Good Enough Is

He lived his life deliberately avoiding the pursuit of perfection. He’d never get the perfect coffee, never find the perfect home, never meet the perfect girl, so he would find something good and then settle early. He always pointed out that it saved time, and he was a lot less stressed than all his friends who would expend more effort for not that much better a result. His life wasn’t great, it wasn’t filled with highs and lows, he just coasted through life taking what was good enough at face value.

He was really upset after death during the scoring.

Perfect Mismatch

It wasn’t that Peter didn’t get romance, as a concept. He understood making an effort to create a magical moment was important to Kate, how she needed to feel special and loved.

But he always preferred the spontaneous, the unexpected kisses, the sudden embraces, the ‘special moments’ in bar bathrooms. He found that a lot more exciting, being in the moment rather than intense long term planning.

But she wanted romance, and it was their anniversary. So he spent months preparing, and he created a perfect night for her.

And in exchange, she wore mismatched lingerie, which drove him wild.

Skilled Negotiators

The ‘siege’ lasted twelve hours.

Once the various guild leaders and nobles were executed, there was still a problem. The city, even before the war, was reluctantly multi-racial, with Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Ratmen, and scattered pockets of seemingly every race that could speak common somewhere within the walls. And most of them were taking this opportunity to settle old scores.

The Emperor would have let them fight, but they were threatening the city’s defences, and so he appointed whores to represent each race. Every race was accounted for, and they all knew each other anyway.

A treaty came swiftly.

Aesop 2.0: 10. The Scholar And The Box

The Scholar was surprised to find a beautiful box delivered to his home, and wanted to know more about it. He went to a woodcutter, who told him the type of wood that the box was made of. He went to a carpenter, who told him about the way the wood had been joined together. He went to an artist, who told him about the style and form of the inlaid pattern of the design. But he didn’t ask the assassin inside his opinion.

“When examining an issue, don’t forget to get the view from inside as well as outside.”

Tasman Absorption

It’s not deliberate. It just happens.

New Zealand has a population the size of one of (biggest) cities. So if someone talented in any sort of performance art begins to make some noise, there’s a finite level they can reach over there.

So they come over here to Australia, and if they make it big, well then, they made it big here, clearly they’re Australian! I mean, unless they’re constantly reinforcing the point that they’re a Kiwi through and through, we claim them as our own.

It’s not deliberate.

Unless they mess up, then we deliberately call them Kiwis again.

Little Ray Of Sunshine

For what seemed like decades, Verona would pester me to have a child. She kept going on about how empty the halls felt, that the little pitter-patter that only a child could bring would be like music to her ears.

I kept telling her it was a bad idea, and then I kept trying to drown her out with drink, but eventually, I gave in and we began trying.

Pretty soon we had a daughter and one of us was proven right. She was like a little ray of sunshine.

Well, not literally. She was still a vampire like us…

Misplaced In Translation

Marvin was forever an outcast, at least he certainly thought so. He felt so sure about things, that life’s purpose was so simple but glorious. Science was too busy looking at rocks, and every religion he looked into got it wrong. God didn’t create anything, God was the end goal, the end point, what would be created at the end of existence.

But eventually he found a likeminded voice, in a cartoon from Japan, one of the characters spoke at length about his exact vision.

He contacted the creator, but blamed the reply talking about ‘parody’ as a translation issue.