Letter to Santa

Dear Santa

I am writing you to see if we can manage mend some fences, considering what has passed between us in these last 50+ years. Here in America, we've just celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday, and contemplating this, I've come to realize not only that I have many things to be thankful for, but that many of them relate in some way to you.

I'm thankful that you've not used your extraordinary powers to kill all life on earth. Anyone that can expend the kind of energy required to visit every home on earth in one night pretty obviously has the power of a small black hole, or is remotely tapping into the core of our sun somehow, and so considering that you unleash that kind of power on the planet every December 25th, I'm amazed that we're not all dead and the earth a smoking ruin of a planet, devoid of atmosphere and mostly stripped of life-giving water.

I'm thankful for relatively inexpensive CO2 lasers, which - when coupled with infrared sensors and aimed at the probable path a semi-supernatural being might take across my living room, might stand a chance of baking all of those millions of lbs of milk and cookies in situ. You can certainly move fast, so any aiming actuators are not going to be able to keep up, but since my laser points straight up the chimney, you'd need to have a very frank discussion with physics to get out of the way.

I'm thankful for all of the neighborhood girls and boys, who by their observable actions have created a vast Santa no-fly zone across my little neck of the woods. If you're keeping tabs on the private actions and interactions of children all over the world in order to label them "naughty" or "nice" according to your culturally uninformed view of those terms - I'm happy to say that based on my interactions with the neighborhood kids, you have no need to come withing a few miles of my home. I'll share a Google maps outline of the area in a separate note, so you can program your GPS accordingly.

I'm thankful for shopping malls, where by every possible indication we can see that the Spirit of Christmas is long gone, driven like snow before a nuclear fusion bomb by the honking and screaming in the parking lots, the fights over last-toy-on-the-shelf and general rudeness of the season. Combined with actual snow and drivers who only come to the big city once every year, the total absence of good will t'ward -- well anyone should keep you at a distance fairly permanently.

Last, but not least - I'm thankful for my friends and family. They know as well as I do what you are up to, and are a creative, inventive bunch. Some of the projects underway for dealing with the Home Invasion this year are truly diabolical and my hat is off to them.

OK, reading this again I realize I'm probably not winning any new friends in the Cringle/Krampus camp. I just started listing those things I was truly thankful for in this month before December, and it seems that most of it is still not complementary of you. For that, I do apologize, but I'm sure you understand.

That said, I only really have one thing on my list this year, and it's a reasonable quantity of deuterium fluoride, maybe 20oz or so. If you could leave it at 36°45'18.2"N+117°11'43.1"W that would be awesome. I've even set up a tree there for you to put it under.

Sincerely,

WC