January 14, 2004

• Dram’s Bedtime Story Service

  
  

  Good evening, one and all!  It’s time for another Dramamine Boy’s Xanga bedtime story!  So brush your teeth, tuck yourselves into bed and prepare to be carried away on another enchanting adventure!

  
  

  But first, before you read on, you should be familiar with Dram’s Bedtime Story Service #1.  If you haven’t read that installment yet, go read it now… don’t worry, we’ll wait.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  HURRY UP!
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  Okay, are we all ready now?  The other day, I was doing some extensive research for future Dramamine Boy’s Xanga blogs. Everyone has their favorite places to get their information.  Students go to the library.  Lawyers have reams of past cases to pour through.  Dramamine Boy’s Xanga?  Why, quite obviously, it’s the kid’s section at Barnes & Noble. 

  
  

  

  
  

  I was browsing through the titles, looking for books from my youth that I might share with the great people of Xanga and came across…

  
  

  

  
  

  What the heck?  There’s a sequel?  I glanced at the author of the book and it was Margaret Mahy, not Claire Huchet Bishop, who “wrote” The Five Chinese Brothers.  I figured it must be a different story, so I decided to flip through it… heck, maybe it’s actually a GOOD story about asians.

  
  

  The Seven Chinese Brothers is a story about seven chinese brothers who look exactly alike and each one has a special power.

  
  

  Uhhhh… that sounds familiar.

  
  

  One brother can see things a hundred miles away, another could hear things a hundred miles away, another was really strong, another had bones of iron, still another could forever stretch his legs (deja vu…), the sixth brother could not be burned (where have I heard THIS before!?!) and the last brother could drown an entire village with one of his tears.

  
  

  If I were Claire Huchet Bishop, I’d be pretty pissed off right about now.  Then again, since she ripped her story off from some chinese storyteller, I guess she doesn’t have much of a case.

  
  

  Anyway, the six brothers made sure the seventh brother was always happy, since he’d drown everyone if he started to cry.  Man, how lame would it be to have to live with THAT guy?  One wrong mood swing and you’d die in a torrent of salty tears.  It’d be like living with the kid from The Twilight Zone movie that turned his dad into a jack in the box.

  
  

   

  
  

  Couldn’t find a pic of the jack-in-the-box dad from the movie, so this was the next best thing.  At least now you know where that Simpsons scene originated from

  
  

  The Eavesdropper hears and The Human Telescope sees that there are poor, tired men wearlily repairing the Great Wall of China a hundred miles away.  It’s a good thing they weren’t 101 miles away, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to see or hear them.  Funny how things like that work out.

  
  

  So, the strong brother goes out and finishes repairing the Great Wall by himself.  Emperor Ch’in Shih Huang hears of this feat and instead of rewarding the brother, he decides he’s too dangerous to keep around, so they capture him and will cut off his head in the morning.

  
  

  Margaret Mahy uses the name of an actual emperor of China in this book.  I think the family of the emperor might have a bone to pick with Ms. Mahy.  To make it up, whenever the emperor is mentioned throughout the book, she adds some extreme compliment such as, “The Celestial Emperor (whose face is more dazzling than the rising sun)”.  As if compliments make up for ripping off the guy’s name, making him look like a fool and not compensating anyone for it.

  
  

  The Eavesdropper hears the plans and Iron Bone runs over and takes the strong brother’s place.  Morning comes, they try to cut his head off and each attempt results in the swords breaking from the strength of Iron Bone’s bones.

  
  

  Okay, wait a minute.  They didn’t say anything about this guy’s SKIN being like iron.  Wouldn’t he at least have bled to death?  Does anyone else wonder about things like this!?!  It’s like how Michael Biehn was the father of John Connor in The Terminator, but he couldn’t be the father because John Connor has to send him back to the past before any of that can happen.  I hate when they can’t avoid mistakes like this.  It just requires common sense and a knowledge of the sequence of events which lead up to the effects to a timeline when a time machine is introduced and a person is allowed to manipulate prior history, thus producing an alternate timeline which is free from the chicken/egg dichotomy… NOW HOW HARD IS THAT!?!

  
  

  …

  
  

  Sorry, just a pet peeve of mine.  Is everyone still with me?  Okay, back to the story.

  
  

  They decide to drown this guy in the sea, but they won’t do it until the next day.  Boy, could this BE any more of a rip-off!?!  Stilt Boy (heck, everything else is just like The Five Chinese Brothers, I might as well use the same name) takes the place of Iron Bone, the soldiers throw him into the sea and he stretches his legs so his head is perched above the surface.

  
  

  

  
  

  Even the ILLUSTRATORS got into the act!

  
  

  The Emperor (whose whisper is like the rumble of thunder) decides to… you guessed it, burn this guy at the stake.  And of course, he’s gonna wait until the next day.  Didn’t this guy learn ANYTHING from the first story!?!  The Human Asbestos Layer arrives, they try to burn him and whadda ya know, neither he nor his clothes burn.

  
  

  So, the Emperor (whose nose hair is as expertly trimmed as the most beautiful of bonzai) decides to shoot this guy with arrows.  FINALLY!  SOMEONE USING THEIR HEAD!  Word gets back to the other brothers that they’re gonna fill the Human Asbestos Layer full of holes and Twilight Zone Boy, knowing there’s nothing they can do to save him… starts to cry.

  
  

  His tears tidal-wave down the road, engulfing the army of soldiers guarding the Human Asbestos Layer a hundred miles away and also sweeping the Emperor (whose farts are as fragrant as the finest rose) so far away, he never returns.  The Human Asbestos Layer is free!  How the heck he didn’t drown with everyone else… I don’t know.  Maybe asbestos people are more bouyant in tidal waves than regular humans.  Maybe I’ll have to ask the Mythbusters to investigate this.

  
  

  And the seven chinese brothers… after killing off the entire chinese army (along with every single living thing in the path of the tidal wave) and removing a well-loved emperor from power (who in real life was credited with unifying China and building the Great Wall of China)… lived happily ever after.

  
  

  
  It says in the book that Margaret Mahy has penned more than fifty books.  I’m guessing that included in her body of work are such classics as The Tale of Four Cities and Three Fish, Four Fish, Red Fish, More Fish.

  
  

  How did these two get away from proscecution?  Isn’t it quite obvious that there’s some serious plagiarism goin’ on here?  What’s to stop anyone else from doing the same thing?  So forget it man, I’m makin’ my own story.  It’s called…

  
  

  

  
  

  It’s a poignant story of ten chinese brothers who all look alike and each one has a special power.  They all work at the U.S. patent office and they use their powers to hunt down two entirely fictional patent infringers, named Claire Huchet Bishop and Margaret Mahy.  Hilarity ensues.

  
  

  This story is gonna make millions.

  • 8:05 pm
  • 36 Comments