Author’s note. Rudy | The Unofficial Novella is comprised of notes found stuffed in a stainless steel shoe box that floated up from what used to be frozen tundra. There will be 25 posts containing random insights into the seasonal saga. They are not in order, but will be when pigs fly. This is #25. The Buck stopped yesterday. Rudy carries on.
Christmas Breakfast idea from Rudy’s North Pole Cook Book.
Enjoy your day.
Author’s note. Rudy | The Unofficial Novella is comprised of notes found stuffed in a stainless steel shoe box that floated up from what used to be frozen tundra. There will be 25 posts containing random insights into the seasonal saga. They are not in order, but will be when pigs fly. This is #20. DO NOT LET THE CHILDREN SEE THIS POST.
Exhibit A
Santa gets letters before December 25th. His staff replies with mail merge canned copy. Rudy receives emails and messages too – the morning after the North Pole Post-Holiday Office Party.
Last season, he made his way up the path to the Barn, repeating . . . “I will not sip, munch or chew juniper berries or anything prepared by the elves.”
The mantra failed. He’s up against diabolical odds. For months, the elves plan how to turn Rudy’s Red Nose into an ornament of shame.
They never fail. These are only a few of the emails and Tweets Rudy tried to purge from his inbox the morning after the 2014 party, where silver buckets of brandied apricots lined the buffet table:
“Rudy! I have your pants.”
“Hey Rudy! How did you get the lampshade off your rack?”
“Rudy, please get the mice out of the water cooler!”
“Your antlers are in the back of my sleigh.”
“Return my wife by noon tomorrow or I’ll tell Santa.”
It took a team of hard-nosed Manhattan attorneys six months and 17 motions to get the judge to declare Exhibit A inadmissible. It could have sent Rudy to the pervert pen for life.
Author’s note. Rudy | The Unofficial Novella is comprised of notes found stuffed in a stainless steel shoe box that floated up from what used to be frozen tundra. There will be 25 posts containing random insights into the seasonal saga. This is #13. They are not in order, but will be when pigs fly.
It’s been 18 years since the attack.
“In 1997, in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, a man who kept reindeer as part of his Santa Claus act was attacked by a 550-pound bull in heat. When the bull tried to gore him, the man latched on to its 31-point rack of antlers. The reindeer carried the man – who weight 370 pounds – in the air for forty-five minutes. Eventually it pinned him to the ground. Five other men tried to pull the buck off. When they finally succeeded, the buck fell dead from its exertions. The owner was not seriously hurt.”
Deer fear – which led to the War on Deer Terror – went under the radar until the Internet took superseded rational thinking. Observe the finer points of this excerpt from just one of the thousands of Websites calling for the elimination of all deer. “ . . . a man who kept reindeer . . . Santa Claus act . . . 550 pound bull in heat . . . 31 point rack . . . the man – who weight [sic] 370 pounds.”
Other stories of hunters being attacked while ‘minding their own business.” Could this be considered a deadly oxymoron?
You can find more of deer fear propaganda on FOX GNUS, the most unreliable source of information on the planet. The coverage won’t include shots of antlers tangled in the barbed wire fences that line the US border.
By trying to escape seasonal genocide, they descended into rack and ruin.
Author’s note. Rudy | The Unofficial Novella is comprised of notes found stuffed in a stainless steel shoe box that floated up from what used to be frozen tundra. There will be 25 posts. This is #11. They are not in order, but will be when pigs fly.
The Hans Christian Anderson storybook was planted on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in his room. Rudy would wake up at 3 am, startled by the chartreuse glow pulsating from the tome’s spine, not by the red light on his snout.
Whenever his mother caught wind of a bullying incident, she would have Rudy pull the book off the shelf, so that she could read an inspiring story from its pages.
Mr. Anderson was a prolific writer. The thing weighed 20 pounds.
“Twenty pounds of inspirational stories should be enough to make him accept himself.” His mother’s guilt hung throughout the house like the aroma of truffles. What would have happened if she had not been dancing so close to the cranberry bog when she was six months pregnant, and slipped?
Would Rudy feel better knowing about a girl fish, the naked emperor, a princess with the sensitive skin, the singing bird, girl with matched, or the switched-at-birth swan? Rudy pretended to listen, playing a La-La-La-La mantra inside his head while his mother read to him.
One day, he found a little book someone had dropped on the path to the ice pond. It was all about rabbits that were different. One told of a rabbit with HUGE feet. Uncomfortable childhood and all that, until it came time to escape from the lone wolf ghost. Another was about a rabbit with a shamrock embossed on the bottom of his paw. He could never get away with a prank, as his prints gave him away.
Until his prints led the way to a pot of gold. From then on, they called him “Lucky.”
Rudy placed the slim book under his pillow.
The Fifth Day of Chanukah is special, filled with Greeks, Maccabees, assimilation vs religious purity, and tainted oil. The saga spans thousands of years and millions of personal stories, stories of the power of light over the darkest of times.
Even the saying “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness” is subject to controversy. Was is Romans 13:11, John F. Kennedy, or Eleanor Roosevelt?
It was K’ung Fu-tzu, Confucius, who uttered it sometime between 551 – 479 B.C.E.
Author’s note. Rudy | The Unofficial Novella is comprised of notes found stuffed in a stainless steel shoe box that floated up from what used to be frozen tundra. There will be 25 posts containing random insights into the seasonal saga. They are not in order, but will be when pigs fly.
Rudy’s second cousins in Wyoming do not posses the gift of flight, so each year they travel on hoof, 150 miles across public and private lands.
Amazing, considering the herd’s geographical route is part of their DNA passed from doe to fawn. They settled in the Leucite Hills in Wyoming’s Red Desert, long before humans followed, crossing the Bering land bridge and setting foot on the eastern portion of Beringia, now known as the tippy top of Alaska.
Humans built ranches, fences, Interstate highways, gated communities and recently, Dillie’s bedroom, in their path. The deer – given the unbecoming name of ‘Mule’ – have continued to move from summer fields to winter habitats in spite of obstacles. Click here for National Geographic’s stirring account.
Except for Rudy’s cousin Ralph’s digression into Dillie’s bedroom, their migration went undetected until 2011, when biologist, Hall Sawyer, placed tracking collars on deer that signed non-disclosure documents. National Geographic photographers got into the act. Watch the wonder.
Author’s note. Rudy | The Unofficial Novella is comprised of notes found stuffed in a stainless steel shoe box that floated up from what used to be frozen tundra. There will be 25 posts. They are not in order, but will be when pigs fly. December 8 is dear to my heart, as I was an adman [ad woman just doesn’t cut it] for 35 years. Truth be told, advertising is the world’s oldest profession.
It was 1939. The drums of war were drowning out the songs of hope that Happy Days Are Here Again. The strong leader that Germans had wished for had turned out to be a nasty guy. In Chicago, a manager at Montgomery Ward needed a hook for the holidays. He asked Robert L. May, a copywriter, to write a children’s story.
May’s career did not match up to his writer’s dream – to pen the Great American Novel. Now, his boss wanted a product that would endear customers to the department store.
May submitted the draft. The boss reacted in typical creative vs. suits fashion: “Can’t you come up with something better?”
May wouldn’t give up. He got an art director to illustrate the draft and the rest is history – the history of how advertising shapes our world.
Rudolph’s story and song and cartoons are heart-warming additions to the US holidays.
Our Rudy will not be 100 years old in 2039. He reached that milestone before the invention of time.
*Monkey Ward is the now-defunct department store’s nickname.
Thanks to National Public Radio for the perfect link. Listen to the story, know more about May’s tragic life.
Author’s note. Rudy | The Unofficial Novella is comprised of notes found stuffed in a stainless steel shoe box that floated up from what used to be frozen tundra. There will be 25 posts. This is #7. They are not in order, but will be when pigs fly.
Bullying rears its ugly head in subtle ways. Direct hits hurt, such as prancing and chanting “Rudy Rud-ee, Rude as he can be . . . “ in circles around a fellow trying to get through the snow.
Or, “Can we use your nose to read after lights out?” at boarding school.
As an adult, Rudy hoped that the tyranny would cease. Not so. The contemplative image of Reindeer and Tree appears innocent to humans, but is a stinging example of unfair practice.
The photo shoot took ten hours. Rudy’s fee and royalty check from Getty Images is not and never will be ‘in the mail.’
No Rudy saga is complete with the science behind how reindeer overcome gravity.
Media truth is hard to come by these days. Today’s content will rely on the world’s renowned purveyor of fact, the British Broadcasting Company, aka the BBC. *
Discover how Rudy and his species take flight, often with humans in tow.
*Hoof-Note: The BBC’s reputation for sticking to news that ‘has legs’ survived the sullen skeptics who denounced “Spaghetti-Harvest in Ticino” as Italian/Swiss propaganda. Did you notice the use of the hyphen?
Throughout millennia, fawn, stag and doe have gazed at their reflections in still water ponds and wondered, “Who am I?”
“Why are my eyes crossed?” “Where did that beard come from?” “Why is my left front hoof shaped like a heart? “Whose nose decided to turn crimson and pulsate after sundown?”
Many of these questions can be answered by referencing the Deer Family Antler. While humans expose their Family Trees to the public through the massive Mormon enterprise’s Ancestry.com, family Cervidae records hang on racks in the most sacred Hall of Secrets, only accessible to the eldest of the herd.
Occasionally, a tribal elder will take pity on a youngster suffering from indignity and bullying. Such was the case for Rudy.
“You should be proud of your relatives. Your great great great . . . oh heck, I’m not going to list the exact number of greats. The point is that your ancient relatives crossed the pond on the DecemberFlower. The little ship arrived five months after the human-bearing Mayflower because your G-Mother suffered from an advanced case of seasickness, which spread to the humans.”
The elder continued. “The little band of migrants pulled into the first port they spotted. They remained moored on the leeward side, safe from storms and the perils of tropical life.”
Rudy loved geography. He had the highest grade in his class, one of the reasons his classmates bullied him. He had to know. “Where is this island?”
“In the Caribou-ean Sea.”
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