otoh

Is it just me, or has there been way more comment spam than usual the last couple days?

Anyway, I got nothin’… so I’ll offer you this:

I’m told that it was on 15 January 1831 that Victor Hugo finished his novel Notre-Dame de Paris, known to us as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. That reminds me of a story…

Quasimodo was planning to retire and began interviewing for a replacement bell-ringer. [Yeah, I know. Just go with it.] So one of the candidates was shown up to the bell tower. “Pull on this rope,” he was told, “and put all your weight into it. You’ll hear the bells ‘DING’ but don’t look up until you hear the bells ‘DONG’.”

So he pulls on the rope, putting all his weight into it. He hears the bells ‘DING’ and then looks up only to find that the bells were swinging straight back at him. He was hit in the face and knocked out of the bell tower to the ground. Dead.

Just then two men walked by. The first pointed to the body of the unfortunate former hopeful bell-ringer and said, “Do you know him?”

“I’m not sure,” replied the second, “but his face sure rings a bell.”

As if that weren’t bad enough [as it certainly should be, but it's not]…

The next day the dead man’s brother applies for the bell-ringer’s job. He’s taken up to the bell tower and given the instructions about pulling on the rope, hearing the ‘DING’ but waiting for the ‘DONG’ before looking up. But, like his brother, he pulls on the rope and looks up after the ‘DING’ only to be hit in the face and knocked out of the tower to his death.

Wouldn’t you know, the same two guys were walking by again and the first says, “Do you know him?”

To which the second replies, “I’m not sure, but he’s a dead ringer for the guy we saw yesterday.”