The human experience is filled with ambiguity. In fact, we are rarely presented with things we can measure absolutely and make specific declarations about like "I can state with absolute certainty, that I took no part in the death and/or disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa." How do you know that for sure? What if your consistent liberal voting stance enabled the infrastructure which eventually led to Jimmy's cement swim? What if the thumbtack you pulled from your tire and carelessly tossed onto the sidewalk, which then stuck to Jimmy's shoe and made a clacking sound on a marble floor at JUST the wrong moment as he was sneaking away from his assailant was the only reason he did not escape to spread corruption another day? Speaking of that tack and your clear implication in his suspicious nearly 40 year absence; was your act of careless litter a good, or a bad act on your part? Hoffa was no longer leading the union after the commutation of his prison sentence by President Nixon, but by all accounts was still up to no good. Your arguably fineable act of littering may have saved the world from quite a lot of misery.
Is lying to someone about their excruciating blog prose ("That's very nice Mr Weaselchicken. I can hardly detect any psychopathic tendencies at all from your very fine blog. You should write professionally...") bad, or good? Telling me the truth would almost certainly hurt my feelings, which could lead to other unfortunate consequences, though most likely not involving any form of orbital strike, unless I'm having a very bad day.
Which brings me to my point regarding The List. Santa is supposedly making a list and performing quality control upon the list somehow. He's creating a sharp, definitive dividing line between "naughty" children and "nice" children. One set gets fine gifts, crafted by some of the most unsavory creatures known to man. The other, naughty, list gets a lump of fuel for keeping warm in the winter cold, potentially saving their family from death due to exposure. Even if we ignore the ambiguity inherent to Santa's gifting strategy, what is the criteria he's using for categorization? Are children provided these criteria such that they can choose which side they land on? All of my calls for transparency from Santa in this matter have been ignored. He's using some arcane methodology to determine if a child's actions in aggregate (I'm assuming) are good or bad. Do some actions weigh more heavily than others? Is there a scoring system that tallys all activities of each child and provides Santa with a final number? If there's a scoring system, with a continuum of naughtyniceness from 0 (angelic) to 999999999 (The parents who park in the alley behind my house to drop their kids off at school) - where does the line get drawn? At the median? At the mean? Does some kid with a score of 5443789 get an AR Drone with the Oculus Rift VR headset and her brother with a score of 5443788 get a lump of coal? What's the cutoff for evening the score? Could the brother leave the last slice of fruitcake for his sister, just before going to bed on the 24th and end up with his very own 80 lbs bag of lime (#1 on his list) instead of the coal?
Santa needs to come clean on his methods, quality control (checking a list twice using the original method is lame by any QA standards) and generally be more transparent about how he's making decisions that will affect the self image of children the world around for the rest of their lives. He's operating with an agenda all his own, rewarding behaviors he likes and penalizing others - completely without candor or any visibility into his motives. Our children are being molded by a clear application of operant conditioning - perpetrated by a shadowy figure with no accountability.
Like my other warnings about this nefarious individual, I expect that this one will not cause the alarm and outcry required to keep us safe. Once again, Santa will perpetrate the illegal entry of billions of homes this December 25th, putting us all at risk of disease, nuclear contamination, kinetic energy release in the multi-megaton level and other so far un-named risks. I plead with anyone reading this to PLEASE think of the CHILDREN. We have no idea what Santa's real agenda is, and this sneaking into your home once a year to psychologically condition the next generation of leaders, teachers and Comcast service people should make you fear for our future.
Meanwhile, I'm converting to coal heat.
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