I was presented with this picture by the younger Free-Ride offspring.
I'm not entirely sure whether it's more accurate to describe it as a map or a process diagram. However, this being December 24th, it is timely.
Here is what I can glean from the various pieces of the diagram:
Elves' working stadium.
Of course, the elves are the backbone of Santa's work force. It's never clear to me that they are happy workers.
I hear occasional rumors that the elves have tried to organize a union, only to be thwarted by the man in red.
I'm not even sure Santa pays the elves, and they seem to live on site.
The North Pole is a company town. How jolly is that for those paid in Santa scrip?
And if they're working in a stadium, does this suggest that Santa stages gladiatorial games as entertainment?
Gingerbread valley.
At first, I was under the impression that this was just where cookies get made.
However, the younger Free-Ride offspring explains that the gingerbread people are also laborers in Santa's workshop.
This makes some amount of sense -- after all, people leave cookies out for Santa, so why should he need to make more at the North Pole? But my sense is that in the presence of cookie shift-workers, the elves have a much harder time negotiating for fair pay and benefits.
In fact, given these tensions, it wouldn't surprise me at all if an elf occasionally ate one of those gingerbread people out of sheer frustration.
Mmmmm .... scabs!
Santa's wardrobe.
I've been assured that while his hat and red coat are removable, his beard is not.
Also, it would appear that Santa is bald as a cueball.
Not that I have any problem with that.
I'll accept gifts from a bald guy.
Sleigh set-up.
This may be the original sleigh with a few new parts.
Regular maintenance: it'll keep your ride going.
Since there's no internal combustion engine, the sleigh is a no-emission vehicle.
Unless you count reindeer droppings.
Reindeer set-up.
This is where the reindeer get put in their jingle-bell harnesses before being yoked to the sleigh.
The reindeer seem well-maintained.
I assume Santa isn't making them pull heavier loads than is good for them, and that they aren't just able to fly because of pharmaceuticals slipped into their Reindeer Chow.
After all, they're under the supervision of the USDA. What could go wrong?
Santa's sack set-up
Obviously, this is where the toys and presents are packed into the sacks prior to being loaded on the sleigh.
Or, as Comrade PhysioProf might put it, this is where Santa sacks up.
After work treat center.
This is where all the members of the team partake of sweet refreshments after their labors.
I can't tell whether some of those refreshments include gingerbread laborers.
If they do, I don't even want to know if gingerbread laborers eat other gingerbread laborers.
Slide.
With so much to coordinate in so little time, a slide can be useful.
Possibly also fun.
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That must be the most delightfully morbid description of a North Pole schematic I've ever read. I wouldn't think, though, that Santa saves money on the gingerbread workers -- as I recall, their health care costs an arm and a leg....
Outstanding!
However, if the Evil Elves over at Disney get hold of this, they are GOING TO MAKE YOUR KID A STAR - whether they want to be or not.
No more research for research's sake. All that creativity will be harnessed and used for Entertainment Value, with a very capital "E".
May all the FreeRides have a Hap Hap Happy Holiday.
That is simply spectacular! It all makes sense, now...
*ahem* If you look, you'll see that it's a staidium. Evidently people go to watch Santa pretending to be a parent.
I have always wondered if Gingrebread men were telecommuters, coming to the North Pole only once a year, picked up by Santa around the world the night before, for a huge office Christmas party!
That might explain the large end-of-year turnover among the gingerbread corps. Best part for Santa -- no severance pay needed, and since the only gingerbread next-of-kin are other gingerbread men, no need to pay "accidental" death benefits.
In this nearing birthday of the imaginary jesus, the Christians need to show us their love.
My Christmas Letter of Good Cheer to Christians:
Long before you silly, confused, lying, obfuscating, faking frauds created your NEW religion 2000 years ago (by voting jesus in as a god in 325 AD by the Nicene Council)---Winter Solstice was celebrated for at least 5000 to 8000 years before you upstarts stole the celebration, up to and including appointing the birth of jesus as the same day as Winter Solstice, Dec 25th (which conveniently was also the birthday appointed to two other gods, Apollo and Mithra).
So...when we say...Happy Winter Solstice...the traditions and acknowledgment of when the life-giving SUN is farthest from the earth and thus begins the realignment of the earth and the Sun back to being closer to us...so plants can live, we can grow food and eat, the earth warms up, water flows, and Spring is on the way...sustaining life on this planet, it is really significant. Your religion has completely ignored life on this planet which is very important. Winter Solstice means something real.
Your dream world and delusional religion, cannot plant crops, sustain life, or even acknowledge the importance of the SUN....since you are all life-haters...and are in reality suicidal self-hating creatures, who worship a neo-god who also committed suicide....
It is not Merry Whatever as one of you sarcastic xians said, chagrined at Xmas no longer being as important or "real" as it once was considered to be. Dec 25th is again being acknowledged as one of the most important days of the year known for at least 5 millenium. But, no never mind...the suffering of your imaginary jesus and gawd have to be more important than all other religions or CELEBRATIONS OF LIFE...
Instead of celebrating life, you xians worship death and just can't wait to join this multiple-god trio including a "ghost"....in eternity...doing who knows what...how boring. OK then, I say...do it....Make the 25th of December the day that you join jesus....in heaven, or where ever your delusional and insane brain takes you. Since you are saved...then joining jesus in heaven...will be just a mere step into the harmonious, ever boring after world of your brainless religious invention.
In fact...use the 25th of December...to have cruci-fiction parties....get those crosses out, nail each other to the cross....SUFFER just like jesus did....my oh my what a role model you have chosen to worship i.e. some nearly naked, bloody, beaten up dead guy in a diaper hanging on a stick who intentionally committed suicide by cop (Roman Soldier)...
PS: I would never, ever ask or approve of anyone "dying for me," or "committing suicide" for any reason so I can go to some imaginary, unknown place in the sky...and I find an entire religion based on this "belief" out right insane. The backwards of mental hospitals are full of people like you...who have done various and hideous things to themselves and others in the name of god and jesus....including drowning all of their children in a bath tub because god told them to (Andrea Yates).
If you do a Google search, or go to YouTube.com....you can take lessons on how to drive nails into your palms and feet just like some nut case Filipinos do every year. They almost got it right...problem is they don't hang on the stick long enough to end up like jesus...they just do it for only a short time, long enough to get enough attention from the crowds to satisfy their sick egoes.
Oh yeah, even you dumb xians don't even get cruci-fiction right...in real cruci-fictions by the Romans, nails were driven through the wrists....not the hands, because the many, small bones in the hand can separate by supporting the weight of the body, causing the crucified to fall off the cross and just hang upside down by their feet and flop around like a gaffed fish....so do it right...drive those Christian Nails right through the wrists...and hang there...and see if god saves you. And the more you suffer, you will know that this is what jesus wants you to do...so do it. Show us your love, show us how much you are suffering for us. Jesus is going to be so proud.
In the 21st Century....christianity is right up there with other bizarre practices, such as female genital mutilation, piercing nipples, lips, eye brows, noses, tongues, and other parts of the genitalia, or tatooing "Mother" across one's back...and other defacements of the human body. And, such practices are all supremely painful...making the sufferer "feel" as if they are doing something really unique, worthwhile, and wonderful...so join them, start nailing each other to the cross every year. Get on with your orgy of suffering "for us," and...do it right, after all jesus did it, so, why you too?
Just how much you xians hate yourselves and are willing to suffer because of self-hate, including hate for all of human life (the sin of carnality) depends on how hypocritical the xian is in reality. Real xians can't wait to die. You xians state frequently, that you are "born sinners"...you are born evil, you are not even worthy of kissing the hem of jesus "dress,"
And,...the rest of you fake your self hate, when in reality, you are full of narcisscistic, hysterical, egotistic need to dominate others, and psychologically use blackmail, extortion and threats, including instilling guilt and shame to manipulate other unsophisticated, and vulnerable human beings. Therefore, to better "sell" xianity like used car salesmen,using the most base emotions and manipulations, you xians need to crucify yourselves as a witness to your "faith" and an example of how much "christian love" means.
In reality, whereby you xians then want the rest of us to worship your suffering....its all about YOU...and getting attention. Afterall, the word "christian" means little christ...so be a little christ and crucify yourselves just like jesus did. Show us by example....what we should do, show us your love.
Xianity is all about insecurity, fear, lack of self esteem or a sense of worth of your own life and the life of others...Your religion is an example of the LUDDITE fear of progress, and the need to self destruct into annialistic mindlessness of which you just think you are going to enjoy---Forever.
Freud and other philosophers of psychology have noted there are two main drives in human beings...the drive to Live, and the drive to Die....The Christian Religion has taken the drive to DIE and encased it in an art form and an orgy of self hate, and the worship of suicide and self mutilation....well OK then...stop whining around telling everyone we should be just like you...show us by example, what you really worship and believe.
Every one of you xians...should re-enact the cruci-fiction on yourselves....show us how much you love and emulate jesus...jesus is afterall, the example you follow, so do it...crucify yourselves.
I can't wait...be sure to get someone to take pictures or a video and put it on YouTube.com...don't let the Filipinos be better xians then you.
Judy Weismonger--Atheist Activist Against Religious Insanity
That diagram reminds me of those shitty Family Circus comics where Jeffy is supposed to go across the street to borrow some sugar, but he ends up on a dotted-line meandering path through the neighborhood engaging in what are supposed to be humorous hijinks but are really completely not funny bits of glurge, but minus the complete HUMOR FAIL. Judy, have a couple fucking Jamesons and chill!
Very amusing post!
No need to pay health care benefits if the elves can just eat them.
For the real meaning of santa;
http://sluggy.com/daily.php?date=001127
Outstanding.
It has it all.
On the surface it is a delightfully childlike overview of north pole workshop bliss. But just underneath it has elf-gingerbread-management conflict, even possible sexual politics in that the sack setup area features a lovely with long red hair already half in the sack. Is Santa going around the world in more ways than one. All rich plot lines for an epic novel. I can see it now:
"North Pole Workshop: The dark, fun and kinky world of the worlds largest toy producer."
Have you ever read S.J. Perelman's Odets parody, "Waiting For Santy"? The elves (okay, gnomes) dispute labor organization under the oppression of Sanford Claus.
RISKIN (filing a Meccano girder, bitterly): A parasite, a leech, a blood-sucker--altogether a five-star nogoodnick! Starvation wages we get so he can ride around in a red team with reindeers!
RUSKIN (jeering): Hey, Karl Marx, whyn'tcha hire a hall?
RISKIN (sneering): Scab! Stool pIgeon! Company spy!
Not just rumours: Elf's Lament.
I love those illustrations!
Santa Claus LLC, Minutes of Executive Committee, 24 December 2008
Comment #34 is my techno-ethics Xmas card to you and yours.
Santa Claus LLC, Minutes of Executive Committee, 24 December 2008
Meeting convened, quorum present, SC presiding. Egg Nog was dispensed.
List Committee reports final rewrite. Heading the "Naughty" sublist is Bernard Madoff for his $50 billion Ponzi scheme, which cost Santa Claus LLC's portfolio about a gigabuck, details of which, along with a revision of the financial leaders naughty sublist since the Global Depression was triggered, will be described in the next meeting's Treasurer's Report. Fidel Castro of Cuba and King Mswati III of Swaziland were nudged out of the "top 10", which now consists of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan; Kim Jong Il, North Korea; Than Shwe, Burma; Hu Jintao, China; Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia; Muammar al-Qaddafi, Libya; Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan; Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan; Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe; and Teodoro Obiang Nguema, Equatorial Guinea.
"Is Osama Bin Laden on the list?" queried Donder. There was a brief discussion of how badly the addresses are updated in that region.
[truncated]
Labor disputes aside, my advice is not to cross the gingerbread men, whatever you do. My 2-year-old godson performed a sneak attack raid on the gingerbread house his sister built on Christmas morning, and he ended up with a nasty fever and double ear infection on Christmas night. I foolishly ate a gingerbread man after Christmas dinner, and I suffered from horrible indigestion Christmas night (which couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the other 10,000 Calories I ate that day...). We're both fine, but it wasn't pleasant for either of us. (More unpleasant for him than me, I suspect.) It's like a chain letter, but with frosting and gumdrops.
On the other hand, my goddaughter - who built the gingerbread-house-and-gingerbread-people-and-gingerbread-trees (which she always mentioned together in one breath, hence the hyphens) - suffered no ill effects, even though she happily ripped the roof off the gingerbread house and dug in after dinner. But she made it herself (with help from Mommy), so I guess she's allowed. Kind of like God is allowed to completely screw us over for no apparent reason because we're His creations. (That's as close as I can get to understanding the traditional Christian "answer" to the problem of evil, really. But I'm not one of them sophistimicated theologian types, so what do I know?)