Haroun and Napoleon

So I write this "woe is me, life is hard, I'm so sad" post below and then I open up my latest read, Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie where the opening lines are these:

There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue.

In the north of the sad city stood mighty factories in which (so I'm told) sadness was actually manufactured, packaged and sent all over the world, which never seemed to get enough of it. Black smoke poured out of the chimneys of the sadness factories and hung over the city like bad news.

I think I'll turn on Napoleon Dynmaite now and attempt to laugh. After all, Napoleon is pretty good with the bow-staff.