They told The Man In The Moon he was no longer needed.
“Automation,” they said.
He had heard rumors of downsizing. The asteroid belt was already completely outsourced. Jupiter and Saturn were handling all their moons from a central dispatch. It was only a matter of time before he’d get the axe.
“What if something goes wrong?” he said. “The connection could go bad, and there’s some things you just can’t do remotely, you know.”
“We’ve got it covered,” they said, and they handed him a severance check.
Two weeks, plus unused vacation, and a little extra for good service.
Category: My stories
The Christmas Miracle
Something strange and wonderful is happening during the holidays.
People are reporting that gifts and important expensive purchases they’ve put on lay-a-way at Q-Mart have been paid off by total strangers.
“It’s a Christmas Miracle!” they say, hugging each other as they strap the baby crib to the roof, or stuff the trunk with shoes, jeans or other crap poor people give each other instead of real gifts.
That’s when the store chain started getting complaints. It turned out that their contractors in India had transposed a few digits, and it was a bunch of billing errors, not good Samaritans.
Nativity
Every December, we drag the Nativity scene out from the basement and assemble it in the front yard.
Problem is, there’s always something missing from it, like Joseph or a camel.
It’s not worth it to buy a new Nativity scene, only being used once a year, so we scrounge for replacements.
Using Grampa Eldon’s old lawn jockey as a replacement Wise Man kinda pissed off the Clevelands next door, although in my defense I did wrap it in Little Janey’s bathrobe and try to paint the face white with Liquid Paper.
Next year, we’ll just make snowmen, okay kids?
Christmas Tree Cookies
Looking down the list of the Cookie Exchange at the office, I read through notes each person gave their gift cookies.
The gingerbread men were delicious.
The frosted snowflakes were wonderful.
But those green pine trees were absolutely disgusting, and they made people sick.
I looked down the list… green pine trees… was Lisa.
She was in her office, and she asked me if she could have her tray back.
“What the heck did you put in those things?” I asked.
“Don’t they smell like trees?” she beamed. “Pine Sol has such a fine aroma.”
Next year, she’ll bring Oreos.
Watch The Clock
When Christmas approaches, online retailers see sales skyrocket, and so does the load on their servers.
Those who added memory and processing power, or shifted to scalable cloud solutions are running smoothly.
But others running sloppy code on overloaded old servers are crashing constantly.
And screaming at us in Support.
I look.
The server’s fine. The platform’s fine. The hardware’s fine.
You’re just slamming the crap out of it.
They say they can’t afford to buy upgrades or suffer any downtime, but we have to fix it.
I don’t have a magic wand, I tell them.
And watch the clock.
Ventilator
It was Christmas Eve. Grandma was in the hospital, so we brought the tree, presents and whole family to her room.
She’d had a stroke. A bad one.
But her living will told us to spare no effort, so there was the ventilator, pumping away, hiss hiss hiss.
It was sad.
That didn’t stop us, though. We sang Christmas carols, told stories.
“Let’s light the tree,” I said.
And I looked for an outlet.
Hrm. All full.
I pulled out what I thought was the lamp, plugged in the tree.
Everyone sang O Christmas Tree, and the ventilator went silent.
Angry At Birds
I started with a tree with a bird in it, chopping it down.
Shot two doves the next day.
Killed three hens in a local hatchery.
And then pegged four ravens off of a telephone wire.
Killing birds is easy, but collecting the five golden rings would be a challenge.
Rob a jewelry stand at the mall
Mug some housewives for their wedding bands?
I settled for ripping the ear off of a punk outside of a nightclub.
I’m going to the park to bag some geese today.
Hopefully they won’t notice before I go back tomorrow for the swans.
Vampire Claus
People assume vampires are skinny and wear black, but I know a fat one who wears red and white.
Yes, Santa Claus is a vampire.
The bell-ringers? The mall Santas?
Indentured human servants to scout for healthy and wealthy victims.
You can tell a lot about a person when they sit in your lap.
Their breath. Their fitness. Are their eyes clear or yellow from jaundice?
As the bag full of presents gets lighter, the sleigh and reindeer need ballast.
Those really bad children won’t be missed.
The smart ones make toys, and he calls elves.
The rest, he drinks.
Punching Santa
Why do children sit in Santa’s lap and tell him what they want for Christmas?
Because it’s a lot nicer than tripping him up, sitting on his back, and punching him in the kidneys until he gives you what you want.
This doesn’t just apply to Santa Claus and Christmas.
Stop beating the crap out of the other kids in school or you’re going to get expelled. Or put in juvenile detention.
And that counts double for your little brother during dinner.
Why can’t you say “Please pass the potatoes.” like other kids?
And don’t punch the damn potatoes, either.
Fruitcake
Tina is in the Christmas Pageant in her school.
She’s been chosen to be the Fruitcake.
That’s right. A fruitcake.
She’s going to get rolled on stage while the kids sing about how horrible fruitcake is.
I know that kids pick on other kids, especially ones in wheelchairs, but the school was supposed to stop this bullying crap.
So, we made the fruitcake costume, stuffed with fireworks.
When it was Tina’s cue, they rolled the Trojan Fruitcake out.
I pushed the remote and… it exploded.
Hurt a bunch of kids. Some permanently.
Oh well. More fruitcakes for next year’s pageant.