I considered it as a cultural and/or social research and I would like to say words of appreciation for everyone who's taken part, and time to read the 'joke' through and to provide me with thoughts.
If you have NOT read it yet, please feel free to do so. And don't forget to comment :)
---
I think I owe you some explanation, which I will give now, but I don't think anyone not having found the joke funny in the first place would feel like laughing.
During the soviet regime people were burdened with a perplexing set of seemingly random laws and regulations. The chances of completely observing these less-than-intelligently articulated, unnecessary and cumbersome rules was next to nothing. Yet people survived because there have been those shortcuts, u-turns and indirect routes everyone knew of, yet noone has spoken of. If one knew the how of things, the place of the secret door to hide away, one was safe.
We had rules, and we had to have the knowledge to disobey them.
This knowledge is what the rabbit has in the joke.
The rabbit is well aware that if he follows the rule he will be dead.
But he tries anything to save his life.
'Can the rules be overlooked just for me, just for now, please, oh mighty bear, whom I fear?' - this is what he has in his voice. And also: 'Can't you just posibly look away, pretending I don't even exist?'
Awful laws, seeking for alleviation in a personal way, corruption, misery and mischief - all condensed into one single political joke.
Some of you found this joke disturbing. Now you know why.
-----
-----
Surfing through the web I came accross this vocabulary quiz. All you have to do is find a synonym to a word. There are four options to choose from. If you don't find the correct match, nothing happens. But if you do, 10 grains (not grams, grains) are donated to someone in a poor country in the framework of the World Food Programme.
I played today and raised 680 grains by matching and mis-matching words with their synonims. My knowledge fits somewhere between levels 28-32. The higher the level, the more difficult/strange the words are.
UPDATE: I played again and gained 800 grains. My vocabulary keeps expanding!
---
and if you've done your part, grab your keyboard and what's left of your brain and head towards The Clarity of Night, where another short fiction writing contest is up and effective as of this Wednesday, 7 November.
Don't miss it.
I'm on 286, dang. Cut, cut and cut.
5 megjegyzés:
Thanks for the explanation. :) I wasn't sure what exactly the rabbit was reflecting, but now I do. Living under such a system must have been extremely stressful.
I got to 2400 grains of rice before I finally stopped. I thought there would be an end to the quiz, but it just kept going and going, like the Energizer bunny. I didn't know most of the words--they were in vocabulary level 45-50, but I could usually guess, based on the Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Latin I've taken. I can't speak any of them fluently, but the classes helped my English a lot.
Anyway, thanks for the link, as well as for link to the contest. I may be too long-winded for a 250-word limit, but I'm going to think about it.
Jason,
oh yes it was, somehow. At the same time people got used to it to the extent they did not feel it stressful anymore. It's like when you have no central heating and have to chop firewood to make your house warm. It is HARD work, but when you just simply don't have a button to push to make you room warm, there's NOTHING ELSE YOU CAN DO. You have to survive, that's all. So each day you go out and chop the firewood. Pack the furnace, heat it up, clean it, pack it again. Chop firewood and again. Survival.
Steve,
Oh, you're such a great man, Steve! To get my grains going up, I used a dictionary. I've also noticed that there were many foreign-language-based words.
Re: Jason's contest.
Yes, go and give it a try.
For those who are wired for loooong stories, this is a very useful exercise, I promise. When you have to cut and cut again.
And some more again to get under that damned limit of 250. It helps one's style quite a bit.
I played it for a bit, donating 4460 grains of rice. What a cool idea.
If Steve is a great man, you're an angel, Anniina.
Megjegyzés küldése