'Twas the Night Before Christmas ???
Jack Weinmann (aa855@CLEVELAND.FREENET.EDU)
Mon, 19 Dec 1994 15:08:43 -0500
Fellow Scouters,
I got this from a good friend at NPTN and wanted to share it with you. It
is a verbose version of the well known Christmas poem. Read and enjoy!
>From jmk@nptn.org Mon Dec 19 14:26:11 1994
Subject: Another Christmas Story
To: aa855@cleveland.freenet.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Dec 1994 14:25:58 -0500 (EST)
A Visit From St. Nicholas
by C. Moore
Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual
Yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity
was not in evidence among the possesors of this potential, including the
species of domestic rodent known as Mus Musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-
burning caloric appratus pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric
appellations is the honorific title of Saint Nicholas.
The prepubesent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective
accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations
of variegated friut confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums.
My conjugal partner and I, attired in our noctunal head coverings were
about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the
exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance
that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the
purpose of ascertaining the precise source therof.
Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing
this fenestration. Noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without,
reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline precipation,
might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself. Thus permitting
my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered
conveyence, drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer.
Piloted by a miniscule aged chauffer so ebullient and nimble that
it became instantly apparent to me thathe was indeed our anticipated caller.
With his ungulate motive power traveling at what may have been more
vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vorcified loudly,
expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the
octet by his or her respective cognomen: "Now Dasher, now Dancer", et al.,
Guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through
which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the
32 cloven pedal extremities. As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile
location, and was performing a 180 degree pivot, our distinguished visitant
achieved -- with utmost celerity and via a downward leap -- entry by the way
of the smoke passage.
He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebon residue from
oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof.
His resemblence to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of
assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.
His orbs were scilliant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary
dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability.
The capillaries of his molar regions and nasal protuberance were
engorged with blood which suffused in subcutaneous layers, the former
approxamating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the later that of the
Prunus Avium, or Sweet Cherry.
His amusing sub- and supra-labials resembled nothing so much as a
common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like
small tabular and columnar crystals being.
Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray
fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a
decorative seasonal circlet of holly.
His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly
mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of
impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container.
He was, in short, neither more or less than obese, jocund,
multigenarial gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly
frolicsome despite every effort to refain from so being.
By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his
head to one side he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.
Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the
afore-mentioned hosiery with various of the afore-mentioned articles of
merchandise extracted from his afore-mentioned previously dorsally transported
cloth recepticle.
Upon completion of his task, he executed an abrupt about face, placed
a singular manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactary organ,
inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith
effected his egress by renegotiating, in reverse, the smoke passage.
He propelled himself in short vector onto his conveyence, directed a
musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered
quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hithro
observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed.
But I overheard his parting exclamation, audibly immediatly prior to
his vahiculation beyond the limits of visibility:
"Ecstatic Yuletide to the planetary constituency, and to that
self-same assemblage, my sincerest wishes for a salubriously beneficial and
gratifyingly pleasurable preiod between sunset and dawn!"
---
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