Rehosting "The instructive fable of the weasel and the scorpion"

Which you can drunkenly repeat half-remembered to impress some girl at a party with how sensitive and spiritual you are

Jan 6, 2020

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Once upon a time there was a weasel that wanted to cross a river. As he prepared to get wet, he realised that he was completely not into it. The weasel spotted a scorpion who also wanted to cross the river, who asked the weasel to carry him on the top of his head.

The weasel, eyeing opportunity, asked the scorpion why they couldn’t do it the other way around. He didn't want to get wet. “I have fur and whatnot, you with your shell, water probably bounces off you like water on a ducks back or something.”

“You’re being silly,” the scorpion insisted. “You are ridiculously larger than me, there is literally only one way this can go you asshole”

“hey whoa relax dude no reason to be mad I’m actually just intellectually curious and honest. you know, the only reason I engage in this fight with you is actually as a sign of my respect because I think you're smart enough to actually talk to me”, the weasel said.

“What are you even talking about. Will you help me get across or not, I don’t have time for this”

“Hahahahahahahhahahahahahah yeah thats what I thought you don’t even have a counter argument and resort to namecalling. I’m arguing the case and you are just moving the goal post”

“Asshole. River. Not gonna ask again. if you keep this up I will straight up stab you to death with my long poison stab-ass, fuckface”

The weasel didn't want to help the scorpion if it meant he got wet, but he decided — or rather, he sort of just saw him self play along, it wasn't so much a conscious decision. He had gotten lost in ironic distance to the point where he didn't have a solid conception of self.

They walked down to the riverbed and just stood there. The weasel found himself panicking. It almost felt as if he lost control of himself, but not quite. He felt possessed, except there was nothing that came in and took him over, he only exited himself, and sort of watched the whole thing play out in third person. Standing at the river, the moment having come where he actually had to *do* the *thing*, he felt like he couldn't breathe. The plot was all wrong. It wasn't meant to go like this.

Why hadn't he done something, said something different? It felt like a dream almost. He only realised he had forgotten to breathe when he heard the scorpion sigh in frustration:

“FINE you lazy shit canoe, you can sit on my head and I’ll do the swimming GOD how do you even function in normal society jesus fuck man seriously this is a terrible afternoon”

The weasel got on top of the scorpions head, and the scorpion started swimming across the river. “I’m Paul by the way,” the scorpion said. “So what are you doing on the other side of the river? I’m visiting family in the country”

The weasel hadn't quite found himself yet and the change of tone stumped him. He just muttered “eeh. eeeeh,” while trying to existentially step back into Being again, having completely lost himself in the moment of social failure.

“Look I know I was being sort of hard on you but you just push peoples buttons dude, conversation is not a fucking competition man, and you’re setting yourself up to fail if you treat strangers with the level of intimacy that is implied by your attitude. you come on too strong. like, I don’t really mind doing you a favor but your entire framing of the situation as trying to get one over on me intellectually, if you couldn't con me into doing something for you, is extremely unbecoming.

You make me instinctively be on guard around you. maybe just try to be real with people about small shit like this, I mean, I could tell that you have this huge entire framing of it as some important moment, some epic win where you owned me so hard I didn't even notice, or whatever.

I mean, I don’t buy your “I respect you enough to argue with you” bullshit for a second. You’re just being condescending, because I’m willing to bet ten buckets of wasp’s tears that’s just the cover story you have to tell yourself, because its really more something like “I think I can win.”

Feel free to deny it but you're not going to change my mind with arguments you learned, aped from someone else, and repeat as if they are lines to some play where you get to be the cool master of discussion and logic. you’re not really *here* with me, you're somewhere else, you're guarded as fuck. because, I think, you're scared.

Not of me obviously, despite me being a living nightmare death monster, which is odd, and again, just make it seem like you aren’t really paying attention. As I said that’s the whole reason you interacted with me at all. I get the sense that the only people you are comfortable with are people you think are clever — but only those you deem slightly less so than you.

My greatest fear in life is that all of this will peel right of of you. That language is truly dead, killed by people like you. I’m afraid that you are truly unsalvegable. That there is nothing good left in you, and that all that there is inside you is desperation and hunger.

The willingness to do anything, say anything — for any reason at all. It makes me feel like I’m not really talking to anyone at all when I’m talking to you, and I’ll be completely straight: it makes me so lonely I can’t even begin to describe it.

If you are willing to say and do anything to get your way, and your “way” changes every fleeting moment as it seem to do, with no overarching structure, point or end goal, you just seem to be the soul of a grasshopper, no sense of purpose; just moment-to-moment hunger.

And I mean, I pray to fucking God that that isn't the case, because even the existence of one of such people, having to know, having to accept that someone could truly be so vapid and void, would by its mere existence discredit the worth of sentience itself.

The fact — if it is indeed one — of such an existence would discredit my own, implicitly. My own sense of being alive would be sullied by association. If it is possible to be such — the To Be is less than I had hoped it would be.

That’s a lot to put on you all alt once, I know, but you know, when you're riding together you just start yapping. I do at least, but I think everyone does. I used to hitchhike a lot, I think there’s something about communication that is linked with travel in some metaphysical way, but that’s an entirely different can of worms, we don’t have to get into it.”

The weasel had come to his senses again, but he didn't know what to say in response, so he just made some sort of affirmative grunts while he hoped the moment would pass a little quicker.

The weasel wasn't truly there, although he did all he could to pretend to be, to alleviate the fears of the scorpion, without having to actually engage with him. So the weasel hid himself within himself, actively suppressing his cognition because the entire scenario was uncharted waters to him.

For a little while they just travelled in silence. The scorpion started to whistle a happy tune, to show that there were no hard feelings or whatever. He was a little embarrassed, but wanted to give being friendly a real try, & tried to emote that he was relaxed and approachable.

When the tune was over and there was just silence, the wind and the water, an image struck the weasels mind. He imagined Later, when he would be Hanging Out with Someone He Wanted to Impress, although even in the fantasy it was a vague generality and not any specified person or people.

The weasel imagined that he would be hanging out with some Cool Guys, someone that really “got him” unlike this stupid angry poser pseud scorpion — telling them about this exact moment. He could just imagine himself, smiling ear to ear as he regaled his tale:

“It was SOOO awkward!” he would say, and all the girls would laugh and maybe he would get a blowjob.

Just thinking about it, he burst out in a snort of laughter. The scorpion stopped swimming, and shook him off into the water with a mighty whip of his neck.

“Hey what the hell I thought we were cool Paul,” the weasel said.

“look asshole do you want me to sting you to death or what, jesus christ how can you be this fucking selfdestructive. I mean are you even there. Is there even any self there or are you just desctrution. can you even feel gratitude or is it just some sort of abstraction to you”

The weasel shook his head, to pose like someone in a tv commercial or a sitcom intro, and smirked: “It’s my nature,”