Alternate Title: One Nap at a Time

So I've been working on a novel I actually want to write for the last few weeks, and it's basically sucked my brain dry of any creative juices. But I don't want to neglect this here blog, as I have it on good authority that people do periodically stick their heads in to see if it's still alive.

It is. I promise.

So rather than try to write something original today, I've opted to bring back the ol' "as interpreted by..." fairy tale, which was last seen back in September. But this time, I'm tackling my favorite fairy tale of all time:

Sleeping Beauty

as interpreted by Kimberly "Snoozin' Kinda Pretty If You Squint Hard Enough" Welsh

Once upon a time, there was benevolent king who was beloved by all his subjects with the notable exception of an evil witch because hey! You can't please all the people all the time. Also the witch hated anybody being happy for any reason. She was like the religious right of the Middle Ages, except she did believe in science. But what they called "science" back then was actually alchemy, which turned out to be a total load of horsecrap when it came right down to it. ANYHOO! One day the queen announced she was pregant, and since Wendy's drive-thrus hadn't been invented yet, the king knew he was up a creek without a paddle when she started getting cravings! He decided to appease her by promising to hold the First Known Baby Shower once the kid was born, and the entire kingdom was invited *PROVIDED EVERYBODY BROUGHT PRESENTS*.

So the catering staff was summoned and some nice finger foods were laid out and all the king's subjects poured into the main hall bearing gifts under threat of death. FACT: if you don't have a volcano for your subjects to appease, a pregnant woman is the next best thing. It was a joyous occasion and the queen was thrilled with all her gifts, even the duplicates, because everyone had brought the receipt so she could exchange those for store credit at Heir Apparents to the Throne 'Beith' Us. Mostly it was just cute bibs and flannel footsie pajamas (because castles are very drafty), but the king had wisely asked some magical fairies to act as godparents and they gave her some bitchin' stuff! The only real hiccup was when one of the fairies wanted to grant her "the gift of beauty", and the queen was all "What the hell is THAT supposed to mean?" and the fairy was like "Nothing! I'm just sayin'. She'll just be even more beautiful!" But the queen was like "Whatever. I know what you meant." Luckily the king was wise in many things, so he said, "Give the kid a break, dear. She has my hideously bulbous nose!", which was a good point, so the queen backed off. It looked to be a glorious day indeed, but some people just CANNOT leave it alone so of course the evil witch showed up.

She burst into the main hall and shoved past the last fairy to give the newborn princess her "gift", which was a actually A CURSE (oh snap! see what she did there?) that would cause the child to die by pricking her finger on a spindle, thereby creating the first known case of hemophilia. But the last fairy had yet to take her turn, so she distracted the evil witch by tearing off her weave, then rushed forward to half-reverse the curse so the child would only fall into a deep sleep rather than dying, because we can't be killing off the title character, now can we? Even J.K. Rowling knows that. The fairy declared that the princess would only awaken to a prince's kiss, which says a lot about women's rights in this era, since everyone is basically agreeing that unless she has a boyfriend, there's no point in her ever waking up again.

After the party, the king made another wise decision to outlaw spindles throughout the kingdom and everyone wisely complied. Well, everyone except this one old lady because she was hard of hearing and the Sonic Ear also hadn't been invented yet. Occasionally someone would tell her she was supposed to get rid of her spindle, but she would just yell, "'EY? WHAT'S THAT, SONNY? I'M SUPPOSED TO GET FREUD'S THE EGO AND THE ID FOR MY KINDLE? IT'S THE 16TH CENTURY, NUMBNUTS!" Frankly, by this point the people had grown tired of "hasn't been invented yet" jokes, so they just left her to get arrested and executed. It was an unfortunate coincidence that the old lady lived and worked in a tower within the castle for reasons that the Brothers Grimm didn't bother to explain so why should I? The point is: after her sixteenth birthday the princess was wandering through the halls looking for her bauble or whatever rich kids do, and she saw the old lady spindling(?) So she stuck her head in the door...

"Pardon me, old hag, what is that?," she asked.

"I DON'T HAVE YOUR STUPID HAT!," barked the old woman. "LEAVE ME ALONE! I'M TRYNNA USE MY SPINDLE!"

"Oh!," said the princess. "A 'spindle', you say? May I try?" She stepped forward and motioned toward the machine in an effort to make herself understood.

"YOU WANNA DO IT?" The old woman shrugged. "YEAH SURE WHY NOT." So the young lady took her place at the spinning wheel, but just as she reached out for it, she pricked her finger and passed out. The old woman panicked and hobbled to the window calling, "HELP! HELP! OH, HELP! ALSO: I DIDN'T DO IT!" So every quack in the country was summoned to treat the unfortunate girl, but the king was wise enough to recognize that trepanning and leeches weren't the way to go here. Instead, it was decided that the entire castle should be put to sleep in order to spare them the pain of going on without their princess. The king's loyal subjects, who never really saw the princess on a daily basis, politely agreed to this plan because they were too nice to point out that they would be perfectly fine going about their lives without her spoiled little butt using up all their tax dollars to buy more baubles. So the people were gathered once more in the castle, and the kind fairy godmother magically installed flat screen televisions in every room so she could play a Grey's Anatomy DVD. Soon everyone was fast asleep.

Many years went by, and before long literally every major character on Grey's Anatomy had slept with every other major character, such that it was now only a "medical" drama in the sense that everybody had a venereal disease. In the meantime, a handsome prince came through the nearby forest with his hunting party, but he drew to a halt as he got close to the castle.

"Hark!," he said to his entourage. "Do you hear that? It sounds like... Yes, it sounds like a series of unrealistically attractive people whining about their love lives in a hospital! But I can't...quite...make it out..." He craned his neck further toward the castle. "It's being partially drowned out...by snoring! By Heaven, I would swear someone up on that hill is suffering from sleep apnea!," he shouted. He grabbed his medieval CPAP machine and raced up the hill at a canter to rescue the snoring victim and also to find out what had happened on Grey's Anatomy.

Arriving inside the castle, he was shocked to find room upon room of sleeping peasants and servants. The stillness was eery, and he had to hold mirrors to their faces to check that they were breathing. After some time, he came upon a room where only one person slept - a beautiful princess who appeared to be roughly his age (she'd been asleep a hundred years but it's really true that sleep keeps you young!). Thinking back on a letter he'd read in an issue of Ye Olde Cathaus, he decided to try to make out with her. He leaned over her gilded bed and pressed his lips softly to hers.

Suddenly her eyes opened and she sat bolt upright, banging her forehead into his.

"OW!," he yelled. "That hurt!"

"Well well well," she said, wiping his spit from her face, "If it's not the Handsome Pervert! I was ASLEEP! Do I even know you? GUARDS!"

At that very moment, the last episode of Grey's Anatomy played on the DVD and it went back to the menu screen. The sound of the same two bars of theme music repeating over and over annoyed the sleeping masses into wakefulness, and they heard the princess's cries of distress. Within minutes, the whole of the kingdom had come to her aid, and the prince was being dragged down to the dungeon, where he would be made to inscribe his name on the First Known Sex Offender Registry. Meanwhile, the fairy godmother rushed back to the castle to make sure everything was OK. When she arrived, she magically created Listerine because HELLO KINGDOM-WIDE MORNING BREATH, and they all lived happily every after.

THE END