"Frosty" the Festive Holiday Zeppelin

I know you all missed me dearly while I was gone - ached for my next entry, even. It's been a long week, finishing up some assorted work, assorted seasonal stress, and so forth. Took a while for inspiration to strike me. Obviously, it's often more scarce than I'd like, but I got some more work on Project 27 Days done, which I'm still hoping to finish relatively soon and finally get published sometime in 2008, if I can manage to find an agent willing to represent me, and they, in turn, can manage to find me a publisher. At least, if all works out, I finally graduate today.

I hope none of you have been grievously injured or killed since my last entry - though my writing does tend to have that effect on people. I need readers, after all. ... Or do I?

Uh, anyway, without further ado, after the long wait, I now present to you a new enchanting tale of holiday cheer well representative of Christmas (Or Crimbo, as some call it.) in the modern world. Pass it down to your children, and in turn, their children. Burn it - scar it into their memories. This is a story of holiday cheer not to be forgotten. Or questioned.

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"Frosty" the Festive Holiday Zeppelin

These days, the holiday season seemed to be officially starting sooner and sooner every passing year. This year, it began in July. Families in America spent July 4th gathered around their televisions, taking in the splendor and wonderment that was the new holiday special, "Santa Sinks a Commie U-Boat." It was pretty violent and tasteless, but then, without these thematic elements, where would American family entertainment be? Fraggle Rock? They had to bomb that after hearing allegations that they might've been harboring some of the gays. (Later, it turned out someone misheard the last part of "Dance Your Cares Away.")

Behind as ever, Amherst, Massachusetts' local NFL game preparation team at the newly constructed Bart Simpson Stadium toiled away, hoping to make a memorable mark on the sporting television world at the Amherst Noam Chomskies' debut football game, just a few days off in early November - critically late in the holiday season, as Robot Santa No. 3 would soon be making its rounds in the AmericaDome. (Following mass global nuclear fallout, every nation sequestered its citizens from the rest of the world in a massive dome spanning the nation. Not that this did much to protect anybody from the nuclear zombie armies that rose up in America's southwest but weeks after the war began and ended - largely due to the growing boredom of all sides involved. These zombies did, however, make construction of the southwestern quadrant a real pain in the ass.) Nobody really liked Robot Santa No. 3, as it was voiced by reviled comic-beast Jeff Foxworthy, one of history's greatest monsters. But nobody really knew how to reprogram the Robot Santas - a minor inconvenience when Robot Santa No. 2 became self-aware and began eating children instead of dispensing gifts. Nobody had stopped him yet. That might have required using a baseball bat. And a small amount of force. That would constitute exercise, which Emperor Bushie IV decreed treason back in 2112 before he fell into an eventually fatal thirty-year coma from alcohol poisoning.

To celebrate the 2222 NFL season, the Amherst team planned to send the crowd on a trip down memory lane by flying an old zeppelin painted to resemble famous historical figure Frosty the Snowman over the field at halftime. At this point, everything was just about good to go. The zeppelin had been painted white, and the front had been painted to resemble a snowman's face, though the Earth hadn't seen snow in over seven hundred years, so there were some mild concerns that the zeppelin may only confuse and anger the spectators when they were expecting to be entertained. It wasn't going to be easy outdoing the Denver Dinosaurs' halftime show with those girls and their magical musical orifices. That just took talent. And in modern America, talent involving various uses for one's orifices was the only kind worth having. Sigmund Freud might have had a stroke, were he to behold so many sexual psychological fixations displayed at once.

With Project Frosty nearly complete, Red Dodger and Dave Forkington were looking forward to kicking back with some brewskis and watching a human air hockey tournament. Manufacturing had just delivered the all-important giant hat to complete the Frosty-zeppelin, and for once, things seemed to be going according to plan - this rarely happened, as by 2222, most people had no attention span to speak of. Red was a rare exception, but then, he'd always been considered a bit slow in the cognitive faculties, and that's how you end up working for the NFL in the first place.

"I can't believe this is actually working out," Red said, as he watched Aaron the overseer direct the lowering of the hat onto the Frosty-zeppelin from the command center window at the Amherst NFL HQ.

"No kidding, looks like I may get to get this cancer treated a bit this year after all," said Dave, between walkie-talkie command relays to Aaron.

After the crane finished lowering it, the field technicians spent a few minutes securing electro-fasteners to the hat, ensuring that it wouldn't go flying away or falling off and killing anybody when airborne, and reinforcing its sonic defenses to render the giant mutant bats that filled the skies harmless.

"Beautiful," Red smiled somewhat sincerely. "This is the sort of thing that got me into this business."

"I thought it was because you couldn't find work anywhere else, what with people hating the way you talk - complete thoughts, and all. I know that's what got me here. I wanted to be a doctor. Maybe see if I could actually help some people. Maybe not die of cancer," Dave mused.

"We're all dying of cancer inside, Dave, we all are," said Red, watching the scene outside. He was right. Ever since the fallout, most people had at least one form of cancer at all times, but most had mutated enough to ensure their long-term survival. Cancer was just a real pain in the ass. Nobody got any cool side effects from their mutations either, just extra nipples or testicles, occasionally a secondary brain they'd have to carry around in a petri dish, lest they forget how to breathe.

Moments after the hat was secured, things went awry for poor old Red and company. The painted face on the front of the zeppelin sprung to life, and Frosty began to scream, "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" And just kept screaming that over and over. Up close, judging by the technicians' state of panic, it must have been a terrifying sight to behold. But from the relative safety of the command center, it was really just kind of annoying, like a kid throwing a fit in a grocery store.

"Well, this is different," said Red, interested enough to raise one of his eyebrows - but only the one. Even the sight of Frosty shooting laser beams from his eyes and mouth, vaporizing everything it could in the area wasn't enough to make that second eyebrow budge.

"Hey, looks like there was a bit of magic in that old hat!" Dave exclaimed without a sense of irony.

"Shut the hell up, Dave," Red spat, "It's not old, we just got it in from manufacturing two days ago! You know how much trouble this's gonna cause?"

"Should bring a bit of cheer to the kiddies, don'tcha think?" Dave said, always the optimist. "If it doesn't traumatize them for life, that is. Or kill them."

"Well, they're not my kids," Red said, picking up the phone. "Keep an eye on Aaron, will ya? It'd be better if we could keep initial casualties to a minimum."

"Too late," Dave observed, "he just got vaporized by one of Frosty's eye-beams."

"So much for worker's comp - hey, Hank?" Red got through to manufacturing. "Yeah, yeah, we've got a bit of a problem here. I'm not sure what you guys were thinking, but this hat you sent us - yeah, that one - seems like it'd pose a bit of a thread to the spectators.
"No, I don't particularly like spectators, that's true. I'm more of an epic-porn man than a live sporting events fan, myself. Well, it just seems like killing them would still be a pretty bad idea. I'm no saint or anything, but I don't see how we can let Frosty fly now in good conscience. Anyway, Dave had an idea, so I have to ask - you guys make any new hires in the past month?
"Zarlock the Planet-Tainter, huh? You guys didn't, perchance, run a background check on the guy before hiring him, did you? No? Yeah, I get it, he sounds like a cool guy. I wish the dimwits I work with knew how to grow pot. Anyway, I'm pretty sure he's one of those evil wizards - you know, warlocks? - that kept turning up in the news a few years ago. No, I'm not being judgmental, I just think he might've put a curse on the hat, or some kind of black magic anyway. Yeah? Yeah, it does look pretty badass, but my job's on the line here. We want the stands full of children who'll grow up to be big boosters for the Chomskies, rather than distance themselves like what happened with the Philly Fuckwads last month. I'm not sure what they were thinking with that name either, don't ask me.
"Let's get back on topic though - could you ask Zarlock to maybe come out here to get rid of the spell? It's getting kinda messy and I've got a wife and kid to feed. No, I haven't tried calling the fire department yet. What're they gonna do, really? Come on, water has never beaten laser beams. Geezus, what movies do you watch? That has never happened - Napoleon was proven to have powerful optic lasers at Waterloo. Yeah? Shut up. I'm running out of options here, what do you expect me to do?
"What do you mean send him up without the hat? Without the hat he's just a big white smiley face! You know how many supremacists that could incite? Yeah, I know what happened in Charleston. That's what I'm trying to stop from happening here. What? Repainting it in blackface is entirely inappropriate. This is the damn twenty-third century, you think I want to reopen those wounds yet again?
"Great, just great. Well, I wouldn't even know how to suggest we get that hat off again - it's killing everything in a ten mile radius and nobody's even flying it yet! I'm not sure how we could even get a pilot over there in one piece. A bunch of lead shields, maybe... regardless, you guys are assholes, you know that? Yeah, fuck your mother too! Next time try doing some background checks before you hire even more warlocks, huh? Some of us have advertisers to placate!" Red angrily slammed the phone down.

"Any luck?" Dave asked.

"Nope. Apparently somebody already got in touch with corporate and they're blaming us for not checking for magical traps before installing the hat. Looks like Christmas is ruined. Again."

"Well, I was planning on jumping the Canadian border anyway. I'd rather take my chances with the giant beavers than stick around and risk losing my health insurance again," Dave shrugged.

Red simply glared out the window at Frosty, as it continued to devastate the surrounding city blocks. "This was a big waste of everybody's time, you know that?"

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Didn't you feel your insides just warm up and pickle from holiday cheer in reading that? If they didn't, you may want to contact a medical professional. Right now. And also do the same if your insides did pickle too. Better delicious than sorry.

What?

Anyway, that's enough from me for now. Hopefully you didn't end yourself after reading that. For this is an important story. You must remember that.

Yeah, I need to find some more worthwhile things to muse about rather than just writing even more stupid comedy. It's been a while since I last wrote something here that actually meant something. At least this entry was better than that last one, though, eh?