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    Arthur of the Roundish Table: THE SWORD IN THE STONE

    By Richard Day on Sun, 03/29/2009 - 1:39pm |
    Lancelot had finished one of those foot long subways and felt woozy to say the least. Much more satisfying than dried venison butt. The One who is Mostly Shunned led our hero back to the glen outside the forest perimeter. They both slept, but in a purely platonic manner of course.

    Sleep never hindered the Hooded One from discussing whatever he wanted to discuss so he crept into Sir Lancelot's dreams.

    Did you hear the one about the sword in the stone, Lancelot.

    No it was before my time.  I came to the Roundish Table a bit later, I am afraid. I suppose I have to hear the REAL story from you though.

    Once upon a time, only a couple of decades ago which amounts to a second in universal time, there lived a young boy in a small village just south of here. He was apprenticed to a forge, a forge run by a man named Ector.

    The boy learned all of the secret processes of iron and the fire.  He learned to use forms into which he poured the melted metal and how to pound and pound that metal to make it stronger and stronger.

    One day while wandering the beautiful fields outside the village, our young hero found a strange rock that had been covered by the grass.  A recent rain and some ground flooding had uncovered a portion of this strange find and so the youth stole back to the forge, borrowed a shovel and went back to dig it up.

    Although the stone was only a few feet long and wide, it was extremely heavy.  So he covered it with grass and dirt and pondered his new find as well as his fate.

    Now these are the dark ages Lancelot, the darkest of the dark. People are now dumber than they will be until the 1950's when children will grow up watching black and white tv's thinking Donna Reed and Father Knows Best are reality shows.  

    But these dark ages foreshadow the age of the guilds because groups of trade workers. These guilds were born out of a need to protect one's shop. The bakers knew the secret of yeast and those terrific creams that go into those donuts without holes and mmmmm I could just eat those all day. And the cartwrights understood the secrets of wheel and some secrets dealing with forgers but those union meetings were kind of violent at times.

    But the forgers knew secrets of the ore and the young lad was fast to learn.  At first Arthur was depressed over being sold into this quasi slavery, but he loved the fire and the smell of metal.  As a competition there was a special demonstration where the winner of the competition would receive special recognition from the King.

    So the lad stole off with a cart and picked up the stone in the middle of the night and brought it back to the forge. And worked it and worked it and forged it and fived it and made this a sword of wonder. He had folded it by the trick of the Asians and hammered it and it was made stronger than all other swords. A true work of beauty and it would not chip or break no matter how hard it was slammed into other swords. And it hewed wood like a knife through butter.

    The rest is history. King Uther arrived and was presented with all the swords. And he took a peculiar look at the sword of the lad.  What is this writing then?  

    It says Ex Caliber Sire, responded Arthur.  It means out of the stone.

    King Uther took an extra long look at the blue eyed blond haired youth also. The young Bedivere leaned toward the King noting, looks a lot like you Sire.

    A lot of blond hair and blue eyes in these parts.

    Ah but the nose is one that would make Gippetto proud.

    Oh dear. And after a short time, Arthur was recognized as the only son of Uther. And I mean, Arthur-Uther. Coincidence?  Clearly mom had some trouble with her r's.

    But dark one, that is not how I heard the story.  I heard that there was a jousting tournament after the death of Uther and that there had been a huge stone with a sword stuck into it and the hilt sticking out.  That there had been continuing competition to pull out the sword by the greatest of the knights of those times and that Kay, the elder brother of Arthur ordered him to go back to the tent. To retrieve his sword which Arthur had forgotten and that the lad came upon the sword in the stone, pulled it out and brought it to Kay. That at first Kay claimed it as his own but thence admitted that Arthur had retrieved the sword.

    And Arthur, after having to demonstrate his capabilities in stone pulling many times over many feast days, was finally proclaimed King.

    Lancelot, the Shunned One responded, that is how the propaganda network unravels the truth sometimes.  

    You begin with History.
    History morphs into legend
    Legend morphs into myth
    Myth even morphs into fairy tales and then cable news.

    It is an evil progression I assure you.

    In 1600 years a famine will grasp the West as a direct result of the crimes of a king named w. Now w was like King Badegrumpus and the King of the Hundred Knights.  

    The w was solely responsible for an invasion onto his soil, the first time in almost two hundred years. And then he took troops into war based on lies he had published in the new thing called media. And he tortured people, he held people in prison without charges or contact with the outside world. w would spy on his own people in violation of the law and then lie about that. w then took more and more of the wealth of the realm, giving the monies to secret corporations owned by his henchmen and spreading wealth to the wealthy and taking from the poor and the middle class. And he lied about that also, saying he was creating jobs with this policy when, in the end it was discovered that jobs had been lost during his reign and no gains recorded at all.

    w had put in charge of all his departments, people who had made all their monies by dealing with those departments.  He put millionaires who made their money from lumber in charge of caring for the forests. He put millionaires who had made their monies putting noxious fumes in the air in charge of the office in charge of cleaning the air.  He put people who should have been put in stocks in charge of a stock market. He put pagan racists in charge of the civil rights division.  He fired and scandalized those who spoke the truth.

    And yet, years later articles were written about the feats accomplished by w. It was written that job creation was at an all time high during his reign. That the air had been cleaned of noxious fumes. That the stock markets had fallen because of foreign markets.

    Kind of like every time a terrible plague of flu arises; it is always called the Asian Flue.

    And books began to be written by generals paid to write about the rightness of the wars begun by w. How freedom was being spread somehow by Hummers and Missiles and Bullets and Torture.

    Some books were written about w's brilliant military career when he never went to war and lied about his inactivity in an inactive military group. And other books told lies about how w made all these decisions by reading daily briefs consisting of hundreds of pages when he would not even take the time to a read a three page talking point memo.

    And later books were written of w's great speaking abilities and how loved he have been by his countrymen.

    Until, by the time of the Planet of the Apes, w was cherished as a Lincoln of sorts.

    Here we are able to see how history becomes legend becomes myth becomes fairy tales and finally ends up as fractured fairy tales.

    Now Lancelot this has been what one lady called an allegory on the Nile, except without the  Nile. I hope you have enjoyed this.  You might impart this to your friend the Bard Tristan.Sir Tristan is part of this modern media.  But he usually sings with more truth than those of the future.