Daily Kos :: Grim Fairy Tales

Once upon a time there was a bus driving down the street. It was the biggest and shiniest bus of them all, and it was driven by a cheerful, likable fellow who knew all the places the bus needed to go and the most efficient ways of getting there. He certainly wasn't perfect -- maybe there were a few times he should have been watching the road when he was talking to one of the passengers -- but all in all he was one of the best drivers the bus had ever had.

One day that bus driver retired, and the new bus driver told all the passengers, 'That was one of the worst bus drivers you ever had. We're going to do everything differently now.'

The passengers were a little confused, but they figured, hey, if he's the bus driver, he must know what he's talking about. So they all waited to see what the new driver would do, and watched with some curiosity as the new driver went backwards and made a number of wrong-way turns on one-way streets. Often, the bus driver would put the bus on cruise control and take a nap. This didn't worry the passengers too much, since the bus had been traveling so smoothly for so long, it seemed like it barely needed a driver at all.

One morning, while the bus was idling at a stoplight, some people from a different bus threw a rock through one of the windows. Over 3,000 passengers were cut by flying glass. (It was a very large bus.)

The people were shocked and angry. 'We've got to get the people who threw that rock!' they shouted. And the bus driver promptly found the other bus, the one that had the people who threw the rock, and rammed it, and that bus fell over on its side, and most of the people inside that bus climbed out the windows and started to run away.

'Let's get 'em!' shouted the people.

'Wait,' said the bus driver. 'Look, over there, at that OTHER bus.....