Swiping Santa’s Secrets
Minimally Useful is off on another adventure to capture the secret to Santa’s success.
Down the Reindeer Hole
As we began to close up shop for the holiday season, we spent one final quiet night doing our annual keg stand / lawn dart doubles tournament. At the conclusion of the tournament we all gather ‘round our fully-consensual bonfire (we ask the tree for permission before we sacrifice its chunky branches to the flames) and we ponder what the new year holds. We all share with each other our vision for the future and chat about holiday traditions. This particular year we spoke of many things on the horizon that we’d need to solve: global warming, ensuring Furbys never come back, keeping the Yellowstone Super-Volcano from yeeting us into a life-ending ice age. But out of all the things we talked about we kept coming back to Santa Claus. Yes, that jolly omnipresent diabetic reverse-cat-burglar — Santa Claus. One, because we had a really good idea for a heist movie featuring his exploits, and two because a lot of the things we wanted to solve in the next year could be solved by ol’ S.C. Specifically, a lot of our problems could be solved by the research that S.C. conducts in his northern research outpost. You see — most people have it wrong about S.C. He’s not just a jolly immortal who likes to spread around presents and cheer. He’s also the greatest bio-engineer and animal trainer to have ever existed. It’s not his ability to monitor everyone — Google, Amazon, Facebook, and (surprisingly) Hardee’s all monitor EVERYONE. It’s the reindeer. We wrote a white paper on the power output of a standard S.C. bioengineered reindeer, and have decided to publish it here. Summary: These bad hombres can really haul ass. But, there’s more than that. They can circumnavigate the globe without satellite navigation, they can see in pure darkness, and they’re WICKED smart — like Rudolph-passed-the-bar-exam-in-Minnesota-and-is-a-criminal-prosecutor-in-the-off-season smart. Not saying that normal reindeer are stupid assholes, but there’s obviously some bio-engineering tomfuckery going on here. Anyway, so here’s the rub. We got real drunk and stole Santa’s research, and with some slight modifications we think we can solve the world’s most pressing problem — climate change.
Santa’s Plan
After we got the plans back to our headquarters, we took a 30 hour power-nap and reconvened to review the research. Well, based on the extensive notes on the reindeer program, it turns out that ol’ S.C. made some exceptions for people on the naughty list circa 1949. Two nazi Dr’s who were reindeer specialists were recruited, turned, and exfiltrated by Team North Pole. They’re long dead, and according to the research notes, not a single hair was harmed on elf or reindeer during their time there. It doesn’t excuse them from being nazis, but there’s an ends-justify-the-means precedent that may make it a little more excusable on Santa’s part. Anyway, Santa’s plan was to modernize the reindeer. He had already genetically bred reindeer that could fly, but the human population was expanding — so he needed reindeer that were smarter and faster to cover the ground if he were to maintain the 100% success rate of his mission. Santa’s vision was to create reindeer that could better work with humans (and diabetic demi-gods) to achieve their goals, but he also wanted more for the reindeer too. Man has a history of purposing animals to their cause (dogs, cows, chickens, etc…), but has not really had a vision for returning the favor to the animals. That’s where we come in — we want to give the animals purpose, and equip them with the wherewithal and means to serve themselves and the world. We want more too. We want to give our animal pals agency to defend their homes and the Earth at large, and Santa’s nazi research gave us the answer.
The Two Part Plan
With the research in-hand, it was time to pick the team. The obvious go-to was any animal on the endangered species list. From our understanding, being an endangered species is the equivalent of having diplomatic immunity (watch Lethal Weapon 2 if you’re not sure how diplomatic immunity works). People are discouraged from hurting an endangered species or their habitat because there’s fines and shit involved. Our lawyer told us (we’ll bold the portion we heard): “Jesus Christ, this again? Wait, did you steal these research notes? From where? I swear to god if you tell me Santa Clause again I’ll have all of you commited. I thought I’d be taking my career in a more exciting direction. I moved my fucking family across the continent for this. The only reason I stay is because you guys pay me so much. Like — an inordinate amount of money. I have no idea how you get it. You’re all the dumbest smart people I’ve ever met. Ugh. I know you all mean well… *sighs* Santa Clause isn’t real. Your plans make NO sense. That’s not how being an endangered species works. That’s not how diplomatic immunity works. That’s not how any of it works…” So, as you can see — According to our lawyer, this is our best plan yet!
Our overall idea was as follows:
- Train animals to protest / fuck up entities that are causing climate change.
- Train animals to defend themselves in the event someone tries to hurt them in our quest to save the world.
We’ve got to hold it right here for now. But, keep an eye out for an article explaining how we actually completed the two points above. Godspeed and happy holidays. May your harvests be bountiful and may you not get mauled by a bear in the coming year.
XOXO
