Santa
Claus
By Disco Stu - Editor in
Chief : Issue 6, Vol. II
 According to exclusive
news reported to Renegade Monkey Nuns,
Santa Claus is quitting after the Christmas of
2000. So, there will be a sore need to make and
deliver toys by the next year. The tradition of
having Santa's jolly old face plastered on every
Coca-Cola can and bottle during the holiday
season (mainly to make Jewish and Muslim kids
feel less worthy) also needs to be kept up with.
That leaves us with the obvious question "Who
will be Santa Claus?" Well, you, of course.
So suit up and read the below to find out how to
be Santa Claus.
Prerequisites
The very first change you'll have to make in
order to become Santa is to change your name.
Unfortunately, you can limit your name change to
just the United States; you have to cover all the
Christian and Communist countries. Santa
is that popular. In the US, you'll be
called Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, or Kris Kringle;
in Germany, your name is Weinachtsmann (Christmas
Man) and you're a helper of the Christkind (Christ
Child); in France, the frogs know you as Père Nöel;
in the UK, Father Christmas is your name and they
see you as a horny bastard since you're always
pictured with mistletoe; in Scandanavian
countries the PaganYule goat has been transmuted
into the common day Joulupukki; and in Russia,
you're the secular Father Frost, thanks to the
influence of Communism.
After the name
changes, you should gain at least 300 pounds of
weight to match the current Santa's physique.
Make sure to also buy a red suit with a huge belt
buckle to match your rosy cheeks. Man, you're
looking jolly already. Now pack up that magic
sleigh you've built and move Mrs. Claus and
yourself to your mansion and toy shop in the
North Pole. Bring lots of jackets and fire logs--it
can get cold.
STEP ONE:
Building an Empire
Like Disney chief Michael Eisner, you lord over
little people as they make products, like the
slaves that they are, so that you can get all the
credit. You don't want to do any work to get all
the credit since you're a fat, lazy hog, so you
get magic elves to do all the work for you.
Fortunately, elves are sold liberally in packages
of six or twelve in participating Coscos, K-Marts,
and Walmarts, so there's no need to worry. Once
the elves are bought, give them jobs that play to
their strengths. The stronger elves should be the
ones making toys, since you'll be working them
like sweatshop workers once Christmas time rolls
around. The taller elves should be told to
decorate your always expanding home, while the
hot female elves should be made as sex slaves. Or
cookie bakers. Whatever floats your boat. While
your buying elves, you might as well get yourself
some reindeer in the process. You'll need them
since they are the ones who'll be carrying your
sleigh and pulling the tons of toys in the back.
Not to mention your fat ass.
If you didn't know
already, you are almost God-like. You are
virtually omnipresent and nearly omnipotent: you
can visit hundreds of millions of homes in one
night, manufacture gifts for hundreds of millions
of children, and deliver them in one night--each
to the correct child (you're such a
perfectionist). You are omniscient: you
monitor each child and know when they are bad and
good (pervert). You check and recheck
which children have shown good behavior and
reward them appropriately (judgmental).
Bad children are bypassed or receive a lump of
coal, thanks to you (unfair). You are
eternal, all-knowing, and just (egotistical
jack ass). You reward good and punish bad
behavior (who are you to say who's good or
bad?). Also, your farts don't smell (nice).
STEP TWO:
Taking a Ride
Once that fateful night arrives, you have to get
the logistics of your sleigh right in order to
have a smooth ride. Here are some calculations
you need to take into consideration.
-
Santa
delivers no gifts to naughty children.
There is a tradition in some areas of the
world that a naughty child receives a
lump of coal. That would change the
calculations slightly.
-
Only one
Santa distributes all of the gifts.
Multiple Santas could reduce some of the
extreme values calculated below.
-
Santa
bypasses Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and
other non-Christian homes.
-
The
percentage of households in which there
is at least one child who has been not
naughty, but was nice is 90%.
-
Santa loads
all of the presents before starting his
journey. In other words, he does not
return to the North Pole periodically to
reload.
Amount of time
Santa spends per household:
-
Number of
humans in the world: 6.0 billion.
-
Number of
children (humans under 18 years of age)
about 2.0 billion.
-
Percentage of
children whose parents are Christian: 33%.
-
Maximum
number of children who might receive
gifts: 667 million.
-
Average
number of children per household: 3.5
-
Number of
destinations where Santa might deliver
presents: 189 million.
-
Number of
destinations for Roman Catholic and
Protestant families: 173 million. (The
remainder are Eastern Orthodox locations
which Santa would handle in his second
trip on January 5. The Eastern Orthodox
church has not yet adopted the Gregorian
calendar; the current gap between the
calendars is 13 days and expanding).
-
Total number
of destinations where Santa delivers
gifts: 156 million.
-
You can't
arrive until the children are asleep.
Some people suggest that you start to
distribute presents in each time zone at
perhaps 9 PM local time, finish within an
hour, and then move one time zone to the
west. But that is a higher level of
performance than is really needed. You
could take longer in each time zone, as
long as the entire job was finished
comfortably before children woke up in
the last zone. Assuming that the children
sleep for 7 hours, this gives him 31
hours (or a total of 1860 minutes, or 111,600
seconds) to finish all deliveries.
-
Average
number of homes to visit per second: 1,398.
This only gives you about 715
microseconds in which to decelerate the
sleigh, land on the roof, walk to the
chimney, slide down the chimney,
distribute the presents and retrace his
steps. But, you're magical, so no prob.
Amount of
distance traveled:
-
Assuming that
Antarctica is essentially uninhabited,
and ignoring the various inland lakes,
the total inhabited land on earth is
about 79.3 million square miles.
-
Assuming that
the destinations are evenly distributed
over the available land, the average
distance between destinations is on the
order of 0.71 miles. Total distance
traveled = 111 million miles.
Average speed
of sleigh:
-
111 million
miles over a 31 hour interval = 3.6
million miles an hour, or a little under
1000 miles a second.
-
This is the
average speed of the sleigh. Some time is
taken to decelerate the sleigh to a stop,
for Santa to deliver the presents, for
him to return to the sleigh and for the
sleigh to accelerate to cruising speed.
The latter would be on the order of 2000
miles a second. I'm not familiar with the
effects of such a high energy on living
things, however, I intuitively feel that
the reindeer would be converted almost
instantly to charcoal.
Payload:
-
Estimate the
weight of the average toy to be 2 pounds.
The sleigh would have to carry about 156,000
tons of cargo.
-
At perhaps 0.2
cubic feet per toy, the payload would
occupy a space of 31 million cubic feet.
Summary:
-
You would
visit over 1500 homes per second.
-
The average
speed of the sleigh would be on the order
of 3.6 million miles an hour (sufficient
time to travel to the moon in about 4
minutes, except that the reindeer need a
steady supply of oxygen.) The
acceleration and deceleration loads on
the reindeer, Santa and the sleigh would
be astronomical.
-
The sleigh
would carry about 156,000 tons of cargo,
about twice the weight of the Queen Mary.
-
The sleigh
would carry about 31 million cubic feet
of cargo, about equal to 1,500 homes.
Don't worry about
all the numbers, Santa. You have a calculator.
 STEP THREE: Breaking and
Entering
This is the easy part of the whole Santa thing.
Once you land your reindeer on the roof, all you
have to do is touch your nose and just like that,
you're in the living room to give the kids the
presents. You don't have to get down a chimney or
anything complicated like that. You're pure magic--that
should make things a lot easier.
Make sure, however,
that you're very quiet while you're in the house.
There are many cynics in the world and people
might be scared, rather than excited, to see you.
While you're in the house, you can keep your fat
figure by eating the cookies and other food
children have left for you. Now, take the food,
as well as some jewelry and money, and get out of
there quick; you've got another house to get to.
And don't step on the cat, like you did in the
last house. Keep doing that until you reach the
final house and then head home for a well
deserved rest.
Now, ignore
everything you've just read because Santa doesn't
exist.
|
