This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.
Santa Tube
By Aaron J. BrownClick “Play.”
SANTA CLAUS (at desk, wearing headset microphone, hands at keyboard):Ho, ho, ho! This is Santa’s first ever “You Tube.” The elves tell Santa all the little boys and girls use the You Tube now. Santa has to change with the times, so here we go. (SANTA looks at mouse, moves it, looks up to screen, back to mouse, clicks).
The first thing Santa is going to put in his You Tube is his official response to e-mails Santa received from boys and girls around the world. (Addressing someone off camera). It says Yahoo is loading. Ho, ho, ho! What does that mean? Oh, here it goes.
(Back to camera). This first e-mail is from little Suzie. She writes, “Dear Santa, I live in northern Minnesota where it is very cold, much like your home at the North Pole. I would like a warm pair of slippers for my mom and a robe for my dad. I would also like a CD-ROM encyclopedia so I can do better in school. They have those online, but we only have dial-up internet which is very slow.” Ho, ho, ho! What a nice e-mail. Santa wishes all his letters were so altruistic.
ELF (appears from off screen): Actually, Santa, Suzie is the victim of big internet providers slowing public efforts to expand high speed internet to rural areas like hers. What you want, Suzie, is a system of delivering the internet that is comparable to the electric grid. It’s the only way the economies of rural places will ever catch up.
SANTA: But Santa has fast internet. Santa lives at the North Pole.
ELF: Santa is magic. That means automatic free fast internet for life. If you had dial up, we’d never be able to upload this video to You Tube.
SANTA: There is so much Santa doesn’t know. (Looks at screen). What’s this now? Norton Disk Scan? Who is Norton? Norton is messing up Santa’s world.
ELF: (off camera) Minimize it. Click the line.
SANTA: Ho, ho, ho! What? (click, click … clickclickclick). OK. Santa thinks he fixed it. Now for another e-mail. This one comes from someone Santa has known a long time. In fact, Santa remembers Billy from 1986 when he was a little boy asking for Go-Bots. Ho, ho, ho! Remember Go-Bots? Billy writes, “Dear Santa, this is a tragic story about a puppy, a veteran, a little old lady and the flag. Please forward this to 9 people immediately or all of them will be burned by hippies.”
Ho, ho, ho! Santa doesn’t like the sound of that. Santa will forward this to his eight reindeer and also Rudolph even though his bright red nose often discourages the use of computers.
ELF (off camera): It’s bogus. That’s just some nonsense that people keep forwarding around to drum up political or religious fervor. They appeal to people’s pathos in the raw environment of the Internet.
SANTA: Ho, ho, ho! Ho. Ho. Hmmm. Santa wonders why he’s bothering with all this. We had a pretty good system with the letters and the kids and the presents and the sleigh. It all made sense. Why is Santa recording this when he could be doing his appearance at the mall and pounding some pegs into some old school wooden toys?
ELF: Don’t you get it? We’re reaching a new generation. This is how information will be shared in the future. Don’t you want to spread Santa’s message of holiday joy to a new generation?
SANTA: Yes. Santa does. But Santa wishes people would just come down to see him in the stores like the old days. Santa just wishes people would enjoy the holidays with their families. Times are hard. Santa knows. Santa thinks people should just love each just a little more than last year. Then everything would be OK.
How does Santa turn this off? Santa is looking for the Stop button. Santa sees a record button, but he doesn’t see a … no, this is something else. Oh, there it is … (END BROADCAST)
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Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog, MinnesotaBrown.com. His new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is out now.
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