...on reprints

the bastard doesn't do retreads very often. but i often enjoy this 12 line short story neil gaiman wrote as a christmas card a few years back. i always find it somewhat funny and heart warming every year. i ran it this time last year and i'm running it again. you don't like it? go to hell.

Nicholas Was...

older than sin, and his beard could grow no whiter. He wanted to die.

The dwarfish natives of the Arctic caverns did not speak his language, but conversed in their own, twittering tongue, conducted incomprehensible rituals, when they were not actually working in the factories.

Once every year they forced him, sobbing and protesting, into Endless Night. During the journey he would stand near every child in the world, leave one of the dwarves' invisible gifts by its bedside. The children slept, frozen into time.

He envied Prometheus and Loki, Sisyphus and Judas. His punishment was harsher.

Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

you know, this has been a weird christmas for the bastard. it's the first christmas that i'm not spending any part of it with the boy which is a bummer. but, also it's the first christmas i'm having since things got better. yeah... things got better in the last quarter of this year. maybe i'll tell you about it. maybe i won't. merry christmas chumps

—the bastard