Why I hate St. Patrick's Day, Part I

Once upon a time, there was an evil (but very handsome and charming) prince named John Smith.

Now, as you might imagine, princing is a pretty lucrative business. Still, after a while, the evil prince started to grow bored. He always wanted to do other projects like a musical about OJ Simpson and a video game where the size of your anime girl's breasts increase every time she goes up a level from fighting monsters.

Princing really wasn't the same as it was in the old days, either. It had gone all commercial, and lots of pretenders roamed the land throwing around their second rate princing, as well. Worse, people just weren't as subservient as they used to be, perhaps because so many second rate pretenders running around made it so that seeing a real prince ceased to inspire the awe and dread it once had.

Unfortunately, a real prince can't just shirk his responsibilities. The evil prince also had a brother, but he was REALLY evil, not just evil in an endearing and charming way that made ladies feel moist and fuzzy inside and tended to make them faint into his arms. So, he couldn't allow his more eviler brother to take over because he's already turned his own lands into a Tolkienesque black stain on the heart of the world.

He also had an evil leprechaun stepfather who had married his mother in hamletlike fashion after the death of the king. Eventually, he convinced our evil (but yet brave and even heroic) prince to let him take over...just in name, or so he claimed...and for a small percentage, of course. The prince knew it was a bad idea but the queen mother nagged him nonstop until he made an incredibly foolish decision (never EVER listen to your mother).

Sure enough, as soon as he got his hands on the realm Claudius the clod abused his powers in every way imaginable, and not in a somewhat dispicable but yet understandable "it's good to be the king!" Mel Brooks kind of way, but in an annoying and stupid way that impinged on the lifestyle of our evil (but as I said, heroic and handsome) prince and which made no sense and which obviously would not be tolerated by anyone for any length of time - which annoyed the prince even more because it was not just evil but stupid, and seemed almost like it was deliberately designed to annoy him personally and waste his time.

So he gathered all the most handsome lawyers of the land to see what his options were. After months and tens of thousands of dollars spent the consensus was that the prince was out of luck and all his money and lands would be forfeit. Then he had a brilliant plan.

Here I am, he thought, young and strong and evil. With a crossdressing handyman as my right hand man, and a friend with a phd in computer science who hangs out in teen girl chat rooms writing sailor moon fan fic to help with his evil scheming. Surely we can come up with some way to dissuade him. So they thought long and hard, and though he loved the idea of promoting his crossdressing handman to crossdressing hitman he eventually realized the matter was simple.

He realized all he had to do was explain the facts to the evil leprechaun king and he would prevail. Giant prince, full of rich white people drugs, tiny leprechaun. Giant, evil prince, with arms like tree trunks who enjoys to cut cut cut and trim trim trim things for hours on end, even things that don't especially need to be trimmed, or which really don't want to be trimmed and avoid it at all costs.

Finally, the evil leprechaun king realized he was beat. He'd pushed the evil prince too far and realized that the law couldn't protect him from being torn limb from limb if he tried to take posession of the land, or in fact being cut down like the grubby weed he was.

Yay, violence! Who said it was never the answer? Actually, that's pretty much how all of human affairs have been hashed out to date and is the ultimate arbitrater of all our laws, so I have always thought it was pretty ridiculous to tell people violence is not the answer, when in fact history has shown it's the ONLY real answer. People who don't stand up for themselves get beaten into the dust, and in fact they can never find worthy mates in the first place anyway so are bound for extinction. If you don't fight, much like if you don't work, you don't live. Period.

After that, they all lived happily ever after. Or at least returned to their previous state of ennui and vague unidentifiable dissatisfaction. And the evil prince continued to sulk in his tent like achilles because people didn't seem to appreciate him to the immense degree he deserved, but he made baby steps towards making changes in his life, and he worked on his projects as well. Even though perhaps succeeding might only further fuel his princely ego, and spending too much time withdrawn from society might make it even harder for him to find a proper princess one day.