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Monday, January 10, 2011

The Origins of Fairy Tales. THE GRUESOME TRUTH >=D



Fairy tales of the past were often full of macabre and gruesome twists and endings. These days, companies like Disney have sanitized them for a modern audience that is clearly deemed unable to cope, and so we see happy endings everywhere. This list looks at some of the common endings we are familiar with – and explains the original gruesome origins. (I'm always fond of these! xD)

10. The Pied Piper 


In the tale of the Pied Piper, we have a village overrun with rats. A man arrives dressed in clothes of pied (a patchwork of colors) and offers to rid the town of the vermin. The villagers agree to pay a vast sum of money if the piper can do it – and he does. He plays music on his pipe which draws all the rats out of the town. When he returns for payment – the villagers won’t cough up so the Pied Piper decides to rid the town of children too! In most modern variants, the piper draws the children to a cave out of the town and when the townsfolk finally agree to pay up, he sends them back. In the darker original, the piper leads the children to a river where they all drown (except a lame boy who couldn’t keep up). Another version of the story postulates that the children fell prey to some sort of disease that caused them to dance, such as Huntington's disease or another form of chorea. As Huntington's disease is a genetic disorder, however, it is not likely that all the children in the town would have been affected. It has also been suggested that the dancing in the Pied Piper storyis an example of the widespread medieval theme of the Danse Macabre, or Dance of Death, with the piper as Death, in the lead. Death was often portrayed in multicolored or pied garb in the Middle Ages. Some modern scholars say that there are connotations of pedophilia in this fairy tale.

9. Little Red Riding Hood


The version of this tale that most of us are familiar with ends with Riding Hood being saved by the woodsman who kills the wicked wolf. But in fact, the original French version (by Charles Perrault) of the tale was not quite so nice. In this version, the little girl is a well bred young lady who is given false instructions by the wolf when she asks the way to her grandmothers. Foolishly riding hood takes the advice of the wolf and ends up being eaten. And here the story ends. There is no woodsman – no grandmother – just a fat wolf and a dead Red Riding Hood. The moral to this story is to not take advice from strangers.

8. The Little Mermaid


The 1989 version of the Little Mermaid might be better known as “The big whopper!” In the Disney version, the film ends with Ariel the mermaid being changed into a human so she can marry Eric. They marry in a wonderful wedding attended by humans and merpeople. But, in the very first version by Hans Christian Andersen, the mermaid sees the Prince marry a princess and she despairs. She is offered a knife with which to stab the prince to death, but rather than do that she jumps into the sea and dies by turning to froth. Hans Christian Andersen modified the ending slightly to make it more pleasant. In his new ending, instead of dying when turned to froth, she becomes a “daughter of the air” waiting to go to heaven – so, frankly, she is still dead for all intents and purposes.

7. Snow White


In the tale of snow white that we are all familiar with, the Queen asks a huntsman to kill her and bring her heart back as proof. Instead, the huntsman can’t bring himself to do it and returns with the heart of a boar. Now, fortunately disney hasn’t done too much damage to this tale, but they did leave out one important original element: in the original tale, the Queen actually asks for Snow White’s liver and lungs – which are to be served for dinner that night! Also in the original, Snow White wakes up when she is jostled by the prince’s horse as he carries her back to his castle – not from a magical kiss. What the prince wanted to do with a dead girl’s body I will leave to your imagination. Oh – in the Grimm version, the tale ends with the Queen being forced to dance to death in red hot iron shoes!

6. Sleeping Beauty


In the original sleeping beauty, the lovely princess is put to sleep when she pricks her finger on a spindle. She sleeps for one hundred years when a prince finally arrives, kisses her, and awakens her. They fall in love, marry, and (surprise surprise) live happily ever after. But alas, the original tale is not so sweet (in fact, you have to read this to believe it.) In the original, the young woman is put to sleep because of a prophesy, rather than a curse. And it isn’t the kiss of a prince which wakes her up: the king seeing her asleep, and rather fancying having a bit, rapes her. After nine months she gives birth to two children (while she is still asleep). One of the children sucks her finger which removes the piece of flax which was keeping her asleep. She wakes up to find herself raped and the mother of two kids.
5. Rumplestiltskin


This fair tale is a little different from the others because rather than sanitizing the original, it was modified by the original author to make it more gruesome. In the original tale, Rumpelstiltskin spins straw into gold for a young girl who faces death unless she is able to perform the feat. In return, he asks for her first born child. She agrees – but when the day comes to hand over the kid, she can’t do it. Rumpelstiltskin tells her that he will let her off the bargain if she can guess his name. She overhears him singing his name by a fire and so she guesses it correctly. Rumpelstiltskin, furious, runs away, never to be seen again. But in the updated version, things are a little messier. Rumpelstiltskin is so angry that he drives his right foot deep into the ground. He then grabs his left leg and rips himself in half. Needless to say this kills him.

4. Goldilocks and the Three Bears



In this heart warming tale, we hear of pretty little goldilocks who finds the house of the three bears. She sneaks inside and eats their food, sits in their chairs, and finally falls asleep on the bed of the littlest bear. When the bears return home they find her asleep – she awakens and escapes out the window in terror. The original tale (which actually only dates to 1837) has two possible variations. In the first, the bears find Goldilocks and rip her apart and eat her. In the second, Goldilocks is actually an old hag who (like the sanitized version) jumps out of a window when the bears wake her up. The story ends by telling us that she either broke her neck in the fall, or was arrested for vagrancy and sent to the “House of Correction”.

3. Hansel and Gretel 



In the widely known version of Hansel and Gretel, we hear of two little children who become lost in the forest, eventually finding their way to a gingerbread house which belongs to a wicked witch. The children end up enslaved for a time as the witch prepares them for eating. They figure their way out and throw the witch in a fire and escape. In an earlier French version of this tale (called The Lost Children), instead of a witch we have a devil. Now the wicked old devil is tricked by the children (in much the same way as Hansel and Gretel) but he works it out and puts together a sawhorse to put one of the children on to bleed (that isn’t an error – he really does). The children pretend not to know how to get on the sawhorse so the devil’s wife demonstrates. While she is lying down the kids slash her throat and escape.

2. The Girl Without Hands


Frankly, the revised version of this fairy tale is not a great deal better than the original, but there are sufficient differences to include it here. In the new version, a poor man is offered wealth by the devil if he gives him whatever is standing behind his mill. The poor man thinks it is an apple tree and agrees – but it is actually his daughter. The devil tries to take the daughter but can’t – because she is pure, so he threatens to take the father unless the daughter allows her father to chop off her hands. She agrees and the father does the deed. Now – that is not particularly nice, but it is slightly worse in some of the earlier variants in which the young girl chops off her own arms in order to make herself ugly to her brother who is trying to rape her. In another variant, the father chops off the daughter’s hands because she refuses to let him have sex with her.

1. Cinderella


In the modern Cinderella fairy tale we have the beautiful Cinderella swept off her feet by the prince and her wicked step sisters marrying two lords – with everyone living happily ever after. The fairy tale has its origins way back in the 1st century BC where Strabo’s heroine was actually called Rhodopis, not Cinderella. The story was very similar to the modern one with the exception of the glass slippers and pumpkin coach. But, lurking behind the pretty tale is a more sinister variation by the Grimm brothers: in this version, the nasty step-sisters cut off parts of their own feet in order to fit them into the glass slipper – hoping to fool the prince. The prince is alerted to the trickery by two pigeons who peck out the step sister’s eyes. They end up spending the rest of their lives as blind beggars while Cinderella gets to lounge about in luxury at the prince’s castle.


I'm gonna discuss all of these tales by my next posts -and also I'll try to discuss the origins of some nursery rhymes.  Ciao~! ;>

"The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in."
~W. H. Auden~
Poet

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Flightless Bird, American Mouth song interpretation ‘-‘

This song is from the Twilight Soundtrack. It’s played during the last part when Bella and Edward are dancing during the prom. I loved this song. This will be the song on our wedding march (if I’ll get married!).



I was a quick wet boy diving too deep for coins:
He’s a guy that’s hard to get and only cared for money

All of your streetlight eyes, wide on my plastic toys: 
They only cared for what he has

And when the cops closed the fair I cut my long baby hair:
He realized that he wanted to be in-love and decided to grow up, change himself.

Stole me a dog-eared map and call for you everywhere:
He realized that he needs to find his love

CHORUS

Have I found you, flightless bird?:
Has he found that fragile thing? Could it be her?

Jealous, weeping:
Is she also in-love with him?

Or lost you?:
Or is he too late?

American mouth:
American mouth signifies idioms or better words said,

Big pill, looming:
Truth hurts..

Now I’m a fat house cat:
Now he’s happy , he can have what  he wants

Nursing my sore, blunt tongue:
He could take care of himself, he doesn’t cared for her that much anymore and doesn’t think of her anymore

Watching  the warm, poisoned rats curl through the wide fence cracks:
He’s been playing with other girls, flirting with them something like that..

Kissing on magazines:
He knows it’s all fake

Those fishing  lures thrown in the cold and clean Blood of Christ mountain stream:
He’s luring the girls but he knows what he wants. He still loves the girl who’s very pure

Have I found you, flightless bird?:
Has he found that fragile thing? Could it be her?

Grounded, bleeding:
He’s not going anywhere, he rather get hurt

Or lost you?:
Or is he too late?

American mouth:
American mouth signifies idioms or better words said,

Big pill, stuck, going down
He accepted the truth

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Aspirin for Acne+Acne Marks

In this post I'm gonna show you how to make Aspirin Mask. 
But before we start I'm sure you're wondering why aspirin~ 


Aspirin is made out of salicylic acid also known as Beta Hydroxy Acid, BHA for short.

BHA is an exfoliate and has anti-inflammatory properties. It causes the cells on the epidermis to unstick itself, removing the dead skin cells off and allowing regrowth for new skin. Studies have shown that BHA improves wrinkles, hyper pigmentation of the skin, photodamaged skin, roughness and acne.

Whenever you get a chance, visit your local drug store. You will see many skincare products that cater to acne prone skin tends to have Beta Hydroxy Acid in their ingredients. They usually come in at the concentration of a 1% and 2%.

The downside to Beta Hydroxy Acid? The skin becomes more susceptible to sensitivity of the sun by 50%. Meaning you will need a good SPF moisturizer after you use this mask. Find one that contains UVA AND UVB. UVB affects the outer layer of the epidermis (which causes sunburn) while UVA affects deeper into the skin which causes cancer.

Now that we know that aspirin is basically one of the main ingredient in many expensive acne products, we can be happy to know that aspirin costs a few dollars. With the unstable economy, the last thing we want to do is to spend hundreds of dollars on products that may not give promising results. With the aspirin mask, if it does not work for you, at least you can keep it in your cabinet for treat your mild pains.


So lets get started ;>



Take 2-3 tablets of aspirin. UNCOATED! (Coated ones will take forever to dissolve) Aspirin is so cheap and convenient. You can get it from the drugstores for around 1-2 peso~! And it could give you miracles!






(Mine is a heart-shaped ones~ cute, but you're gonna dissolve it later anyway. Naaaww~~)


Next, pour on some few drops of water on to the aspirin (IMPORTANT: Only a few drops will do. If you some too much water, it'll become too mushy. Useless~)



Then it will start to dissolve. If it doesn't, use your fingers to mush it.


It should look like this..


Honey or Aloe Vera is optional but I suggest to add some honey on it 'coz the aspirin alone can be very drying to the skin and it's grainy. The texture if honey is sticky so yeah.. Honey. 

I'm using aspirin alone 'coz look at my zits and acne marks! T^T



Leave it for 15-20 minutes the rinse it with a mild cleanser and warm water. As you're washing it off, take advantage of the grainy texture of the aspirin and GENTLY exfoliate your skin in circular motions to get rid of dead skin cells. Right when you wash it off, you will feel your skin renewed and it feels soft to touch~! :P


I'm using this mask for a week and I noticed my pimpled dried out and my acne scares are more lighter! ;>

Note: Do not overdo this, try it out for every other day. Aspirin is very drying and might irritate your gorgeous skin of you abuse it. And- your skin might get tolerant to it.


BEAUTIFUL SKIN FOR EVERYONE!!

"Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart."  ~Kahlil Gibran

Climate Change

There's a climate change on our beloved country  (Phils.)
It's actually frosting in Baguio City, the erm.. coldest city here in Philippines~ Here in Manila it's actually also cold. I could sleep with my sweaters and pajamas on without drowning in sweat after i wake up! '-'

All the metallic stuffs here inside our house are as cold a s ice~! I know.. it's already that cold. 

It's actually late, I mean the coldness. Usually cold weather starts around October-February, uh-huh.. 

But this cold, it's unusual that it's already January~ Yeah I like the weather right now. 

But I don't like my dry skin and lips GAAAHH~~~

I'm still hoping that it will snow here lol

Monday, January 3, 2011

Hello Bloggers!

Happy New year to all of you beautiful humans! (Do I sound sarcastic? )

Oh well.. I hope I'm not blogging for nothing~ If you'll ask me how's things are going, so far so good.
I mean I'm at the worst place in the whole wide world
-at our house. EVERYDAY!
And so far so good, yeah~
Except for my pimples! GAWD THEY'RE MULTIPLYING LIKE HELL!!!
(I'm gonna teach you how to do the Aspirin Mask)

Sooo.. yeah, that's it.
It's hard to say goodbye but I have to~ Lmao

Now you're reading this..

Now..

You..

Don't.