The Fox & The Grapes:A Hipster Aesopimal Fable

Wanting to prove I can write more than three-word captions, I turned to the classics.

Aesop’s tales are timeless - enjoyed since the 6th Century BCE - so I thought, why not saddle them with current specifics that will seem hopelessly outdated five years from now?

This story begins, as all tales of disappointment and regret do, on eBay.

Just after getting up at noon and a leisurely check of all of his social networks, Fox found an absolutely amazing Japan-only export re-release of The Grapes’ self-titled four-song EP.

Pressed on 180-gram vinyl and individually numbered, the 7” was in sealed mint condition and had no minimum reserve price set. No question about it — he had to have it.

(I know what you’re thinking, gentle reader, but this is not the Atlanta-based 90s jam rock The Grapes but an infinitely cooler, more obscure band called The Grapes that only super-savvy very hip people know about.)

He abandoned his usual strategy of waiting until the last day and bid right away. He checked back in an hour to discover someone else had outbid him. He raised his bid considerably only to be outbid again.

Luckily his monthly check from the parents had just arrived, so he raised his offer on the record to a princely sum. He checked back on eBay with clockwork regularity as the time left on the auction passed.

In the last second, he was outbid by a record-store owner in Austin (who had downloaded an app that automatically bids at the last possible second – totally unfair!)

Huffing with rage, he marched to the nearest coffeehouse.

He bought a single Americano and occupied a table for four hours while hammering out a blistering 1500-word blog post about how The Grapes were totally overrated and that release in particular was notably full of flaws.

Moral…

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