Next, Marie and I encountered a truly hideous representative of the mushroom people. The skin of this old lady was a sickly brown, the edges of her cap were curled with age. She had black furry mold growing in the cup of her upturned cap. She had white cob-webbed mold growing on the underside. Trailing into the dirt from the base of her stalk was yet more mold, which, strangely enough, was just as blurry in real life as it appears in the photograph.

Just as the natural affinity to light and warmth that many people harbor has become a tasteless and over-used cliché, so too has the attention given to beauty become trite and uninsightful. So Marie and I sat down with the troll to see if their was any wisdom of the hideous to be gained. As it turned out, there was nothing but bitterness. All the same, we stand by the principle of our argument, which prompted us to try.