Santa VS. the Zombies

He was making a list and checking it twice. He was going to find out who was naughty or nice. Santa Claus was coming to town.

According to the Decidotron 2800, over seventy percent of the children had been naughty the past year. That was an all time high, even higher than than in the 80’s, when the numbers had been split pretty evenly. He had been lenient back then, as the Decidotron 2800 had been new at the time. A child who may have been a little naughty still received their Transformers figures and Cabbage Patch dolls under the Christmas tree, because Santa was a Saint. Those spoiled children went on to become irresponsible adults, and Santa felt he was partially to blame. Even so, a 70% reading bore further investigation. Perhaps the Decidotron itself was on the fritz. Periwinkle had been bothering him to update the system to the new iDecidotron, but Santa was very old and set in his ways. It had taken much for him to agree to a computerized system in the first place, but the Elf strike of 1978 had made it necessary. The strike itself had barely been settled in time for Christmas, and the rushed production on toys resulted in more than a few disappointed children. In the years that followed, soulless toy manufacturers took advantage of the disenfranchised children by hocking their goods to them through cheaply made Japanese cartoons. Due to the trade marked manufacturing rights, Santa now had to buy most of his toys directly through these companies instead of having his elves make them in his workshop. The struggle now became finding enough money through the trade of resources.

Santa shook himself from his gloomy thoughts and reminded himself why he was at his desk. The Decidotron was showing a significant spike in naughty children following Halloween. This was common with all the Halloween mischief that went on. Santa forgave most instances of throwing toilet paper and eggs at houses, as he was a Saint, but something was different this time. Instead of children binging on candy after Halloween, they had taken to eat each other’s brains.

Santa sat back and thought about that for a moment. Living at the North Pole, he was more or less out of touch with today’s Generation. It was hard to judge a child who lived over 4,000 km away, across the frozen Arctic Tundra that kept his creditors at bay, but he knew that times changes, and every Generation brought something with it. He remembered when children thought they were being naughty for listening to Beatles records, or wearing their hair long. Now, they had taken to cannibalism. Times were strange.

It wasn’t just one or two children, mind you. There was always a bad apple in the bunch. To him it seemed like all the children at once had decided to upset their brothers and sisters by sinking their teeth into their skulls. Perhaps they had seen it on TV, or maybe it was that new Justin Bieber who got them to do it.

As he looked, he also noticed that there were fewer children than ever. At best, there should be seven billion people on the planet, and under two billion of them should have been children. It looked as if there were only six hundred million, or so, all told. Where had all the children gone?

Santa sat back with his egg nog and wondered if there could be some kind of correlation between children eating each other, and there being fewer children. Santa was very old, and there were many things he forgot. At end, he continued his research, and saw it much the same. Children eating one another, and their parents as well. Some even ate their pets. So much naughtiness, and all in little over a months. It was twelve days before Christmas, and Santa was worried the children wouldn’t be able to make up for their misdeeds before the Christmas Eve deadline. From a financial perspective, though, it was greatly to his benefit. Fewer children, and fewer nice children made for fewer presents and less work for himself. Santa was an optimist and preferred to look at things this way.

He depress the button on the intercom and leaned forward, “Periwinkle, I need you in my office please and thank you.” Santa always tried to use good manners. It especially helped around the elves, as they were becoming more belligerent as the years wore on. A kind word here and there helped to keep the peace. The last thing he wanted was another strike.

The large oak doors to his office swung open on greased hinges and in walked the relatively tiny figure of Periwinkle, all dressed in his uniform of green. He was slight, even among elves, standing barely 2’9” tall. His pointed hat and the stripes on his stockings were all designed to make he appear a few inches taller than he ought to be. Santa made sure of that when he approved the company uniforms, as he was secretly freaked out by little people. Children he loved, but short people creeped him out. He told Mrs.Claus that it was because he often mistook them for children and was ready to give them a hearty, “Ho. ho, ho!” and offer them a gift when he realized his mistake. Nevertheless, Santa smiled broadly at Periwinkle as he stood at attention before his desk. The little elf was always more formal than necessary, but reminding him of the casual nature of Santa’s business made no impression on him. He played his role as a soldier in the field, which was why he had become one of Santa’s most trusted elves.

“Periwinkle, I’ve been going over the figures, and I’m noticing an awful lot of naughty children this year. Are you aware of this?” Santa turned the bulky monitor toward Periwinkle and bathed him in the green glow of the text on screen.

“Yes, Santa. Distribution has made a note of it. We’ve increased production at the coal mine to compensate. All in all, this could be a very profitable year for us. We might even be able to pay off or debt with the toy companies,” Periwinkle noted proudly.

“Ah yes,” Santa said distractedly. He didn’t like to dwell on his deal with the toy companies. By licensing his image and selling coal on the global market, he was able to make up for a lot of his losses, but as toys became more expensive, it was difficult to close the gap. “Have we heard from the companies lately?”

“No sir, not since the incident,” Periwinkle said.

“The… incident?” Santa was confused. He’d been sleeping since Boxing Day, as was his wont. Some years he would stay up and keep a normal schedule, but as he got older, he found himself hibernating more and more often. It was difficult to refill the vast reserves of energy it took to deliver presents all over the world. He always woke up by December at the latest in time to make the final preparations for Christmas.

“Allow me to fill you in, Santa,” Periwinkle offered as he produced a flat tablet from his side pouch. Touching it, it lit up like a TV, and he showed it to Santa.

“What’s this?” Santa adjusted the wire frame lenses perched on the end of his round nose.

“This is the new iDecidotron,” Periwinkle explained.

“I thought we decided against that,” Santa made his disappointment known in his tone of voice, which was difficult given his otherwise jolly nature. He looked at the device with confusion.

“We held a meeting with the elf committee back in August, which you couldn’t attend because you were still in your post-Christmas hibernation. Mrs.Claus tried to wake you, but you couldn’t be roused,” he hastily explained. “You do know that in the event your unable to attend we have to proceed without your blessing.” It was one of the concessions Santa had agreed to end the strike of ‘79. “One of the points we decided on was to update our operating system. It’s still backwards compatible with the 2800, but as of now you’re the only person still working with the old system.”

“How many of these do we have?” Santa turned it over. He could find any buttons to push. His thumb brushed the screen and it suddenly changed to show him a different display, and he almost dropped it in surprise.

“One for every elf, and you Santa,” Periwinkle told him reluctantly.

“Oh my stars,” Santa slumped back in his chair and stared up at the vaulted rafters. “How much did that cost us?”

“The cost is moderated by the increase in efficiency and productivity,” Periwinkle explained hastily.

“How much?” Santa repeated. His chair began to spin lazily.

“I don’t know the exact figure, sir, but we were able to afford it after selling off certain assets,” Periwinkle explained.

“Which assets?” Santa became alarmed.

“We sold the oil rights for the Island of Misfit Toys,” Periwinkle told him, unperturbed.

“What about the toys?” Santa fretted.

“What about them?” Periwinkle was slightly confused.

“Where will they live? You know I try to find them a home every year with the good girls and boys,” Santa told him.

“Sir, the children, they… They don’t like those toys. We’ve looked into it, and in pretty much every case where you’ve brought them a present from the Island of Misfit Toys, it goes straight in the garbage,” Periwinkle told him sadly.

“No!” Santa was horrified.

“Sometimes they were burned in the yard. My point is, they’re not good presents, sir. That’s why we threw them all on the island in the first place. We’ve taken to recycling them to save money, and to be eco-friendly,” Periwinkle tried to put a positive spin on it all.

“You mean you kill them!” Santa was shocked.

“They’re not really alive to begin with, sir. They’re toys. We make them out of cheap plastic and lead paint,” Periwinkle shook his head sadly. “Eliminating them is just one of the cost-saving measures we’ve taken. We’re trying to modernize our entire industry. To bring things back to the subject at hand, I’m showing you the iDecidotron so we can look at one of it’s new features. We can now see streaming video of naughty children caught in the act. If I may,” Periwinkle waddled behind the desk with his curly-toed shoes and pressed the screen of the pad Santa was holding. It brought up a new menu. “This is a video taken at one of the toy manufacturers we buy from, over in China. It goes a long way in explaining why things have been so quiet on their front.” After pressing the screen a few more times, it brought up a video of a factory in China. The workers sat in long rows in white coats at an assembly line, putting bits of plastic together to make dolls. No one looked happy. It was quite different from his workshops full of merry elves.

The monotony was broken by a sharp scream from somewhere off camera. A few of the workers looked around, alarmed, but a shift manager walked by and told them to keep working. He struck one of the workers violently in the back of his head, and he immediately bent down at his station and picked up his tools. Then another scream came, this time even louder. The worker did not look back up, so he did not see the main entrance burst open. A worker dressed in the same white coat as him fell backwards through the door, only his coat was splashed with red. The man scrambled backwards on his back a few feet, but the bent and twisted figure above him collapsed over him and began to tear away at him. Blood gushed out from the man’s neck as the strange

On Vacation.

I have from now until Boxing Day off, and I’m already bored after three hours.

My step-son got the last of his Nintendo Ambassador Program games today for his 3DS, which he then took with him on his trip to his real dad’s house. He received ten games in total that I downloaded for him as part of the free program for buying the system before the price drop, such as Mario Kart Advanced, Wario Ware and Kirby, and another goddamn Zelda game. I now have four Zelda games on the 3DS and I didn’t have to pay for shit. Personally, I only ever liked the Zelda game for Super Nintendo. I’ve been meaning to try at least three different Zelda games for the system legacy such as the Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks and the Ornica of Time. If I could justify owning a Wii, I’d want Skyward Sword, because I refuse to own a motion-control system without games that involving me flailing an invisible sword around in my living room.

The first ten games were mainly rejects from the Nintendo system, with all their original charm and faults. Considering that Nintendo was trying to make up for consumers wasting a big wad of cash when they could have waited a few months an gotten the system on the cheap, the initial offering was pretty weak. They were mainly classic games that should be a part of any fan’s collection, but they made me worry about the Virtual Console in general. I’m a consumer that’s bought plenty of XBLA games, and enjoyed them, but their original digital selection seems sub-par to what you could buy in stores, and their classics are outdated graphically. On the other hand, it’s free, and I shouldn’t complain. The new games definitely make up for the old, and the fact that people in the program are getting them free of charge before they ever show up in the virtual store (if ever) is a definite plus.

I was part of the Xbox Live Update Beta program, and couldn’t talk about the impending changes. That’s all in the past now, so I can finally say: I kind of hate the new layout. For anyone who bought a Premium Theme, they lost a lot the functionality in it with the new page settings. It use to be you could switch menus and your Premium Theme would change along with select icons, like the backgrounds for the Avatars in your Friend’s page. That’s mostly gone, or buried deep. You now only see your friends who are on live in the main page of the Friend’s tab, and looking at the friends offline come up with some strange and somewhat unsettling animations for them, that make them seem like their sleeping in a Chinese laundromat. There’s a whole tab for Bing, which is just wrong. Nobody like you, Bing. The music tab is still as pointless as ever, as I doubt anyone really uses it unless they own the now defunct Zune. People who use music on the 360 are people who plug their iPods into the system. The Ap tab is solely devoted to video aps, so it could have been part of the video tab. On my system, even after the update went live, I still have the Preview tab for the Beta. I tried deleting the files in the system, and it’s still there.

I read someone complain about how Xbox found a way to put more ads onto the screen, and they were immediately bitched at for being ungrateful. The guy in the forum brought up the valid point that you’ve already bought the damn thing and paid for the service, so why were they still advertising themselves to you? The main middle of the screen is no nothing but an ad. That’s the main focal point. If you want to find a game to play, go elsewhere. Also, if you happen to like the ad, and try to click on it: good luck. It skips through about five different ads. It’s possible to switch back, but the new menus were intended for Kinect users only, so the controls for doing this are not intuitive. When you want the screen to shift left, you can’t simply push the “left” button. That doesn’t even make sense with the controller, as there are no less than five buttons for “left,” (a left D-pad button, two joysticks, and a bumper and trigger button). Pick one and you have a one in five chance of it being correct.

The only thing I really give a damn about is the Cloud saves. I have two 360s (or one 720). Now I can play a game in my living room, get kicked out by my wife, and then go into the bedroom and keep playing on a different console. Before, I had to use a third-party cable to transfer saves from one box to the next, which was time consuming and could possibly overwrite or damage the saves. It also screwed me out of getting official achievement points before, for some odd reason. Plus: I couldn’t have the same content on both systems at the same time. Now it doesn’t give a fuck.

I also picked up a third-party wireless router for the 360 on the cheap at $20. The official 360 version is still priced at $99, which is insane. The Mad Catz N-something or other (I’m not getting paid so I can’t be bothered to remember their names) required me to basically hack my own network in order to make it work. I followed every instruction, but couldn’t make it through one of the set-up stages. For some reason, it worked using Internet Explorer, but not Google Chrome, and I finally made it through without crying. It was one of those “Eureka” moments where you’re just wandering around work, staring blankly off into space and wondering how things went so terribly, terribly wrong. Now it works better than my computer itself, which is quite sad. It also recognizes the connection as “wired,” even though it’s going through a wireless router.

I’d have to say the one feature I don’t give a shit about is facebooking achievements. That sounds like a surefire way to piss people off. Remember when facebook was new and every time you “liked” a comment, or made a comment, or thought about making a comment, your inbox would fill to the brim with notifications? That seems like it’s part of that.

Bored of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was on the other night. I had one of those revelations that only come from seeing the same movie over-and-over. This time, during the scene where Legolas goes apeshit on the giant elephant, I realized what a total dick he was being. After releasing the harness and sending the saddle base tumbling off of the elephant, he had effectively won the fight. There was no reason to go any further. In the scene prior, it was firmly established that the Rider of Rhodan were outnumbered 10 to 1. Sauron’s armies were on foot, while the Riders were obviously mounted, and therefore could escape the path of an elephant far more easily. Therefore: a rampaging elephant without it’s handler was far more likely to kill a huge swath of the orcs instead of the Rhodans it had been sent to kill. Legolas didn’t see it that way. Instead, he put multiple arrows into it’s brain and slid down it’s trunk as it died. It was a dick move, especially for an elf who’s supposedly into animals and nature.

Previously, when asked why Gandalf didn’t have the giant golden eagles fly Frodo to Modor at the very beginning and be done with it, I had always said it was because of the dragons. They would have to kill the dragons before the eagles could reach the mountain. Then, as I watched it again, I saw the eagles actually show up during the last battle before the ring was destroyed and fight a dragon, blowing my theory to shit. The eagles apparently outnumbered the dragons at all time, and are more than capable of killing the shit out of them. So why didn’t they help out before? My new theory is: the eagles don’t give a shit. They’re eagles. Gandalf was saved in Part One by the eagles, but it’s not like he controls them. It was more like calling a cab than him going all Aquaman and summoning them telepathically. Getting you down off of a tower is one thing: flying past the Eye of Sauron through a flock of dragons into an active volcano is another. I think they just showed up in the end so they could look like the heroes. All the work was already done. By the same theory, the Balrog could have taken over all of Middle Earth on his own. He was a giant flaming hell demon. Gandalf pretty much shit his grey robe when he saw him. After he killed him, and vice versa, the universe was so impressed it decided to give him a promotion, and a change of pants.

Which brings me to my next point: Gandalf is basically given a promotion by the powers that be with the understanding that he fire the current white wizard. It’s the exact plot to the pilot episode of News Radio. There’s some kind of cosmic force doling out wizard colours. At any point it could have fired Sauromon and be done with it. It could logically do the same to Sauron. After all: he’s just a floating flaming eye on top of a tower with it’s life-force connected to a magic ring he managed to lose. In a flashback you see how he gets pwned just by losing a finger. He’s not exactly the most powerful being in that regard, and yet he’s still the most powerful being, with the exception of whoever is giving out these wizard robes. If this power decide that Sauron could go suck it, what’s he going to do? He’s basically just an living lighthouse.

What the fuck is up with Sauron’s tower anyway? What’s in there? Is it nice. Does Sauron actually live in there, and he’s like the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz? Could you kill Sauron by knocking the tower over? It’s like the One Ring and the tower are his horicruxes. It’s like there’s alternatives that no one ever bothered to look at.

Also: if you look at Modor, you realize that there’s no way Sauron’s army was going to make it another year. The war happened when it did not simply because Frodo was planning on chucking the ring into the fires of Modor, but because if they didn’t take over some agricultural resources immediately through arms they were going to starve to death. There was no food in Modor. There’s nothing but rocks, fire, and pain. Sauron was the undisputed ruler of a inaccessibly and uninhabitable wasteland, due largely to the fact that no one else wanted it. Plus: orcs and giant spiders.

Pyjama Jam

This:

This is a real thing. Forever Lazy. It’s a fleece coverall, incredibly similar to a baby sleeper. You’re expected to wear this in public. At all times. The video shows people working, and attending tail gate parties with other people dressed the same. There’s no attempt at fashion. One of their highlights is the zipper on the side for when you need to make poopies, like those flap-traps in ol’tyme pyjamas you’d see hillbilly prospectors wearing in Looney Toons. Basically, they took the already ridiculous notion of the Snuggli: the blanket with sleeves, and turned it into an outfit.

It’s called the Forever Lazy, but honestly it would take more effort to put this on than a shirt and a pair of pants. Especially when it comes to going to the bathroom. Like I said, the zipper is on the side. You’re expected to pee like a turn-of-the-century Chinese stereotype.

Don’t buy this. I know people are buying this, but don’t buy this. Even for people you hate.

Christmas Time

I did some quick calculations, and found out that I’ve listened to approximately 1,500 hours of Christmas music in my life. Nearly 1,300 hours of that has been from the last nine years alone. This is a result of working retail where Christmas music plays constantly on a non-stop rotation from late November to late December/early January. The songs in their playlist automatically become my most listened to songs by default, as the song rotation is fairly short, and I listen to roughly 130 hours each year.. The top listened-to songs on my iPod don’t even come close in terms of time played, even combined. Christmas music comprises 1/12th of all music that reaches my ears. None of this is by choice, mind you. I have, and still listen to Christmas music by choice, but it differs greatly by content, artists, and target audience than the songs I listen to at work, or in malls and stores, and makes up a tiny fraction of total Christmas music I’ve listened to. It’s hard to gauge, but I believe I may have listened to over a hundred hours of Christmas music intentionally, be it on record, on television specials and movies, singing or instrumental, or in concerts and pageants.

My point is that I’ve mentally broken, and have long since gone insane, and am now a danger to myself and others.

Full Moon

In the past two days at work, I had a customer swear vehemently at me, I was treated like a retail slave worker by another, I had two customers break open lifts of merchandise in the overhead to get at things that didn’t really exist and argue with me all the while, and I had some dude with a shaved-head (ie. skinhead) in a 80’s acid washed jean jacket come up to me and say the following when he saw me using a pull bar, “Hey, you didn’t happen to work in the death camps in a former life, did you? I think that’s the kind of hook they used on the Jews when they took them out of the ovens.” I nearly went nuts and punched him in his meth teeth. There was that brief instant where I literally thought I would fucking do it. He made a blatantly anti-Semitic remark out of fucking nowhere, while simultaneously calling me a death camp Nazi. Nothing that person could say or do for the rest of his life would ever make up for that. All I did was clench my jaw and ask him, very pointedly, “Did you need help?” because I work in fucking retail. I never had less respect for myself than just then.

Worse thing is: I think this is the second job I’ve been in where I’ve dealt with this fucker. I don’t know what kind of shit he does for a living, but it’s not legit. Plus, I know I’m going to see him again. Seriously, even if I quit this job and get another, he’ll probably show up again. I think the first time I noticed him, he was towing around some chick like a piece of property and making very sexual remarks to other members of the staff. Classy.

I’m going to refuse to give him service next time I see him, and I’m going to let the managers know why. I honestly don’t care if I’m fired because of it.

Double Jeopardy

Last night I had not one, but two dreams that I died, and both dreams ended the same way.

In one I was picking up my kid from school, and on the way home I was chased down by another driver wielding a gun. I tried speeding away, but he shot at the back of my car. I eventually made it to my childhood home, and it turned into a gun-in-the-back hostage situation where I had to pretend everything was okay. This went on for quite a while, until we were separated, and I told my mom to call 9-1-1. The gunman caught on to me immediately, and took my brother hostage in the basement. I ended up getting shot in the leg before I woke up, with my heart racing.

When I went back to bed, I had another CoD-style dream probably inspired by those n00b trailers. I was a soldier in a war trying to clear out a huge swath of the enemy on a cliff-side. I got up to the last batch, and ran out of bullets. I took a strange old fashioned gun from one of the enemies, and tried using it. I couldn’t get it to work. I was grabbed, and one of the enemy gladly showed me how to use it by emptying into my body. I woke up again, heart pounding. More than anything, I was worried about my pulse rate, which was getting fairly high. I had a nosebleed later on in the morning.