that in this Wolf-democracy, every right-thinking being would of course agree with the Wolf. People who did not agree with the Wolf's idea of democracy should be shot or perhaps burned at the stake for the Wolf's gratification and entertainment because they were members of a horrible conspiracy of technocommunistic anarchists.


Miso and her friends kindly tried to point out to the Wolf various elementary problems and conflicts of both logic and fact in the Wolf's speech [even the squirrels chimed in, and we all know squirrels aren't the best of scholars, suffering from ADHD and often being distracted -"Oooo! Human!"]. The Wolf continued to argue, although most of the animals agreed that "argument" and "debate" to the Wolf meant bullying with made-up "facts" and a foul-mouthed delivery that would have Miss Manners [as well as any fledgling journalist] blanching in dismay at this morass of viperish bombast and bile.


For instance, the Wolf claimed that a Clock Miso had made had "planets" in it. When Miso politely pointed out that there were no planets in the Clock, the Wolf insisted there were; when Miso asked what exactly the Wolf thought were "planets" the Wolf pointed to 4 circles made up of the serpent Ouroboros, which Miso had cleverly worked into the Clock as a comment on the cycles of Time [which was what a Clock was all about anyway] which Miso assumed an educated person would have recognized. The Wolf also made sarcastic comments about "wondering if the Clock actually told time." This was funny to Miso and her friends, as no person who had ever bought the Clock from Miso in the two years and more that it had been offered for sale had had the least difficulty actually reading the readily-available notecard about the Clock, which would have informed the Wolf that it indeed told Time in adjustable timezones and declinations...

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On and on it went; for every mistaken or invented distortion of the Wolf's, Miso attempted in good humor to bring the Wolf's attention to actual facts, but the Wolf was in a frenzy and would brook no "opposition." Miso was reminded of the argument Alice had with Humpty Dumpty:

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - - that's all.'"

She recalled that this Wolf had boasted "I'm happy to hold grudges in Second Life -- indeed, as long as it takes, if not forever" and had also admitted the despicable practice of gathering freebies [flowers and nuts and fruits from the generous elves, Architects and Builders in the forest and offered freely for anyone for the taking] and reselling these free things for profit; a practice frowned on by most people of any sort of taste and ethical leanings. She also happened to notice that the Wolf was using other people's images and elements in his Diary pages by stealing these items from other places and not even acknowledging that fact, which seemed sort-of two-faced on the Wolf's part [who ranted and railed against free offerings and yet was not troubled at all by taking such benefits from his professed enemies and turning them into a profiteering opportunity].

Miso's attempts to show the Wolf his logical contradictions using his own words went nowhere; the Wolf insisted that these were "lies and distortions" despite being taken from his own speeches and the Wolf, like Humpty Dumpty, was the only person qualified to know what a democracy was and what was proper and right thinking for a democracy, which was of course whatever the Wolf said. The Wolf, growing bored with a conversation he couldn't follow due to the nature of logic and the Wolf's feeble grasp of the fine points of Debate, took umbrage and stalked off in high dudgeon to look for a kitten to kick.

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After awhile, the Bear leaned over to Miso and whispered, "Don't you remember the story of the Tar Baby? You'll never be able to talk sensibly to this Wolf; everyone in the forest knows this Wolf is an insane, vindictive, vituperative, foul-mouthed, lying yellow-bellied coward, inflated with his own opinion of himself and revealing with every slimy slander and lie the constipated and mentally-disturbed nature of the husk of a mind once facile but corrupted now and decaying into pond slime and leaf mould."

Miso blinked at this statement; the Bear looked at her solemnly... and then they both cracked up! Miso hugged the Bear for making her laugh with a witty parody of the Wolf's speeches and the cleverness of the Bear in avoiding the guttersnipe words the Wolf so dearly loved to use while retaining the disgruntled and hyperbolic delivery of the Wolf's ravings.

The Bear pointed out to Miso that the Wolf loved to ladle and lather his speeches with references to many unrelated and repetetive words to fool the Search Fairies into driving traffic to his lair so he could collect some pitiful pennies off misdirected people; that this Wolf, in fact, far from being the Champion Of All Things Right And Proper [which is what the Wolf thought of himself in his own mind] was merely a petty highwayman, laying in wait for travelers; creating bog-traps to ensnare and deadfalls to bludgeon, all to profit off of anger, misery, verbal violence, content theft, defamation of character, slander and the rest of the arsenal of low-bred persons who use quasi-academic verbal bullying to defend a position that is unable to withstand even elementary debate or questions as to statements of fact contained therein.

The Bear showed Miso many instances of the Wolf asserting that he "did not have time to read/view/explore or investigate some situation or object or fact" and then go on at great length with opinions, fabrications and fantastic words put in other people's mouths to defend his idea of what a thing was, or was about, or meant... having, of course, no idea at all [given the above admissions].

The Bear then demonstrated to Miso that almost everything the Wolf said about other people could be easily shown to be the Wolf's own position as regards to almost any issue; that while declaiming to support free speech and individual rights, the Wolf in fact displayed a fascistic and rigid mental structure which would not tolerate any information contrary to the Wolf's own thoughts. [Miso wondered privately if the poor Wolf had hemmorrhoids or scabies or was constipated or something and helpfully started a list of herbal cures for various conditions and problems that might be responsible for the Wolf's mental anguish]

The Bear finished by pointing out that the statements of the Wolf regarding shadowy enemies of Order and Progress [the FIC] were remarkably similar to paranoias and lunacies like The Elders of Zion, The Illuminati, The Grey Aliens, the Reptilians of Zeta Prime, the Knights Templar, Rosicrucians, the Vril Society, Jesuits, Black Helicopters, the Secret Team and a host of other wacky conspiracy theories.

By this time, all the animals at the tea party were laughing hysterically and ran to get costumes and spend the rest of the lovely afternoon playing Spy Vs Spy, Aliens Vs Humans, The X Files [Miso of course being Agent Scully] and other games of silliness and intrigue. And a wonderful time was had by all.

[at Midnight, Agent Miso slipped away to confer with her fellow FOCers and report that the voodoo doll of the Wolf appeared to be functioning quite satisfactorily and recommended a pin in a place "where the Moon don't shine" to further the descent of the Wolf into the heartbreak of psoriasis and insanity]

Certified Word Fairy Count: 1,929

DISCLAIMER: The preceeding was a fictional story of alleged entertainment! Any resemblance to persons living, dead or blogging is merely coincidence, happenstance or the fiendish machinations of a vast diabolically-clever conspiracy designed solely for the purpose of shadowing men's minds and ruling the world.

PS: As a kindness to Wolves who might have trouble with English as a Second Language, here is a Russian translation of this post: Ты мне надоел, сумасшедшая старуха.