Category: My stories

At first, they blamed the Chinese food markets and poor sanitation for the pandemic.
I mean, that’s where Bird Flu came from, right?
Researchers traced the migration path of the virus and discovered that it closely matched another migration pattern.
Santa Claus’ Christmas Eve flight plan.
It seems Santa picked up the virus somewhere and that’s how it spread so rapidly.
And being good enough for Santa doesn’t always mean washing your hands or covering your face when you sneeze.
Santa survived the plague.
Now, he stays up late at night, drawing lines through so many names, good and bad.

Sure, it was bad weather that brought down Kobe Bryant’s helicopter.
Because of all that fog, Santa Claus couldn’t see where he was going.
Even with Rudolph’s red nose lighting the way.
Because Santa’s sleigh doesn’t show up on radar.
No radio or flight plan, either.
So when some rich former athlete ignores the tower’s weather warnings and just has to get his ass from here to there, well, God forbid there’s a jolly old man taking his sleigh out for a test run.
Oh, kids. Don’t worry.
Santa’s fine.
Just don’t ask him for a Kobe jersey for Christmas.

Tina wanted a puppy for Christmas.
She asked for one all the time.
On Christmas Day, she woke up, ran down the stairs, and…
No puppy.
But when she opened her gifts: a dog collar, a bowl, some treats, and a pooper scooper.
“Let’s go to the shelter and get a puppy,” her dad said.
So, they went to the shelter, and Tina looked at the puppies.
“I don’t like any of them,” she said.
“Well, what kind do you want?” asked her dad.
Tina couldn’t decide.
So, the collar, bowl, treats, and scooper sat in the corner, gathering dust.

To save money, we recycled our old Christmas lights and bought ones with LEDs.
They were much cheaper when it came to electricity.
They were also programmable, so we strung them up all over the house and constructed a playlist to animate some reindeer and snowmen.
Well, the guys we hired to string them up. There’s no way we’re getting up on ladders and the roof again, after what happened last year.
Oh, and we added light projectors and music and…
The electric bill for December was through the roof.
Maybe next year, we’ll just stick with a small tree.

Santa’s a bit of a traditionalist.
It took a long time for him to let kids mail him their wish lists.
Heck, he still has a fax machine in his office.
Sure, he keeps running out of that thermal paper.
He’s finally coming around to the Internet, email, and the web.
Problem is, Santa Claus the username is taken everywhere.
And how does Santa Claus prove that he’s real and who he says he is?
He just asks the owners of those usernames and domains nicely.
And if they say no, they’re on his naughty list until they give in.

The movies have Santa’s Workshop all wrong.
There aren’t elves sitting at benches, building toys.
Instead, they outsource all of their manufacturing to factories in third-world countries.
Is China third-world country? Doesn’t seem like it, these days.
Thanks to all of Santa’s contracts.
The elves just handle the logistics and accounting.
They also don’t wear silly green and red suits with pointy shoes.
Because, in spite of the climate, the North Pole is a nudist colony.
Okay, so they wear the pointy felt hats.
On their heads.
How do they stay warm?
Well, that’s why there are so many elves.

Bailey has a tattoo of Jesus on the cross.
It covers her whole back.
She loves to show it off at parties.
She takes off her jacket, pulls her shirt up.
When she rolls her shoulders, it looks like Jesus is struggling with the nails in his hands.
She tilts back her head, and Jesus slumps, dead.
Pulls her shirt back down, puts her jacket back on.
Thing is, she’s an agnostic.
The tattoo was from an ex-boyfriend who drugged her.
She dumped the guy, but kept the ink.
“Jesus has my back” she says.
And she laughs and laughs.

Sure, people talk about the Christmas Truce in World War One, but how many talk about the Easter Escalation of the Crimean War?
Of course people don’t. Because I just made it up.
I make up a lot of things.
As long as they sound good, you’ll believe them without questioning them.
But a few people will bother to Google the event, maybe look it up in WikiPedia.
And they discover that I’m talking out of my ass and making things up.
At that point, you won’t believe a thing.
And I can pretty much write anything I want to.

Year after year, Santa’s Workshop produced its wooden toys and dolls and the traditional crap nobody wants anymore.
The fat old man, slumped in his throne, smiling and nodding.
Signing papers the elves brought to him.
More wood, more paint.
“Very good, very good.”
The Workshop. Raw materials came in one end, and toys went out the other.
But instead of loading them on to Santa’s sleigh, the elves put it all in a pile
And when the pile was high enough, they poured kerosene on it and lit a match.
They’d sing a few carols and return to work.