| How To Tell if You're a Grinch 1. You reuse last year's Christmas cards and send them out under your own name. (5 points) 2. You steal lightbulbs from your neighbor's outdoor display to replenish your own supply. (5 points, 10 if neighbor's whole light set or lighted Santa goes out) 3. You have dressed a dog or cat as Santa Claus, elf helper, or reindeer. (10 points for each; if you dressed an endandgered species, 5 extra points) 4. You put out last year's stale candy canes for children. (1 point for each piece of sticky candy. If you put out a chocolate or marzipan Santa also, add 10 points) 5. You enclose a shoddy and inferior gift from Target, Wal-Mart, or K-mart in a Bloomingdale's or other prestigious box to impress your friends. (5 points for each infraction) 6. You make collect long distance phone calls to your family on Christmas day, claiming you are stuck in a phone booth. (5 points, 10 if from a cell phone) 7. At the office Christmas party, you horde huge stockpiles of goodies for later consumption at home. (5 points; 15 if you use this stuff for your own party) 8. You steal the wreath from a parked car to use it on your own. (5 points) 9. After an invitation to a friend's house, you bring a commercially produced fruitcake and try to pass if off as homemade. (5 points; 15 points if the fruitcake is from last year) 10. Any stealing from the Toys-for-Tots collection bins is a definite no-no. (20 points) Evaluate your score on the "Grinch Scale" from 20 to 100 20-30 points: You are just a cheeseball 31-50 points: You are an apprentice in Yuletide larceny and are probably wanted by the police for overdue parking tickets 51-100 points: Grinch, move over. The Meyer Lanskey of Christmas crime has arrived. |
| Santa Works Hard! |
| A scientific analysis of the Father Christmas myth affected the following results: -There are possibly 378 million children in the Christian world -At just over 4.1 children per household, that's 98.1 million homes One presumes that there is at least one good child in each -Time zones give Santa 31 hours of Christmas to work with, which means 822.6 visits per second -That is to say for each Christian household with good children, Sant has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of his sleigh, fill the stockings, and get back into the sleigh -The sleigh itself would have to travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound, 650 miles per second The fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second -The sleigh's payload -- assuming nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set, weighing 2 pounds, is 321,300 tons and, even if flying reindeer have 10 times the pulling power of an ordinary reindeer, he will need 214,000 of these beasts. -353,000 tons, traveling at 650 miles per second, creates enormous air resistance. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously. Santa's whole flying circus would burn up like a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere. In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve...he's dead now! |
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| The Unknown Reindeer The game show contestant was only 200 points behind the leader and about to answer the final question, worth 500 points! "To be today's champion," the show's smiling host intoned, "name two of Santa's reindeer." The contestant, a man in his early 30's, gave a sigh of relief, gratified that he had drawn such an easy question. "Rudolph!" he said confidently, "and...Olive!" The confused host replied, "Yes, we'll accept Rudolph, but could you please explain 'Olive'?" "You know," the man said, as he impatiently began to sing, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, had a very shiny nose. And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glowed. *Olive* the other reindeer..." |