Again, I have been struggling to maintain my vows of regular blog posting. If only I lived a live filled with action and adventure, wealth and power, champaign and bikinis, I might have more interesting things to say. Then again, if I lived any of those lifestyles I probably wouldn’t be sitting around telling people about it. At least, not until I published my riveting memoirs, which you could purchase at any major bookseller for only $24.95 plus tax. 5% of the purchase price would be donated to my private foundation: Rats Are Beautiful Too, Inc., that brings the gift of cosmetic surgery to fancy rats in underprivileged nations.

Then again, since my RSS feed is apparently not functioning properly, maybe of you aren’t fully appreciating my posting efforts anyway. Quite a shame since my entry today isn’t just a post, it’s storytime! That’s right, instead of saying I was in a miserable meeting today squaring off with one of my advisors about funding recommendations to our University’s Provost, I will instead begin to tell a completely non-allegorical fairy tale about a poor little village and their efforts to rid themselves of a big, ugly, brutal dragon. Did in mention this is non-allegorical? Okay, good. I wouldn’t want you to read too much into this. Nope, this is pure fantasy, folks.

I waited patiently for the dragon to return to its cave. It was already mid-afternoon. I had been waiting for some time, expecting the dragon to arrive a little earlier. But dragon’s aren’t especially known for their timeliness, and this dragon was no different than any other in that respect. At last, the dragon lumbered into view. My blood boiled as I anticipated the showdown. I knew the dragon was a fearsome creature, that it would fight tooth and nail to protect the happy little nest it had built just on the outskirts of our village. Of course the dragon enjoyed being where it was. It could eat little farmers alive whenever it felt like it! But the poor, struggling farmers were obviously not so happy with this arrangement. Ah, the dear, inconsistent little farmers! When the evil dragon first appeared, we would all rally together to drive it away together. We would gather together in big groups and make a lot of loud noise for hours on end, sometimes late into the evening in the hopes of someday driving the dragon away completely. Some of the especially zealous ones would wave their flaming torches right up in the dragon’s face and shout “viva la revolution!” But those days were past. Now most of the farmers, tired and resigned to their fate, just toiled in the fields and hoped the dragon wouldn’t come for them next. And thus I stood today with only two other brave companions to face the horrible menace, lumbering ever closer…