We start our tale with the usual sorry problems of a second marriage. The first wife got the beautiful child she wanted - a daughter with skin as white as snow, cheeks as rosy as blood, and hair as black as ebony. But the second wife, the trophy wife, an ex-model who'd only married for the money to set herself up with a naughtly glamour site at QueenWicked.com, didn't like the Snow-White at all.
Each day she would look into the mirror and say:
"Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the ladies in the land,
Who is fairest? tell me who?"
The mirror, $69.99 from Walmart, and one of the first talking mirrors imported from China, replied:
"Thou, Queen, art fairest in the land"
Until Snow-White grew up. And then the mirror, being more honest than most items of interior decoration, replied:
"Thou, Queen, may'st fair and beauteous be,
But Snow-White is lovelier far than thee."
Result? Snow-White was taken out in to the woodlands and abandoned, in contravention of Section C of the 1962 Child-Care Act.
But she was a spunky little so-and-so, and wandered through the woods until she came across a little cottage and went in there to rest. On the table was spread a white cloth, and there were seven little plates with seven little loaves and seven little glasses with wine in them; and knives and forks laid in order, and by the wall seven little beds. She was exceedingly hungry, and nibbled the loaves and sipped the wine and inevitably finished up sleeping it off on one of the beds.
When the dwarfs came back from gold-panning in the hills, they were mightily pissed off.
"Who has been sitting on my stool?"
"Who has been eating off my plate?"
"Who has been picking at my bread?"
"Who has been meddling with my spoon?"
"Who has been handling my fork?"
And many similar anally-retentive comments that might be made by small people who feel slighted, or by large bears in fairytales that came later.
Yet when they saw Snow-White lying in one of their beds they were less righteous. "Good heavens! How beautiful she is!" And they took care not to waken her; and happily bed-hopped for the night to make sure she wouldn't be disturbed.
In the morning, Snow-White told them all her story, and they pitied her, and said if she would keep all things in order, and cook and wash, and knit and spin for them, and generally accept a completely sexist position in life, she might stay where she was, and they would take good care of her. Then they went out all day long to do their man's work in the hills, searching for gold and silver.
Snow-White remained at home; and did her housewifely chores, and everybody might have lived happily ever after except the pickings on the hill were exceedingly poor, and the dwarfs came home each day with nothing but a few flakes of precious metal. The little loaves of bread became littler, and the glasses of wine less full, especially as now there were eight mouths to feed rather than seven.
Then one day Snow-White had the bright idea of taking up her step-mother's trade. She gathered together all the dwarfs' shovels and picks and walking sticks and put them on eBay. And with the proceeds bought a digital movie camera and a selection of exotic clothing.
And so SnowWhiteXXX.com came into being, specialising in dwarf fetishism. Each morning the dwarfs would put on their leather clothing and sing:
"Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go,
With a snorkel and a whip
And a Viagra hit,
Hi ho, hi ho,"
When the Queen of QueenWicked.com came across the new venture on the Internet, she was furious.
She looked in her mirror and said:
"Tell me, glass, tell me true!
Of all the web sites in the land,
Whose is the best? tell me who?"
And the glass answered:
"Thou, Queen, thou are fairest in all this land;
But over the Hills, in the greenwood shade,
Where the seven dwarfs their dwelling have made,
There Snow-White is hiding; and she
Is a far better webmistress than thee."
And that really didn't help the Queen's mood.
But she came up with a cunning plan, and so it came to be that Snow White was administering her web site one day, and counting her new subscribers, when she received an email with a Word document attached, detailing the sexual appeal of small people. But when she opened it – disaster! It wasn't a Word document at all, it was a terrible virus called IHateYou, and it swept through her computer and her web site and all was ruined.
When the dwarfs saw what had happened they where sorely grieved. Dopey and Grumpy stormed off saying they wished they'd never sold their shovels in the first place, and complaining how the leather pants chafed. Sleepy and Sneezy went for a lie-down. Happy said it was all for the best, and Horny went to the bathroom. Which just left the final dwarf looking over Snow-White's shoulder, and his name, fortunately, was Techie.
Techie rolled up his silk leotard sleeves and set to work, clearing out the virus and replacing all the damaged files from the back-up tape. By evening, the site was back online.
Imagine the Queen's fury! She stormed down to her technical chamber in the basement and didn't stop work until she'd put together the most evil computer virus that mankind has ever known.
For good measure she took the batteries out of the mirror too.
And so it came to pass that Snow-White was administering her web site and counting her new subscribers when the postman called to deliver a DVD with the message "Amateur Dwarf movies – please publish on your excellent site".
Snow-White couldn't wait to see what was inside, but when she ran the DVD her computer screen turned blue and smoke poured out of the cooling vents and sparks came from the keyboard and within seconds her entire computer set-up was charred mess of burning plastic.
Snow-White was overcome by the fumes. The dwarfs found her lying on the ground; no breath passed her lips, and they were afraid that she was quite dead. They lifted her up, and combed her hair, and washed her face with wine and water; but all was in vain. So they laid her down upon a bier, and all seven watched and bewailed her three whole days; and then they proposed to bury her; but her cheeks were still rosy, and her face looked just as it did while she was alive; so they said, "We will never bury her in the cold ground." And they made a coffin of glass so that they might still look at her, and wrote her name upon it in golden letters, and that she was a king's daughter. Then the coffin was placed upon the hill, and one of the dwarfs always sat by it and watched. And the birds of the air came, too, and bemoaned Snow-White. First of all came an owl, and then a raven, but at last came a dove.
And thus Snow-White lay for a long, long time, and still only looked as though she were asleep; for she was even now as white as snow, and as red as blood, and as black as ebony.
At last a travelling computer engineer called at the dwarfs' house; and he saw Snow-White and read what was written in golden letters. Then he took a laptop from his engineer's bag and placed it close to Snow-White's head and powered it up and the very moment she heard the Windows start-up tune, written by Brian Eno, she awoke and exclaimed, "Where am I!" And the engineer answered, "Thou art safe with me."
It was impossible to repair the ruined computer equipment, so for the time being they ran SnowWhiteXXX.com from the laptop, and the subscribers came back in their hundreds of thousands, as all the dwarfism bulletin boards had been teeming with messages wondering what had happened to the beautiful web site and whether it would return one day.
Soon they were able to able to replace the burned-out equipment with new kit delivered by Dell, and within months the site had made a million, then its second million, and so on, until the Snow White Corp was flush with money and secretly made a takeover bid for QueenWicked.com.
And everybody lived happily ever after, especially the Queen, who retired on the proceeds of selling her site, but not Snow-White and the engineer, who made the terrible mistake of getting married, after which the engineer insisted that Snow-White was never to appear in any more dwarf movies. This she resented greatly, and they bickered and fought yet stayed together for the sake of the business, which was now jointly owned. So although they were exceedingly rich they were also exceedingly unhappy, and there lies the moral of this tale.
