Update 12-23-03


Hi,

Seasonal silliness, courtesy of Internet forwards.

From Larry Rugen: I found the perfect Christmas cookie recipe for Crown Royal Reserve. Enjoy.

Ingredients
3 cups of flour
1 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks of butter
1/2 cup of lemon juice
2 large eggs
1 cup of walnuts
1 cup of dried fruit
1 fifth of Crown Royal Reserve

Sample the Crown Royal to make sure it's of the highest quality.
Take a large bowl, check the Crown again, then pour one level cup and drink straight.
Turn on the electric mixer. Beat one stick of butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add one teaspoon of sugar. Eat.
Check the Crown Royal again. Turn off the mixerer thingy, break 2 leggs, and chuck in the dried fruit.
Pick the fruit up off the floor. Mix on the turner. If fried druit gets stuck in the beaterers, pry loose with a drewscriver.
Sample the Crown to check for tonsisticity.
Sift two cups of whatever. Shift the lemon juice. Strain your nuts.
Add one table. Crack a spoonful. Greash the oven.
Turn the cake pan 360 degrees. Parefully clace the dishwasher in the stove. Toss the salad bowl. Upchuck the nuts. Polish the Royal. And don't forget to beat off the turner.
CHERRY MISTMAS !


More soberly, from Zelda White Nichols: An Engineer's Christmas

There are approximately two billion children in the world, "children" being defined by the United Nations Census Bureau as "persons under 18." Since Santa doesn't visit Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist families (except, maybe, in Japan), this reduces his Christmas night's work by 85%, for a total of 378 million kids. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 108 million homes, presuming at least one good child in each family.
Thanks to different time zones and the rotation of the earth, and assuming the most efficient east-to-west travel route, Santa has 31 hours to work. This divides into 967.7 visits per second or 1/1000th of a second for Santa to park his sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, stack the remaining gifts under the tree, gobble whatever snacks have been left, ascend the chimney, leap into his sleigh, and scramble to the next house. Assuming, for statistical averages, that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth, Santa flies approximately .78 miles per household, for a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound. By comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, while a conventional reindeer runs -- at best -- 15 miles per hour.
Assuming that each child gets at least a medium-sized gift -- and a starter LEGO set weighs two pounds -- the sleigh carries over 500 thousand tons, not including Santa. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull up to 300 pounds, but allowing that "flying" reindeer can pull 100 times that load, Santa would still need 36,000 of them. This increases the payload another 5400 tons, or roughly five times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the sovereign).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance -- the reindeer would heat up like spacecraft entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead reindeer -- Rudolph? -- would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second; in short, he'd instantly burst into flames, simultaneously creating a deafening sonic boom. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second or just as Santa reached the fifth house. Santa himself, accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to forces of 17,000 G's. A 250-pound Santa, which seems ludicrously thin, would be nailed to his seat by 4,315,015 pounds of force and instantly crushed, reducing his bones and organs to a quivering pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's now dead, along with Binky, Twinky, Winky, Stinky, and Cottonrump.
Merry Christmas! Ho Ho Ho!


Next, The Night Before Chanukah, as spiffed by playwright Freyda Thomas:

'Twas the night before Chanukah, and all through the place,
There was noise, there was kvetching, oy, such a disgrace!
The kinderlach, sleeping, uneasily felt
The chocolately rush from the Chanukah gelt.
And me in the Easyboy, so stuffed with latkes,
I stretched the elastic which held up my gatchkes.
When up on the roof -- and it has a steep pitch --
A fat alte kakker was making a kvitsch.
I jumped up real quick, and I ran to the door,
Was it a bandito or only a schnorrer?
He wasn't alone; he had eight ferdelach,
And called them by name as he gave a gebrach:
"On Moishe, on Yankel, on Itzik, on Sam,
On Mendel, on Shmendrik, on Feivush, on Ham;
My kidneys are swelling! My butt is asleep!
Do you even care? Do you give a god..." (BLEEP)
He had a white beard with the payyes to boot,
And to keep out the cold, he had such a nice suit!
A second from Peerless, I saw at a glance,
But the cut was okay, and so were the pants.
He was triple XL, a real groisser goof,
So I yelled out, "Meshuggah! Get off from mein roof!"
He jumped down and said, as he shook hands with me,
"Max Klaus is the name. You have maybe some tea?"
So I gave him a gleisel; he shook his white mop,
Mutt'ring, "Always the same thing -- they're dreying my kopp!
From Miami to Morristown, cryink and whinink,
Every shmo in the world wants to hakk meir a cheinik!
They're screaming for gifts, low fat challah with schmaltz,
And from Brooklyn alone, the back pain, oy gevaltz!"
So we sat and we yentehed; we spun the old dreydels.
(He took all my money, and one of my knaidels.)
He said, "Business? Not bad, it's a living I make,
But I'm getting too old for this Hanukkah fake;
And the cell phones, you see how my pacemaker dings?
For two cents I'd quit and move out to Palm Springs!"
And he gave a geshrei as he fled mit a lacht,
"Gut Yontiff to All! Vey is Mir -- Such a Nacht!"

Finally, separate from all this holiday frivolity, Mr. Fiveson writes, saying he'd like to change his title and be knighted like Sir Mick. But, being merely Canadian, he's settled for switching his e-mail address instead. It's now: 5son@5son.com


The home page: http://hometown.aol.com/falcon


Rich