poisoned

“Didn’t we once read a story where one character murderer another… using, ummm… lilies of the valley?” asked Urania. “Snuck the plant into food or tea?”

“We did… and I can’t remember anything more about it. That bit stuck because of Typist’s appreciation for the flower… which she really doesn’t like all that much,” said Thalia.

“She only grows them because there’s a story about her mother’s favored patch of the little cream bells. Her father would clip them down with the lawn mower. Funny what people remember?” Calliope cleared her scratchy throat and blew her nose. “Want to poison someone Nia?”

“No. I just read that Socrates was poisoned by the powerful for renouncing Zeus and seducing a school of impressionable youths into worshipping a fantastical metaphysics instead. Sounds like a truly awful way to go. Before he went though… he experimented with satire and found that… well… ‘tis better to poke fun at ourselves rather than others.” Urania was dangerously close to oversimplifying what she’d just read into uselessness. She was not on top of her game.

“Oh… like yesterday day’s BFN?” asked the Muse of Many Questions. “Where we said we didn’t want BFN to be mistaken for Better Homes and Gardens, but in an ironic twist, Martha Stewart’s Living magazine was okay?”

“Yes… that’s the idea. Author Angus Fletcher concludes, ‘So, by satirizing ourselves, we dose our brain with Socratic aboveness and pain-quenching neuro-pharmacologies, while by satirizing others, we drag ourselves down with anxiety and cardiac arrest.’”

“Interesting. So much to learn,” said Thalia.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people. ~Socrates