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The Porcupine's Quill:
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the satire column
Porcupine's Quill
January 16, 2011

TOO BIG TO DIE/FAIL -- A FABLE FOR OUR TIMES

by Arshad M Khan

Once upon a time in a small hamlet in a large country there lived a small
pack of four giant dragonsters.  The giant dragonsters claimed they needed
to be FED regularly otherwise they would die.  And because they were so big
should they die, their decaying, rotten carcasses would release so much
noxious gas and fumes that all the people would become sick and die also.

So they kept getting fed, getting fatter and getting bigger.  The people had
to make many sacrifices to satisfy these appetites, and they began to get
poorer and weaker, and poorer and weaker until one day the hamlet chief
decided to get outside advice -- he  knew his own counselors had just one
answer ... keep feeding.

He called upon Theseus, a very smart dragon control specialist more
inclined to action than circular thinking and with prior dragon/monster
eliminating experience.  Unfortunately, Theseus was rather busy at the time
with prior dragon slaying commitments but promised to come by and look
into it soon.

When Theseus was finally able to come to the hamlet things had gotten
worse.  He was surprised, nay shocked, at the size of the dragonsters.  "Why
did you let this happen?"  he asked in amazed disbelief.

The chief merely shrugged his shoulders.

Theseus mulled the problem thinking to himself, let me see what happens if
I just chop off the tail of one dragonster.

Well, he did and nothing happened because the dragonster was too fat and
slow to move.  So then he cut off one leg -- nothing -- then another and
another and another.  Soon there was a huge, colossal body collapsed on
the ground.  Theseus got all the villagers together to dig a giant hole, and
they buried the dragonster in it.  Then they filled it up with the earth they
had dug up, making an enormous mound on which they soon built an
amusement park.  This they named Freedomland.

So what of the other dragonsters?  Well, seeing what had happened, they
quickly learned to behave themselves, slim down, and start doing useful
things for the hamlet.

Moral:  Nothing is too big to die/fail.