To demonstrate the strangeness of life's ebbs and flows, Rudolf was suing ... unauthorized use of his nose; he went on Geraldo; and in front of the nation he demanded a couple million in compensation.

Half the reindeer were gone; along with his wife, who suddenly decided she'd had enough of his life. She joined a self-help group, and left in a whiz, demanding forevermore he address her as Ms. As for the gifts, why, he had ne'er a notion that making a choice could cause such commotion. Nothing of leather, nothing of fur, this meant nothing for him, and nothing for her. Nothing that might be construed to pollute. Nothing to aim. Nothing to shoot. Nothing that clamored or made lots of noise. Nothing for just girls, or just for the boys. Nothing that hinted of being gender specific. And nothing that's warlike or non-pacifistic. No candy or sweets...they're bad for the tooth. And nothing that seems to embellish a truth.

So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed; he simply couldn't figure out what to do next. He tried to be merry, he tried to be gay, but one has to be careful with that word today. His sack was quite empty, flung on the ground; could anything acceptable ever be found? Something special was needed, a gift that he might give to all without angering the left or the right.

An offering that would satisfy, with no indecision, each group of people, every religion. So here is his gift, it's price beyond worth: "May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth."

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The 3 Stages of Life

1) You believe in Santa Claus
2) You don't believe in Santa Claus
3) You are Santa Claus

10. You've got red and green bags under your eyes
9. You're serving reindeer pot pie
8. When you hear, "Sleigh bells ring, are you listenin'?," you scream, "No! I'm not listening!"
7. You climb on your roof and start shooting carolers in the ass with your BB gun
6. You think you hear your Christmas tree taunting you
5. Instead of spending time with family, you're watching some guy make photo copies
4. You're busted for running through town wearing nothing but mistletoe.
3. You've got eggnog coming out of your ears
2. Your standard response, "And happy holidays to you too, you bastard"
1. Two words: tinsel rash

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IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

And now: Santa Claus--The Awful Truth

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
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