Fruity!
Once upon a time, there stood an apple orchard on a nearby hilltop in the beautiful country of Romancelandia. It was a perfectly serviceable orchard as orchards went, providing good fruit to those who wanted apples. It was, naturally, plagued by a few of the problems to which all orchards and groves and berry patches fall victim -- infestations and bad weather, including the occasional plagues of locusts and rains of frogs.
And then one day, after a particularly challenging growing season, along came an -- at best -- ill-informed Internet Tabloid Journalist.*
Tabloid Journalist: I'd like to see something in an orange, please.
Orchard: I'm so sorry, but I grow apples. Can I offer you a juicy MacIntosh? My Pink Ladies are lovely this year, as well. Not so much my Granny Smiths, though -- a drought in the early summer made them mealy.
Tabloid Journalist: No, I want oranges. Why don't you grow oranges?
Orchard: Because I'm an apple orchard, not an orange grove.
Tabloid Journalist: But if you grew oranges, you'd help more people. People in Romancelandia need the vitamin C in oranges to keep them from getting sick. You should grow oranges, and you should start immediately. If you don't, it's proof that you're worthless and don't care about the people who eat your fruit.
Orchard: Oranges are a wonderful kind of fruit, and I'm glad there are groves out there to supply them to the people who want and need them. But I'm an apple orchard. I suppose I could attempt to grow oranges, but since that's not what I was created to do, I suspect it would be a failure.
Tabloid Journalist: You SUCK!
Orchard: I suppose we could employ some kind of genetic specialist to try grafting a few orange branches onto some trees. Maybe we could create a hybrid fruit of some kind. But I'd have to take this issue back and discuss it with the entire tree membership. Changes of this kind take time, after all, and since the trees here signed up to grow apples, it might be a challenge.
Tabloid Journalist: You suck so much that I'm going to make a public example of you, you worthless apple orchard, with your nasty apples that are nothing like oranges. And when the people who read my blog make unkind, similarly ill-informed comments of a personal nature, I'll do nothing to stem the tide of poison. With any luck, it will seep into the ground and kill all your worthless, apple-producing trees. Because unless you grow oranges, and do it in just the way I suggest, you are dead to me, you worthless, apple-growing scum who clearly care nothing for the average Romancelandia eater of fruit. Do you hear me? Dead. To. Me.
~flounces off to find an ant hill to kick over, because she can and because it's perfectly legal, don'tcha know~
Have no idea what I'm babbling about? Consider yourself blessed.
Staring down a March 31 deadline. Will not be back to address comments anytime soon, but feel free to have at it.
* aka: Some Chick With A Blog.
SelahMarch.com - Romance of Dubious Virtue
13Comments:
Perfect analogy but sadly it's wasted since she'll never get it.
Oh FUCK I'm going to have to read that post over there aren't I? Why do I have a feeling my eyes are going to bleed?
Brilliant.
LOL! OMG! I am so going to post a link to this post. Thanks for the laugh.
BTW, the apples have won many awards...not just one award and certainly not just in two years. If you don't know what I'm talking about... Well, a blog post might explain that one later.
Brenna
Wonderful, just wonderful!
I don't engage the people in question in conversation anymore, since somehow my attempt to not be associated with something was, in their eyes, both proof that I was being defensive because I had something to hide and an invitation to derogatorily discuss my love life.
I do stay aware though, and I love your very spot on commentary.
Yeah, okay. You're right. But the discussion (minus the ad hominem bull-crappiness) is still interesting, dammit.
And there is a need for oranges. Another tree, dammit! More 'n' bigger trees! No, you're not catching me doing any pruning or watering.
Absolutely brilliant! It's a shame that certain tabloid bloggers won't realize waht it is about.
You are the Goddess of Reason and Clarity. I worship at your feet.
I disagree, Kate. The discussions over there are not interesting. On the now rare occassion when I venture over to read, in my head I am seeing people who stayed at a Holiday Inn Express performing surgery on someone, standing over the mortally wounded (by them) body, discussing the efficacy of cotton vs synthetic swabs for stemming the blood flow.
The Myth of Sisyphus for Crash Test Dummies.
Accolades to the wise gardner!
damn ferfe, you should be a writer or something.
Oh, fine. I'll give this one to you.
It's interesting.
It's interesting that they were very sad for Kenyon who is (presumably healthy and beat the odds against her) on a successful run with a bright future.And it's interesting that they happily slam the ever loving hell out of the ePublisher who is (most likely terminally ill and succumbing to the odds against her) systematically closing down her career and business and pulling inward for a fight only a few people still living can appreciate or understand.
So yeah. You could be right that the conversation there is interesting -- in their usual sick and twisted way.
It's not my kind of discussion, though. There's an audience for it. They provide a service to that audience. I am not their target audience.
Selah did a really good job with her analogy. I can't wait for the mangos and bananas story to come out. The one where the bananas have homogenized into one or two types that everyone knows and buys, never realizing that there used to be huge variety available on smaller plantations and farms that never made it to market, but because the mangos are so difficult to come by, people buy any variety that shows up in the store even if they have no clue how it will actually taste and can't really tell when its ripe until it's rotten. Uncertain product in an unstable market vs a certain (if bland) product in a declining demand for over production market. Push those bananas baby!
Read it all.
You make me want you.
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