"Peace on earth, good-will to men." An astute reader noticed the words in a Christmas poem by one "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow," and notified the authorities. They examined pictures of Wadsworth. Long white beard. Thick moustache. No doubt about it. It was Santa. What's more, the man was a dangerous pacifist and an enemy to the State! Why else would he have all those aliases? Santa Claus, St. Nick, Kris Kringle. Word went out and the man immediately arrested. They kept him in a cell, solitarily confined for weeks. He lost lots of weight, but he never told where the elves were. It was decided finally to make an example of him.

They announced the event, to be held Christmas Eve. Everyone was there. Standing room only. Bigger than the Macy's Day Parade. The door to the field opened and Santa was led in. A hush embraced the entire audience of spectators with tension so thick you could cut it with a cookie cutter. They were throwing him to the reindeer! - wild, raging beasts that streamed onto the field through another door. When they saw his cheeks like roses and that red suit, they went berserk, charging towards him in a pack.

Santa may have been a pacifist, but he wasn't stupid. And that black leather belt meant something. It meant Judo. The first reindeer went down in a heap. The second tripped over the first. More rushed in and more crashed to the ground. Soon Santa was knocking them down faster than they could rise again. Downed, Dasher! Downed, Dancer! Downed, Prancer and Vixen! At last the reindeer could take no more and were away in a blitz, flying up out of the stadium, never to be seen again. It was a Christmas miracle! "Ho! Ho! Ho!" Santa's jolly laugh rang through the stadium. The children went wild and swarmed to the fences to tell him their Christmas wishes.

Story #323

A very Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, and a wonderful Holiday Season to all of you. Indeterminacy will be back in the New Year. Postscript: Last year's Christmas story is here.

Note: Persons of a non-English language cultural heritage may not recognize the references in the story to the classic Christmas poem "The Night Before Christmas." You can read the text of the original version here.

The blog is winding down for the year. I'll try to put up a Christmas story or two before going off for the holidays. Then Indeterminacy will be back in the New Year, hopefully new and improved, but probably same as ever.

The siege continued into countless starweeks. It was becoming desperate. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty were locked in the bridge with Uhura, Nurse Chapel and Chekov, cowering in fear of the Alien Cliché roaming the decks of the Enterprise. Cabin fever and delirium had set in. Kirk kept pounding his fist on the console, shouting "This is my ship!" McCoy would blurt out "I'm a doctor, not a mechanic!" seemingly in no connection with anything relevant. Scotty was babbling on about the engines and Spock kept trying to wiggle his ears. Nurse Chapel quivered while Chekov stuttered passages of Tolstoy at her, and Uhuru sang nursery rhymes to Starfleet Command.

This was all preceded by the surprising arrival of the Cliché Alien right in the middle of Kirk's cabin. She had green eyes and olive-green skin, and antennas sprouting from her head. At first Kirk looked forward to some noncommittal kissing and petting, but then she began toning "I love you forever" with her sultry, spaced-out voice. He fled through the ship. Sulu, trying to protect his captain, barred her way, but she threw a kiss, vaporizing him into a green gas which she then inhaled. After 79 episodes of the original series, 178 of The Next Generation, and 98 of Enterprise, not to recall the forgettable Deep Space Nine and Voyager, 348 episodes in all, and ten movies, there were no options left. That's when the officers retreated to the bridge and locked themselves in. The Cliché Alien roamed the decks rattling off dialogue from badly dubbed Bollywood films.

Somewhere the good spirit of Gene Roddenberry observed all this and decided to intervene. He selected two girls from the planet Chaos-IV and beamed them across the galaxy onto the Enterprise. They took up their positions in one of the corridors, biding their time, waiting for the predictable appearance of the Cliché Alien. She approached them, arms outstretched, ready to initiate a tongue kiss. But it didn't come as she expected. In the moment before lips touched lips, the girls whipped out their erasers and rubbed the alien away. In her place stood Sulu, alive again and gracious recipient of their tongue caresses.

Story #322

Original post: This photo for the weekend stories was prompted by Viruswitch's comment, "Beam me up scotty :D." So I dug up the photo that I've had here for a while that always suggested to me a corridor in the Starship Enterprise. So write Star Trek stories, if you can think of any, otherwise write what you can think of. I'll post my story late Monday. Enjoy the weekend. All story contributions have been reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com. P.S. I posted Friday's story rather late, so if you missed it, it's right under this post.

Farmer Brown took loving care of his roosters. Quarters should be comfortable and roomy, food was to be the best, no expense was spared. He even set up an Internet Bar in the coop to entertain his poultry in their spare time.

"Hey, quit crowding!" a group of roosters gawked to their friend Hogwaller who tried to force his way through to the monitor.

"Has he updated yet?" the spurned specimen of roosterhood shot back, his red crown flapping and twisting in excitement.

"We're waiting, too!" one of the feathered cocks answered impatiently.

Hogwaller noticed that his coopmates pecked at the screen every few seconds to effect a reload of the Blog they were trying to get. The monitors, in consideration of the animals' physiology, had been made sensitive to the touch. It was especially fun touching the screen when one of those cool Indeterminacy chick-photos was on display. They all took turns pecking well into the night in a tumultuous congregation around the glowing monitor. And the monitor only seemed to glow brighter and hotter as the night progressed.

A sudden commotion interrupted Hogwaller's reveries over past stories. He perceived a flash on the screen and bits and pieces of excited cock-squawk: "It's up!" - "A story!" - "Lemme see!" - "Whazzit about!" And finally, "Damn! I think he's tapped into our Webcam."

Story #321

- Can you bend?
- I beg your pardon?
- Can you bend?
- I wasn't expecting that. Do you mean like this?
- That will do nicely. Now, think a circular thought.
- A what?
- A thought whose end cycles into the beginning.
- Can you give examples?
- Let's see... The rising and setting of the sun. The cycle of life, from birth to death to rebirth. The heavy breaths of primal exertion. The tides.
- A heartbeat? How's a heartbeat?
- Hmmm, has rhythm, movement, unrelenting. Excellent!
- What now?
- Hold that position. Freeze your thoughts. Engineer! Switch on the psychogram captivator! Bottle the essence! This is it! Our new eau de parfum for the ladies: Male Fantasy™.

Story #320

Dave was a glass-smith. With his talents he created kaleidoscopic glasses of prismatic distortion through which he could see good and evil as distinct entities - in a single subject! He could look at a person and see these opposites, hermetically distinct and conveniently capsulized for easy comparison. It was all in the eyes. The viewer peered through the lenses and into the eyes of the person. One eye held all the malevolence, contempt and hatred that a person had to offer. The other eye reflected the entire goodness in that person's soul. Jekyll and Hyde at a glance. The only trouble with the glasses was that one could never tell which eye was which.

Story #319

The nightmare flooded his consciousness and would not leave him. He recalled the two women lying in the bed, pleasantly waiting, exuding temptation with bodies shrouded in the cool whiteness of linen. "Kiss us, kiss us," they spoke through their veiled mouths. And in the dream he could not resist them. There was nothing unpleasant in their attitudes and in the enticing manner their eyes followed him. Decisively, with both hands, he slid the shroud of the first siren just enough to kiss the mouth beneath. As his lips molded onto its fullness, her lips turned to cold, hard stone. The eyes remained fixed in a glassy stare, and he saw as he looked closer that they were glass, and the head papier-mâché and porcelain. When he tore the entire shroud from her body he saw there was nothing beneath but decaying humus intermingled with twisting worms. The other girl began laughing out loud at his folly, and then he'd awaken.

But he was awake now as he approached the two girls, and that's when he remembered the nightmare. Fighting back misgivings he mounted the foot of the bed, and inched up the furrow between the two breathing bodies. The gentle rising and falling of sheets bore witness to natural physiology. He stared at them a long while, poised between them, unsure of what to do. Would they be real to the touch? His lids grew heavy under the ponderances. It became harder to hold them open. His thoughts drifted. The lids fluttered closed. "Go to sleep," the girls whispered to him. "We'll wait for you."

Story #318

I'll post my story in a few hours after I polish it up. Please have a look over at kirwani.blogspot.com where David Raphael Israel has begun a remarkable foray into the 55 Word Story.

Postscript: The entire set of stories are posted at http://kirwani.blogspot.com/2005/12/thirty-pages.html.

Ralph was a drinker. He drank considerable quantities of alcohol. He measured the extent of his intoxication on the basis of his hallucinations. One drink put the people around him into t-shirts and jogging pants. The second drink had them jogging around as they jiggled into swim trunks and bikinis. After the third drink people started arcing into the air and swimming around at eye level with Ralph. Four drinks and Ralph was swimming right along with them in a 60 proof sea of alcoholic splendor. But not today. They wouldn't have let him through the turnstiles in that kind of condition, due to the danger of spontaneous combustion when the lights switched on. What an idea it had been turning the coliseum into a mass tanning studio!

Story #317

Sad news: Robert Sheckley, America's great science fiction satirist passed away on December 9th, 2005.One of his last stories, "Reborn Again" is shared with us online.

The stories posted here in the comments have all been reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com.

One night while enjoying the warmth of their campfire, Tim and Tony decided to go amphibian and take over the world of the mermaids they knew to thrive in the lagoon. To reign over such minions! To be masters over the realm of Aquarian pleasures! The multi-fathomed lagoon was fed on one side by a torrid waterfall whose long tongues suavely licked it into sublimity. Along crept the boys to the shore side of the pool. The half-human creatures huddled anxiously below the surface, considering their defense against the coming attack. Tony struck the water first. The mermaidens, experts in seduction, decorated him with droplets of lake dew, dissolving him into a girl. As Tim perceived the change an entirely new plan of conquest entered his mind.

Story #316

Note from Indeterminacy: I will be off of blogging until Wednesday evening, due to a two day class I'm holding at work. No time to concentrate on stories.

There have been so many work and family fluctuations recently that it wasn't always possible to prepare a story, which is unfortunately the case today. But I want to share with you a few beautiful places I've found out about:

1) River's Blue Elephants - Stunning poetry
2) Cruel Virgin - Keen observations
3) Viruswitch - There's a glass of wine waiting for you!
4) Young at Heart in San Diego - New blog from a nice gal.

And just to show you I don't only notice the ladies, here are two male bloggers:
5) The Chaotic One - Opinions with soul
6) Hantojin - Euian's remarkable Signus drawings

I will think very hard tonight while I'm sleeping and tomorrow, and hope to have a story by the European evening.