Once Upon a Time.... but when dammit?!

This week Angela at Begging the Answer had a thought about Fairy Tales and invited the rest of the cheese filled bloggers to share our thoughts. Here are mine:

As a little girl I loved fairy tales. Not really because of the stories but the pictures. I would pour over these gaily colored books for hours memorizing the colors, the shapes, and all the fantastic mythical creatures that lay upon the page. My favorite was the dragon, every time I saw him I couldn't help but get excited.

The first story that I remember really touching me was the story of Puss and Boots. I got the story book for some holiday, I want to stay Christmas but I was like 4 or 5 so I can't really be certain, my grandparents got it for me and my little sister, along with the one about the three billy goats and the troll under the bridge.
I would read Puss and Boots and hit the buttons at all the right times to hear the sounds. I absolutely loved it to the point where I could almost recite it word for word. All the deception in that story never really sunk in till I was older.

So there's a Miller and he dies. He splits up his possessions like this: The oldest gets the mill, the second get the mule, and the youngest gets the cat. The youngest son is a whiner and pretty much says "I'm going to eat this cat and then die of starvation with nothing but a cat hand warmer." Maybe because he has been (probably) ordered around by so many people in his life when the cat suddenly tells him what to do instead of eat him the Miller's son listens.

The cat tells the young man to get him a pair of boots made for him and a sack then heads out to make his master a fortune.

Not too bad at this point. And who doesn't love a cat walking around in a pair of tall boots wearing a cap with a jaunty feather in it (yes jaunty). The cat catches two young rabbits and walks (forever) to the castle of the king and gives them to the king as a present from his master the.... wait for it.... Marquise of Carabas.
LIES!
*Ahem* The king is impressed, not with the rabbits but with the talking cat. I think my version of the story had the king ask Puss in Boots if his master was a wizard (Here I got to hit the magic wand button and hear magical tinkly sounds) and the cat answers 'Yes'. So the cat continues to bring the King wild game for a few months, and the king is like every other man I know: "MEAT! It's time to grill baby." lol *ahem* Actually I think the wording is: "This pleased the King greatly." But we all know he was thinking the first thought.

The cat goes back to his master, the Miller's youngest son, after he's got the king's routine down and goes and tells him to bathe in a specific part of the river. The cat knows the king is going to ride by there and has a dastardly plan.

The Miller's youngest son listens to the cat, again. And goes skinny dipping.
The story points out that the princess is in the carriage and that she's super beautiful, so when the Miller's son (aka: The Marquis of Carabas) gets hauled naked out of the river because the cat is like "Help help, my master is drowning! Thieves have thrown him in the river and taken all his belongings!" I couldn't help but giggle... I still giggle. Because at that moment I'm sure the sheltered little princess got quite the eye full and it's no wonder she started crushing on him. (OMG! I've seen a man neked! Now I HAVE to marry him!)

Here is where it get's really crazy. The Cat runs ahead of the carriage and starts telling all the workers in the fields to say that they belong to the 'Marquis of Carabas' should the king ask them. Apparently the cat has been stalking more than just the king because he knows that all these lands belong to a shape shifting ogre who has a castle down the way.
What I don't get is why the workers listen to the cat. I swear Puss has to be a Jedi or something. Either that or it was like one of those middle school pranks we're all very painfully aware of: "tee hee, this is going to be hilarious, snicker snicker, shhhhhh!"
Whatever the reason the king is like "wow is all this really yours?!"
And the Miller's son lies to his face! "Yup." (Stretches so as to coolly put his arm around the blushing princess who's JUST SEEN HIM NEKED. "Indeed it these fields never fail to have a good harvest." Winning jock smile. Key the 'nabisco ding' sound effect and the shiny tooth gleam.)

While the "Marquis" is lying to his sovereign's face the cat is off antagonizing an ogre. Daring it to shape shift into things. Telling the ogre he doesn't believe that he can do it. (Chicken! bock bock bugock!) And you know what, it works. The Ogre turns into a mouse and the cat eats him!
So now all these lies have suddenly become true!
The Miller get's the girl, a castle, and the riches of the ogre all because he listened to a cat, got off his buns to do stuff, wasn't afraid of a little streaking, and had the ability to lie to others faces.
The cat did all this just so that he wouldn't get eaten.

The moral of the story? IF some one wants to eat you use all your cunning to survive.
If a girl sees you naked she will probably fall, the story literally says, violently in love with you.
But ultimately, don't take dares from cats. Because dude you're gonna die.

What's your name again?

(this is a little rushed, I'm trying to be part of the Cheesy Blogger's weekly challenge before my husband packs up the mac.)

Most of you know me as Ashes. A few of you know me as Rem. And even fewer of you know exactly why I have so many names.

I name everything, and most of the stories are short and lame. For example Rocky the Mountain Bike, and Rinky our dinky red car, those don't even need a story as self explanatory as they are. The story of how I got my nickname however is long and slightly hilarious as it is full of the ridiculousness of high school.

My maiden name was Redd. Growing up in a military society most people know you by your last name. My first name is Ashley, I've been called Ashes ever since I was tiny, and shortened it to Ash shortly before the advent of Pokemon. Yeah. With all of this I discovered that what others called you could greatly effect your high school experience.

There were too many Ashley's in my school. I'm not kidding, there were only 300 or so students and at least 15% of them were Ashley's. Going by Ash was out of the question; the first time I introduced myself that way I got the lovely "like from Pokemon?" complete with the distasteful scrunching of the nose. It was logical to just go by my last name, it was a military school after all, easy. Or not, turns out my last name was some super popular girl's nick name and so I couldn't be called that. Didn't matter that it was actually my name she scared enough people that no one was willing to take the easy route.

Lucky for me I had a two really good friends, Kai and Melanie. We were dorks, no not just regular dorks, flaming dorks. We wrote fan fiction at lunch, played Gaia online before it sold it's soul to consumerism, talked about ytmnd.com and watched red vs blue before they made t-shirts, comics and anime stacks sat next to our idea for our next role play. Dorks I say! As flaming dorks we had to get japanese nicknames just like Kai's!

So here's where it gets a little more interesting... or long depending on your tastes. I was in love with the movie Hero that had come out that year, Jet Li rocked the 'no name' character straight into my dorky heart. My nick name was easy I'd be 'no name'. Using a handy little online translation sight that came out to be Nanashi. Easy, simple, no fuss. Melanie however was harder to please.

Melanie wanted us to find her a name that sounded cool. Kai and I did, but the kanji looked stupid. Okay, we found a few more names with more interesting kanji, but they sounded lame or too long or the kanji was too complicated or didn't mean the right thing. She was as finicky as a pampered cat! In a fit of frustration I announced, after a weekend spent searching the corners of ever japanese dictionary, website, and person for just the right name for my friend, that she no longer deserved a name. She was 'no name' and she could say nothing about it! Argh!
After the initial rage I then realized that I'd just given away my nickname. D'Oh!

Kai assured me that the newly christened Nanashi and she would find me a good japanese nickname. Weeks went by and nothing happened, no names were presented to me so I started to bring up my own. Each one of my ideas was shot down by my friends. For a while I thought that I was just going to have to go back to Ashes and leave it at that. There would be no 'reinventing myself' in high school for me.
When I'd given up hope Kai and Nana came running up to me to announce that they'd found the perfect name for me: Rem! I was really confused because as far as I knew that wasn't a japanese name. They assured me that it was, and even if it wasn't that they were my friends and they were going to call me that forever regardless. Eventually I found out that they'd named me after a character from a series called 'Trigun" but I'd gotten so used to the name I didn't bother railing against it. I didn't find out till I moved to Japan that it is a japanese name, a boy name typically translated as 'Ren', and it means 'lotus'.

And that is how Ashes turned into a Lotus. *haha... okay, fine, it's not funny*