The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #41970   Message #609040
Posted By: Peter T.
13-Dec-01 - 12:02 PM
Thread Name: BS: Mudcat Christmas Party 2001
Subject: RE: BS: Mudcat Christmas Party 2001
The automatic door for the disabled opens briefly, and then an electrical short closes it on the face of what appears to be a black hole on legs, who battles with its inexorable pressure for a few seconds, and then gives up. After a few seconds, this grim spectacle enters by the main door, looking not unlike someone who has been up the previous night celebrating with the Donner Party. Under his arm, he carries a flat TV screen like box with two knobs on it, labelled "Etch-a-Wretch", whose main claim to fame is that whatever one draws on it resembles a character from a Dostoyevsky novel. The lady currently in charge of the festivities seeks to head him off from the jollification, but he is already in the room. He comes to the bar, and pulls out a dollar bill, and says: "Could I have change for the jukebox, esteemed lady?" and she reaches into her pocket and pulls out a quarter. "Here," she says. "But--" he says. "No" she says, "One song, that is it." "But --". "One song." He sighs, and goes over to the jukebox, and gingerly puts the coin in the machine, which debates whether to go ahead, shrugs, and whirrs over to the array of Condolezza Schwartz' tunes, and reluctantly gives it a spin:

Just because you aren't a house, don't mean that you ain't haunted,
Just because you aren't in a schoolyard, don't mean you won't be taunted;
Just because you are sitting surrounded by empty boxes, batteryless toys, and
children who say "what about everything else we wanted?",
don't mean it is late on Christmas day; and
Just because it is darkest, don't mean dawn is on the way.

Just because you can't land, don't make you an Arab hijacker,
Just because there's no prize in the box, don't mean Jack, cracker,
Just because you want to cut off your ear, don't think you can paint,
Just because you drive nails into your hands, may not firmly make you a saint.

But just because you cry all night, it don't mean a thing,
And just because you sit by the phone, don't mean it doesn't ring,
And just because everything's false, don't mean that now I'm true,
And just because you are alone, don't mean I don't love you.

Just because you wear funny red clothes and sit in dark kitchens eating carrot sticks and peanut butter sandwiches, doesn't make you Santa Claus, and --"

"Stop!!!! Enough!" And as one, they eject him from the room, magically enough flinging him gracefully out into the night through the smoothly moving disabled door.