After the first Santa column of the year last week (Christmas is DEAD), he’s back! The Santa machine is in full flow! The bad news is lurgy is on the loose.

He’s sure it’s not COVID-19. 100 million percent sure! But something’s up. And Santa is here to ran like a madman about how unfair it all is.

Lurgy Has Hit

Oh my good giddy bollocks. Just as we fire up the factories and hire in a bunch of new employees (5,000 elves! And one janitor called Gary)… the lurgy hit.

I started one morning the same as always. Hungover to shit and barely able to stand.

My new head elf, Mary, fetched me my bottle of whiskey and I slugged from that until I felt better. Belching exuberantly, I could then begin my day.

Except I couldn’t. Because of lurgy! I sneezed violently, drenching Mary in a mixture of snot, mucus, and spittle.

She looked quite shocked about that and stood there staring at me. Like she was expecting an apology. “What are you looking at?!” I barked. She thought I was joking and laughed. Impertinence!

Well, I can tell you she STOPPED laughing the moment I grabbed a stick of TNT and began threatening to blow us all to smithereens!

To prove to her I wasn’t making an idle threat, I promptly lit the fuse and chucked the TNT onto my bed (which was covered, as always, in vomit), and let it blow to smithereens. Then I ordered her to fix the mess.

Bed chunks and vomit were all over the place, caking the bedroom roof, myself, and Mary. With steam rising off my shoulders and debris on my head and in my big Santa bear, I glared at Mary and snarled, “Clean it up!”

These new employees, you gotta put them in their place early.

Otherwise they get ideas. Like they have employment rights, or some crap. They don’t!

Anyway, with Mary clearing up that mess I walked into my bathroom and wiped all the debris off my person.

And I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look good. A bit haggard. As if decades of chronic drinking abuse had affected me somehow. A big, swollen, red blotched nose and nasty looking skin. I was a bit appalled.

I don’t really look at myself in the mirror much, you see, but when I do it’s usually when thoroughly wasted and with beer goggles on. Normally I sort of fancy myself a fair bit.

Well I put my nasty look down to the lurgy, because I promptly sneezed again and got another batch of mucus all over the mirror.

I jammed another stick of TNT into the sink below it, lit the fuse, and left the bathroom.

Walking past Mary as the thing blew up, she turned sharply in shock. Glaring at her I bellowed, “Clear that bloody mess up too, woman!”

With panic in her eyes she mumbled some form of agreement and scuttled off into the bathroom with a mop, flannel, and elf hat swaying from left to right.

I laughed mightily at her distress. Pathetic inferior subordinates!

The Elf Hiring Process

Hiring elves en masse is a total bastard.

But we managed to get it done in a week. It took a lot of energy. I was fuelled on cocaine, whiskey, and Red Bull for the whole ordeal.

We put the job spec out online:

“Santa looking to hire elves. Arrive at The Santa Factory, North Pole on 7th October 2021 by 9am for humiliating candidate analysis. Bring mittens and bobble hats because it’s goddamn freezing. Disclaimer: Attend at your own risk. Death is highly possible. Minimum wage is also guaranteed.”

So on the 7th October they were there, 10,000 of them, all lined up outside waiting for work history checks and all that.

We didn’t need to do it, of course, I just wanted to force them to stand around outside in subzero temperatures.

That needlessly spiteful plan backfired a tad because 5,000 of them died due to a mixture of:

• Freezing to death.
• Hypothermia.
• Panic and running off into the wilderness to either:
  • Be eaten by polar bears.
  • Fall off verges into freezing water.
• Falling into the giant cesspit outside the factory and drowning in effluence.

The plan had been to hire all 10,000 of them, but well… never mind. 5,000 is still a good amount! Dragging them through hours of mind-numbing paper checks puts them through their paces, you see. They see I’m boss!

Of the 5,000 corpses, I got the new hires to sweep away the bodies. Some of them were their friends and found it an emotional and distressing experience.

Goddamn snowflakes! I detonated a few TNT sticks and fired my shotgun at any of the dissenters.

Unfortunately, that inadvertently led to over 100 more deaths. But 4,900 elves is plenty enough to get Christmas 2021 on track!

An Introduction to our Head Elf Mary

Mary was immediately made Head Elf due to her simpering gullibility. Her CV (resume, to you North Americans reading this) is packed with submissive roles and naivety.

This role will be her masterpiece in acquiescence!

She speaks with a high-pitched whine (as all elves do), is small, dextrous, and prone to bouts of barely controlled panic.

It was hilarious to threaten her each time she homed into view with my double barrelled shotgun. That and verbal abuse. And the whole TNT bedroom incident.

However, after that she sort of snapped and told me about human rights, the Equality Act 2010, and her right to enforce an employment tribunal due to harassment.

I offered her $10 on the spot and she seized it greedily in her tiny, pallid hands and rushed off to store it somewhere.

Excellent. A true capitalist! And easily swayed. She’ll go far! Unless I accidentally shoot one of her legs off with the shotgun.

Then she won’t go far. Ha. Hahahahahaha!

The Lurgy

With 5,000… sorry, 4,900 elves settled into the factory and familiarised with the production processes, I felt proud.

This was professionalism of the highest standard.

But then my bout of lurgy began afflicting all around me. First off, my bitch wife began sneezing. Then Mary did.

Before I knew it, the whole workforce came down with the thing! Seriously, try putting up with 4,900 elves sneezing every 30 seconds. It was driving me spare!

To drown out the sound of that, I got Rudolph and the other reindeer to rig their ghetto blasters up around the various factories and that lot was pelting out trance, dance, and rap music at full volume.

The problem was it was really disorientating and making a lot of us puke in sensory distress, but at least we couldn’t hear any sneezing!

My bitch wife said, “Darling, do you think this music is making everyone more ill?” And I told her to piss off.

Anyway, over the weekend things didn’t improve and much of the workforce crawled to a halt and wanted to lounge around in the sleeping quarters.

I ordered the reindeer (unaffected by the lurgy), to break out the whips and thrash the elves back into action.

It’s essential as the Barbie doll production line started on Friday. With 20 billion Barbies to churn out before December 24th (Christmas Eve), we can’t waste a single second!

Many of the elves (new to my working practices) complained vociferously about being forced to work.

To punish them I cracked open the doors of the heated factories and let all that subzero air into the giant rooms. That soon shut them up!

Unfortunately, this did backfire as the drop in temperature began affecting the machinery.

The Barbie doll head machine (a giant, cauldron shaped contraption) began backfiring wildly and soon caught fire.

Immediately, the freezing elves surged towards it to seek warmer climes. As they huddled around the blazing inferno rubbing their hands together, those at the back began climbing and pushing forward to get closer to the flames.

Stupid fools! They thought it akin to a woodland fire for their marshmallows and sleeping bags!

I bellowed at them furiously to get away from the fire. Seriously, I did my very best to prevent injury and death.

I mean… I was running away. But I did shout three or four times for them to save themselves.

Inevitably, the Barbie doll head machine exploded. Rudolph (who has a passing interest in the science of explosions) noted this one had the power of a really, really, really small atom bomb.

Elves went flying everywhere, like it was a fireworks display of elves, and there was much screaming and bedlam.

Well, Mary can work out the death toll later.

For now, my concern is the Barbie doll production has ground to a halt. I mean, I’m still churning them through the cycle to package them off.

But, for now, they’re all going out minus any heads.

Are little girls scared of headless Barbie dolls? I hope so. It’ll be goddamn hilarious to have them open those things on Christmas Day and burst into tears. Haha. Merry Christmas, you spoiled brat!