Santa will kill us all

If you've read anything I've written about Santa / Krampus / Osama Bin Cringle, you know that his illegal antics each December tend to terrify me. The energy requirements for visiting millions of homes on Dec 25th would indicate that he's packing something like anti-matter while he's eating your cookies and milk (his alien physiology likely can't deal with the cookies and milk by the way. He's probably feeding them into some kind of matter to energy converter disguised as reindeer.) Today's timely warning isn't about any of those issues though. Today is about the fact that Santa will some day surely kill all of us, and by "us" I mean humans.

Just as the cold of winter is really getting started, this entity that's been observed "laying a finger aside of his nose" and then touching presents, glasses of milk, plates of cookies, the fireplace hearth, stockings even candy for goodness sake. Then, while his alien mucous is likely dripping from his fingers - he proceeds to provide a vector into a huge segment of the population of the world. Based on his travels alone, I think we can attribute 90% of the winter flu infections across the world to the Jolly Old Disease Vector. Those of you with children, imagine that instead of the classmates your kid usually hangs out with, we expand the pool by hundreds of millions and you have some idea of what Santa's bringing into your home each Christmas.

Some day, this guy that flies downwind of reindeer poop all night, touches warm milk that's been sitting out on the counter (maybe drinks it) and fiddles with his nose all of the time (Google it, he's got a nose thing) - someday he's going to spread a really bad one and since it will hit us all at the same time, we won't have time to develop a vaccine.

He's a threat to the viability of the human race, a hazard to flight, a B&E specialist and a poor example for obese children the world over. As a threat, it's hard to over-estimate his potential and yet the authorities spend no time at all working on bringing him to justice. Are they blind to the world spanning scope of his criminal organization and the threat to our way of life? How can they not see the coming Santapocalypse?

This year, as usual - I'll spend Christmas eve in the hidden safe room, cradling a 12 guage & wearing a surgical mask. According to the Mayo Clinic, I should be able to get out and bleach the house by the 28th or so in time for new years parties. That is if anyone else survives that long.

The Lateness (more about my calendar)

I’m almost never very late to an appointment, and rarely late at all. Being late bothers me, as my mind is filled with what I would be saying about my lateness, were I the other person and it’s not complimentary. My imagined 3rd person internalized harangue from the person I’m going to be speaking to soon is most decidedly negative in nature. (Note: Imagined internal monologues of others in response to my lack of planning are always performed in disgusted tones, while glancing at their watch, mumbling under their breath about how this meeting was a bad idea in the first place.) When I am late, it’s typically because of traffic or parking.

Traffic delays seem to present an almost insurmountable mathematical problem. There’s the somewhat challenging, but solvable non-equilibrium statistical mechanics models, say using the Boltzmann equation. I can’t really do that kind of math in my head while I’m driving, and I don’t really trust Outlook to solve it either before I leave the office. No, the truly unsolvable traffic delay calculation seems to be the seeming inability of many drivers to grasp the butterfly effect when it comes to the consequences of their own actions while driving.

Essentially, deciding to slow down by 5 mph to watch some poor sap get a ticket for driving under the influence of scrapple (no link, look it up) you affect thousands of people who have the bad fortune of being behind you. Big deal, everyone slows down by 5 mph right? Wrong. The people immediately behind slow by 7 mph, because the have no idea what the idiot up ahead is doing. The folks behind them weren’t paying attention, so hit their brakes just in time – coming to a near stop. While they get their adrenalin levels back to near normal, the people behind them actually stop in awe of the near accident that they just witnessed. The full stop ripples back as far as the fluid density is great enough to support the compression wave – maybe 4 or 5 miles. In heavy traffic, that’s maybe 8000 people on a 6 lane road – 1/2 hour delay for each so 4000 man hours of productivity, around 2.5 man years your rubbernecking just cost society. In the mean time, you’ve made me unpredictably late for my meeting.

Bumper Sadness

I really have to comment (rant) a bit on the sad postings I see from time to time - mostly on some forlorn soul's bumper, but occasionally on their computer  case or even a shirt. The clear expression of woe is one that I'm sure you have all seen, and one that is nearly impossible to ignore, once  the implications are clear. The fact that so many people find themselves in need of expressing such an extreme and unfortunate fact of their life would be cause for contemplation even without the additional context. The fact that the condition (which I can only describe as heart rending sad) is so common in our society that one can purchase stickers which express the shocking truth -- indicates to me that our society has failed, and not just the unfortunate few who are OK with expressing these torrents of grief, but each of us who should have been there for them; each of us who may also feel the same; each of us who participate in a world, a society, a community where these expressions happen and do nothing to alleviate the obvious pain.

I speak, of course, of the folks expressing the thought "I'd rather be knitting" or "I'd rather be shining my Ford Mustang" or even "I'd rather be petting my poison dart frog." Really, you can pretty much fill in the blank of the thing they would rather be doing, it's all the same sad commentary on their life. If it's not obvious to some of you more insensitive clods, I'll spell out what these people are really saying. They are saying that no matter what wondrous life affirming experience they may be having at the moment you are reading their sticker, they would rather be doing the mundane thing on the sticker. They could be taking their son or daughter to the airport to fly to Stockholm to accept the Nobel prize for physics, and according to their deliberately placed mass market expression of their innermost desires - they would rather be beekeeping.

How can we live with the concept that there are people out there who have given up on what life has to offer to the degree where they can with some confidence (these stickers do no come off easily) explain to the world that they have determined that no other experience which they will ever participate in will be better than the well known activity which someone mass printed and sold as bumper stickers? Can't we help these people somehow? Explain to them that they should not just give up on life because the best thing they have ever done so far is play Bocci?

If you are reading this and have such a sticker, please reconsider your approach to the rest of your life and believe that is is possible that you may have moments in the future where you would not rather be bird watching. There's nothing wrong with bird watching, especially if you are somewhere in Peru trying to catch a glimpse of an Andean Condor carting off the remains of a capybara or maybe the leg of a chupacabra. Please consider that the best thing to happen to you may still be to come, and may not be an activity which is so common in in your society that your affiliation with it can be found expressed in truck stops and curio shops for $3.95 plus tax. Your life is NOT over -- please do not express the rage, sadness and hopelessness you feel in a permanent way on your bumper, locker or laptop case.

On that note, I'll let you all contemplate the shocking horror of our abandonment of these unfortunates. Have we created self-help groups for them? Crisis lines? Maybe an awareness campaign? No, I can say that we have done none of these things and people that I talk to about their obvious plea for help uniformly turn me away. How can any of you, knowing what's going on - not reach out to the person parked next to you at the grocery store who would "rather be ice fishing" and try to ease their pain? I'm sick of the complacency and sick of fighting this battle alone. All in all, I think I'd rather be digging holes.