The 'Great' Reindeer Debate

Yahoo News is at it again.

Instead of heeding the pending Mayan calendar apocalypse (aka, Al Capone's Vault revisited), they chose instead to wade into a seasonal controversy that academics feel it necessary to weigh in on again...and again...and again.

And what is it this time?  The story of Santa Claus, flying reindeer, and how it all probably began with hallucinagery mushrooms.

My pet rock, Seymour, took offense at this notion.  I mean, this is a pet rock that's been around longer than all of us, and has been stoned the whole time.  So if anyone should know this subject, it's Seymour.

"Phfffffffft!"

He even managed to keep that germaine to the subject.

Seymour decided to don his professorial hat -- one I didn't know he had -- and delve into correcting a story from Yahoo News about how Santa and flying reindeer are the result of hallucinagens.  With no further adoodoo:

Magic Mushrooms, Helium, Tacos...A JackWagonload of Stuff May Probably Not Explain Santa & His 'Flying' Reindeer

By MacArthur Park Douglas, Enlivened Science Embalmer | Enlivened Science.com

　
This Christmas, like many before it and many yet to come, the story of Santa and his flying reindeer will be analyzed, argued, bebunked, reinforced, and more than a few food fights will erupt in chambers of Christmas parties. And it’s all over the same silly argument every friggin’ year by the same silly arguers: over how the "jolly old elf" flies on his sleigh throughout the entire world in one night, giving gifts to all the good children.


Now, experts in the study of "perceptional hallucinagenics and endorphic quantum guessnics" are claiming that the real story of Santa and his flying reindeer are the result of one thing and one thing only: hallucinogenic or "magic" mushrooms.


"I mean wowzers, dude, Santa is like, you know, a counterpart of Cheech ‘n Chong, man" said Johan Sebastian Ripshiz, an anthropological scat tracer at Sayonara Correge in Toredo, Ohio.


According to the theory that Ripshiz rushed to conjour up in time to meet our publishing deadline, the legend of Santa derives from psychotic mushroom men who smoked the banana and saw the devil bunnies that would later surface in a Bloom County cartoon on the subject, wherein drunken eskimos dropped into locals' teepeelike homes with a bag full of frozen kimchi and passed it off as frozen fart patties in late December.


"As the story goes up in smoke, up until a few hundred years ago these antics were only curtailed by wandering polar bears who were not impressed with having their scat misrepresented in this way
," Ripshiz told Enlivened Science.　


But that's just the beginning of the symbolic connections between the Antarcticus Scatologicus mushroom and how all this came to be laid upon a fat guy in a red suit, according to several notedly bored archivians of the Benedictine Bar and Grill, or people who study the influence that how a jolly old soul in a red suit and smoking mushrooms can become a real fungi in a party setting.


*rimshot*


Of course, not all scientists agree that the Santa story is tied to tax revenues, free phones and an inexplicable surplus of pork rinds in Detroit.


Presence Under A Tree


In his book "Why A Horse Has A Long Face and 3,000 Other Bad Bar Jokes" (The Book Apocalypse, 2009) the author U. R. Phulovit points out that Amanita muscaria, also known as fly make up, can be purchased wherever Maybelline has stockpiled the crap. This partially explains the practice of why flies fly into windows instead of avoiding them; "they're putting on makeup and not paying attention to where they're flying", Phulovit said.


"Flying" reindeer

"When one considers all the variables in nature, including those as-yet unrevealed anomalies that await us as we journey into the space between spaces, one thinks it's ridiculous to see a reindeer fly, but it isn’t" said Rarl Duck, a professor of Interdimensional Astronomical Obstrusics at Lawrence Livernomore Propulsion Laboratories. "Go in the woods and you’re set upon by a sh**load of biting deer flies. So why not reindeer flies in reindeer environs? Believe me, flies aren’t choosy about the sh** they eat, bite, whatever" Duck mused.   "Amongst the medicinal pot dispenserers, you have an animal spirit you can journey with on just about any trip. What KIND of animal is up to the respective tripper. Some go with flying lizards, monkeys, tap dancing manatees...others prefer to attach their hallucinations to Bambi".

The Santa connection


There is little debate about the consumption of mushrooms by the staff of MSNBC led to Chris Matthews turning abjectly stupid. But that’s "non sequitur to this post" as Duck put it.


Many of the modern details of the modern-day American Santa Claus come from a mistranslation of "War And Peace", which when discovered resulted in 40 days of elf protests and violence in Antarctica. Which no one understands, because all the hallucinagenic sh** goes on at the North Pole.


After a night clubbing, Harvard law professor E. Meritless Schmuck drunkenly postulated for his intern, Merry Wasntcontrary, that the Norse god Thor (known in German as "Das Biggen Vorken Mitte Hammer Thingen") flew in a Flexible Flyer drawn by two goats – Hans undt Gretl – which have been replaced after a lengthy strike by non-union reindeer.


Duck points to Rudolf as an example of how Schmuck’s intern made the most of his overindulgence of holiday spirit and body painted his unconscious form like a reindeer with a red nose, which she playfully dubbed Rudolph, and then sent a video to YouTube and local news 9 Wants To Know, of him trying to leap from the roof of her house when her husband came home. He landed on the roof of the next door neighbors, the Schmitts, and from there "one can see where THAT escapade was headed in university lore."


Beyond All Doubt


Other historians were unaware of a connection between Bill Clinton, hallucinagenic mushrooms, and the results of the 2012 Miss Universe Competition. Someone at MSNBC tried to blame it on Bush, but a low-flying pelican waylaid the reporter on his way back from substance abuse treatment for sniffing toilet seats, and he suffered amnesia that so far has spread to Hillary, so his story missed deadline and even Rachel Madcow couldn’t blame it on Bush.

　
Finally, our picked historian to settle this matter once and for all – professor Seymour PetRock, Emeritus Valediptorian Schlock of Geothermal Atmospherics for the National Weather Service, when or if they find out about it – told a source at Spencers that the theory of a mushroom-Santa connection is cockaspew.
"How can reindeer fly? I’ll tell you how reindeer can fly: TACOS. A SH**LOAD of TACOS". Professor PetRock contends that once fueled and ignited, Santa’s journey around the planet, making deliveries within a 25 hour time frame, is "a piece of cake, albeit a rather gnarly one".


"If you look at the evidence of Siberian shamanism, hallucinagenics and all that other crap, you’ll decide that a lot of scientists, historians and other academics have too much time and access to meth on their hands" PetRock said.


"People who know about meth use in the lamestream media accept this story," Duck retorted. "Is there any other reason that Santa lives in the North Pole?"


"Yeah", counters PetRock, "Occupy drum beaters last about 2 minutes before the bears arrive".