Pastebėjau, kad viena feisbukdraugė prisijungė prie grupės “Campaign against political correctness”. Pažiūrėjau, apie ką ten žmonės diskutuoja, ir radau visai smagų anekdotą. Jūs jau žinote, ką manau apie anti-politkorektiškumą, bet anekdotas neblogas

One facebook-friend of mine joined a group called ‘Campaign against political correctness’ (see link). I was curious to check what people discuss there, and I found a rather funny anecdote. You might already know my opinion about anti-PC, yet I find the anecdote not bad at all Here it is in full, no idea whose copyright…

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There once was a young person named Little Red Riding Hood who lived on the edge of a large forest full of endangered owls and rare plants that would probably provide a cure for cancer if only someone took the time to study them.

She lived with a nurture giver whom she sometimes referred to as “mother”, although she didn’t mean to imply by this term that she would have thought less of the person if a close biological link did not in fact exist. Nor did she intend to denigrate the equal value of nontraditional households, although she was sorry if this was the impression conveyed.

One day her mother asked her to take a basket of organically grown fruit and mineral water to her grandmother’s house.

“But mother, won’t this be stealing work from the unionized people who have struggled for years to earn the right to carry all packages between various people in the woods?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother assured her that she had called the union boss and gotten a special compassionate mission exemption form.

“But mother, aren’t you oppressing me by ordering me to do this?”

Red Riding Hood’s mother pointed out that it was impossible for women to oppress each other, since all women were equally oppressed until all women were free.

“But mother, then shouldn’t you have my brother carry the basket, since he’s an oppressor, and should learn what it’s like to be oppressed?”

And Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her brother was attending a special rally for animal rights of community.

“But won’t I be oppressing Grandma, by implying that she’s sick and hence unable to independently further her own selfhood?”

But Red Riding Hood’s mother explained that her grandmother wasn’t actually sick or incapacitated or mentally handicapped in any way, although that was not to imply that any of these conditions were inferior to what some people called “health”.

Thus Red Riding Hood felt that she could get behind the idea of delivering the basket to her grandmother, and so she set off.

Many people believed that the forest was a foreboding and dangerous place, but Red Riding Hood knew that this was an irrational fear based on cultural paradigms instilled by a patriarchal society that regarded the natural world as an exploitable resource, and hence believed that natural predators were in fact intolerable competitors.

Other people avoided the woods for fear of thieves and deviants, but Red Riding Hood felt that in a truly classless society all marginalized peoples would be able to “come out” of the woods and be accepted as valid lifestyle role models.

On her way to Grandma’s house, Red Riding Hood passed a woodchopper, and wandered off the path, in order to examine some flowers.

She was startled to find herself standing before a Wolf, who asked her what was in her basket.

Red Riding Hood’s teacher had warned her never to talk to strangers, but she was confident in taking control of her own budding sexuality, and chose to dialogue with the Wolf.

She replied, “I am taking my Grandmother some healthful snacks in a gesture of solidarity.”

The Wolf said, “You know, my dear, it isn’t safe for a little girl to walk through these woods alone.”

Red Riding Hood said, “I find your sexist remark offensive in the extreme, but I will ignore it because of your traditional status as an outcast from society, the stress of which has caused you to develop an alternative and yet entirely valid worldview. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I would prefer to be on my way.”

Red Riding Hood returned to the main path, and proceeded towards her Grandmother’s house.

But because his status outside society had freed him from slavish adherence to linear, Western-style thought, the Wolf knew of a quicker route to Grandma’s house.

He burst into the house and ate Grandma, a course of action affirmative of his nature as a predator.

Then, unhampered by rigid, traditionalist gender role notions, he put on Grandma’s nightclothes, crawled under the bedclothes, and awaited developments.

Red Riding Hood entered the cottage and said, “Grandma, I have brought you some cruelty free snacks to salute you in your role of wise and nurturing matriarch.”

The Wolf said softly “Come closer, child, so that I might see you.”

Red Riding Hood said, “Goodness! Grandma, what big eyes you have!”

“You forget that I am optically challenged.”

The Wolf could not take any more of these specist slurs, and, in a reaction appropriate for his accustomed milieu, he leaped out of bed, grabbed Little Red Riding Hood, and opened his jaws so wide that she could see her poor Grandmother cowering in his belly.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Red Riding Hood bravely shouted. “You must request my permission before proceeding to a new level of intimacy!”

The Wolf was so startled by this statement that he loosened his grasp on her.

At the same time, the woodchopper burst into the cottage, brandishing an axe.

“Hands off!” cried the woodchopper.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” cried Little Red Riding Hood. “If I let you help me now, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in my own abilities, which would lead to poor self esteem and lower achievement scores on college entrance exams.”

“Last chance, sister! Get your hands off that endangered species! This is an FBI sting!” screamed the woodchopper, and when Little Red Riding Hood nonetheless made a sudden motion, he sliced off her head.

“Thank goodness you got here in time,” said the Wolf. “The brat and her grandmother lured me in here. I thought I was a goner.”

“No, I think I’m the real victim, here,” said the woodchopper. “I’ve been dealing with my anger ever since I saw her picking those protected flowers earlier. And now I’m going to have such a trauma. Do you have any aspirin?”

“Sure,” said the Wolf.

“Thanks.”

“I feel your pain,” said the Wolf, and he patted the woodchopper on his firm, well padded back, gave a little belch, and said “Do you have any Maalox?”

My friend Jūratė posted this quote in her facebook status:

Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.- C.S.Lewis

I would add: the existence of little men already implies dictatorship; the monopoly of focus on little men implies dicKtatorship

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My acquaintance with Kiev starts much before we all start trying to delineate its limits through the window of our plane. It starts from the stewardesses with ‘Slavic’ style makeup – they won’t give us immigration cards until we ask them, since they don’t consider us foreigners. It also starts from pieces of hot chicken and lots of potatoes, which we receive in our lunchboxes on the plane. It starts from half-understandable (for us) signs in Ukrainian language.

The team that meets us do their best to ensure us that the next days will be interesting, purposeful and orderly – some Western European colleagues clearly doubt the latter point. A Swedish-speaking Finn jokes that the Ukrainians cannot tell a bus from a sauna. He will later have to pay (literally) for his impatience. Not willing to wait for instructions from our hosts, who will warn us about unreliable ATMs at the hotel lobby, he will later rage when one of these machines simply would not give him his cash.

The key-card must be used everywhere at the hotel – to enter your room to take an elevator, to turn on the lights… Some people don’t feel very comfortable when seeing policemen in corridors watching them. Later we will see that the guards do not cause any problem for girls in their shiny hardly-covering-anything shorts.

And so finally here it is – the city! The city of music: at the airport, in the elevator, in underground crossings – everywhere you are surrounded by sounds at once. There are speakers outside the hotel, but in the evening they will be replaced by the gently flowing “Strangers in the night” melody – live. The driver’s radio plays both Russian pop and oldies, the songs that hardly anyone listens to anymore, but everyone knows their lyrics by heart. As the midnight is approaching, a guy selling flowers in one of the tiny kiosks in an underground crossing is deep in his thoughts and listening to rap music. After breakfast you cannot miss piano melodies coming from the corridor.

The city of romantics: beside the Independence square, a guy in a suit is waiting for someone with a white rose in his hand. Couples, not paying attention to people passing by, are kissing in underground crossings. Not like the French, who are always going deep into each other’s throat, but as if they would be carefully studying each other shortly after having just met, and, having recognized their fatal passion from scents, colours or something else as in some magical TV commercial, they would not even consider that it is possible not to give in to it. Even posh Ukrainian girls, who are famous for this feature even in Lithuania, walk hand in hand not with guys in their training suits and not with rich foreigners. Dozens of people enjoy taking a stroll, sitting on benches, walking in a wide fountain, or sitting down right on a pavement, with a bottle of beer – it’s not forbidden.

The city of colours – I see a small part of it through the window of my wine-, gold- and sand-coloured stripy spotty bedroom. The city of colours, which has a square where you can see two bright sky-blue Orthodox churches with golden roofs. The city which receives enough sunshine to make nail-polish shine on thousands of toes on every step. And shoes, abundance of them, – those that were fashionable in Lithuania a couple of years ago, the latest ones, soft and with little braids, sparkling flip-flops, fatal red, with heels high enough to remind strip dancers to some observers, white and multicoloured – whatever you fancy. Everyone in this diversity of colours wants to be colourful in her own way, and I’m starting to understand them.

The city with a melancholic smile for the past – no one fears a pentagram in the city centre, and a statue of Lenin, concentrated and leaning forward, meets bypassers near one of the many underground crossings. The conference hall at the hotel is filled with gentle tingaling of old chandeliers, and snacks at the headquarters of Ukrainian labour unions remind these times, when people were good at producing sophisticated meals from very limited variety of products.

For only 23.6 hryvnia (a bit more than 3 EUR) I get a small bowl of soup with pieces of sausage, cucumber salad, the main course of delicious dumplings, and a big mug of home-made kvass. Western Europeans are surprised with everything they see in the Besarabian market, but not all of them. Me and the Danish colleague are discussing that it’s almost like in Gothenburg. At first we doubt whether it is safe to return home at night, but only until we see that there are two guards in each underground crossing. At night I try to take a photo of the statue of Sholom Aleichem, but it appears so blur that it looks like a friendly waving ghost. Now I begin to wonder, was it real or was it a dream?