Thursday, December 23, 2010

Is It Time for an Interview?

    Is It Time II?

Never a dream that wasn't truncated,
Broken off unevenly like a twig
Or chocolate bar rather than
The sharp, cauterized mercy
Of surgical precision.

Bound into wakefulness,
Into time to go to work,
Time to cut the grass,
Time for the bright sky to alarm you
Or the sun to make you squint.

Feed the pesky cat who scratches
On the door into the garage.
Placate the noisy kids who stir you
Early on Christmas morning.
Do something! Your opportunity

To do nothing arrives soon enough.


    With Christmas rapidly approaching, I landed an exclusive interview with Santa Claus. He joined me via satellite from his Polar home.

    RH: Good afternoon, Mr. Claus, thank you for agreeing to speak with me.

    SC: I hate the media.

    RH: Doesn't everyone?

    SC: Yes, it's one of the best scapegoats we've got. I always mark them as "naughty" on December 26th every year and never alter the status.

    RH: Do you really check your list twice?

    SC: Certainly not. Over the years, my job has become increasingly administrative. I don't spend a lot of time in the toy shop anymore; all that's gone too high tech for me. And with the increased population, management of the list has become my most important task, so I check the list far more than twice.

    RH: What about the whole "coal in the stocking" thing? Was that genuine?

     SC: It's based on a real incident, but I never intended it as a punishment. I put coal in a little boy's stocking one year because he asked for it. Cold winter, you see.

    RH: Most people probably don't realize it, but your accent is pretty much inscrutable. Seems to be a hint of Germanic but with American "Rs", maybe a little Scandinavian in there, too.

    SC: Well, I get around, don't I? And whenever a child wakes up and catches me with the milk and cookies, no matter what country it's in, I have to be prepared to speak the language.

     RH: Are there any languages you can't speak?

    SC: I struggled for a long time with any language that features palatal clicks, but now I'm used to it. I'm a dab hand at Zulu and Xhosa, but didn't bother much with Ndebele. It's very similar to Zulu and I got lazy.

    RH: So you can speak the Eastern languages like Mandarin, too?

     SC: Well, the Chinese government doesn't let me deliver, something about violating their airspace. And don't get me started on North Korea. A couple of the reindeer lost their antlers dodging missiles in 2007 and I haven't gone back there since. So it is possible that I'm a little rusty at some of those languages, but I have studied them. When you're immortal, you have a lot of time to do these things, even if you're usually busy with other matters.

    RH: Pardon my directness, but you don't seem to be very fat at all.

    SC: With the global obesity problem, I decided it was best to drop the weight. Mrs. Claus didn't like it much, not that she's still overweight because she lost it easier than I did. But she detests cooking with canola oil and checking things for trans fat. Bit of a nuisance, she says. I guess she's set in her ways.

    RH: Do you really have elves working for you?

     SC: Never did, actually. Anyone with a presentable resume' and high tolerance for cold weather conditions can work for me. It's true that in the early days I hired mostly short people due to the layout of the workshop, lack of headroom and all that. That's probably how the notion got started.

    RH: Thank you so much for joining us, sir. Will you say it for everyone, please, the catchphrase for which you've become so famous?

    SC: No one likes you.  

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