A fractured fairy tale (apologies to Rocky and Bullwinkle)

Once upon a time there was a quiet little village called Larebil. The Larebilians were actually an alien race which was exiled from their home planet, Vulcan, because they could never quite grasp the concepts of logic and reason. The other inhabitants of Vulcan were so tired of putting up with their crap and lack of any common-sense that they eventually lured them onto a spacecraft (offering all the tofu they could eat) and then shot them the hell off the planet.

Luckily for the Larebilians, they landed on a planet that could sustain them, and the inhabitants didn’t know enough about them to try and get rid of them immediately. It took them no time at all to start annoying the neighboring inhabitants however, and thus they spent most of their time in their own little village. Even though they had a combined I.Q. of a rock, the Larebilians actually thrived in their new little village; but, as time passed, changes began to occur.

Whether it was the over-exposure to gamma rays from space, due to the depleted ozone layer; or if it was due to CO2 emissions from the large vehicles that the other inhabitants drove; or, if it was due to the minute temperature variations that occurred over time, which absolutely drove them nuts---the Larebilians started down the path of self-destruction.

The first major change was that the male Larebilians began losing interest in the females and started having sex with each other. The females then began doing the same thing. Now this had been considered an absolute abomination on their home planet; so they began working on a whole series of rationalizations, the end-result being that they now thought of themselves as enchanted beings and somehow special in all the universe. That may not have been so bad, but fairly soon after that, the females who were reproducing began to grow resentful, they realized they had a choice; and although they enjoyed the sexual aspect, they started killing off the babies they didn’t want, and eventually just began aborting as soon as they knew they were pregnant. Needless to say, their population growth slowed to a trickle.

Now the Larebilians had always prided themselves on the variety of individuals that constituted their group; they had people of all different colors, shapes and sizes. They lovingly called themselves the rainbow people. It happened that a group of similar looking, and thinking, individuals got together and starting hanging out together. They were disenchanted with life among the Larebilians, and began causing trouble and eventually began terrorizing all the others. They called themselves the regnabs. They soon grew so resentful that they turned violent and actually began murdering people in the village. They would drive around and shoot people for reasons as ridiculous as they didn’t like the color of clothes a person was wearing.. The people cried and wailed about how nobody would come to help them; but, when authorities from nearby villages came and offered to help them crack down on the regnabs, they were rebuked and railed on as if they were the enemy, and the people would not lend a hand to help bring the regnabs under control or put them in jail.

Then, another dreadful thing began to happen with alarming regularity---a group of people that called themselves ‘the prophets’ began visiting Larebil on a regular basis. Every time that one of these prophets came to town, there was a horrific bombing that killed multitudes of Larebilians. It happened so often that the statistical probability of a bombing taking place when a prophet came to town was 100%. Did the Larebilians try and do anything about it---NO. They were so afraid of offending these people that instead of taking measures to stop them, they began enacting rules and regulations that affected and annoyed everybody around them; everyone except for the people who were doing the bombings.

The Larebilians were known far and wide as a group of people who said and did some of the stupidest things imaginable, but they never seemed to learn. In the end, the lack of population growth, violence within their own little village, the bombings that were taking place, and their over-all inability and lack of fortitude to do anything about it, (apart from blaming it all on the inhabitants of other villages who actually had sound solutions and the know-how to help them) caused the Larebilians to reach near extinction.

Ultimately, there remained only one Larebilian left. He began roaming the countryside looking for odd jobs to perform. He ended up working for a farmer, who paid him to stand out in his cornfield all day and scare away the crows. He did this for a long time, until one day a little girl and her dog came along the yellow brick road next to the cornfield. This is a whole new story, which we won’t relate here; but suffice it to say, he ended up being the first Larebilian in history who actually came close to getting a brain. THE END.