A Crispness Tale

And a Crackling New Year! To help celebrate the birth of our Savour, JeSuis Crisp, please accept these Crispness Wishes from Santa Josephine and the Elvesses here at the Newsletter Narf Pole! Ha Ha! Santa Joseph has asked me to send off this week's bulletin on account of his Royal Fatass is in the studio this week recording his new album (yawn), 'I'm Dreaming of a White-is-the-New-Black Crispness.'

Santa will be laying down some of those funky tracks that many of you have come to love, such as:

' Rudolph the Commie Pinko-Nosed Terrorist Bastard"

'The Jingle Bell Ass Australian Idol Vomit Compilation'

'I Was Bert Newton's Love Elf (and Needed Stitchin')'

'I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus (While Mommy Was Taking Her Happy Medicine)'

'Cold Chestnuts Just Sitting There in the Fake Gas Fireplace.'

(By the way, friends, I suppose I should let you know that SANTA is actually an anagram for SATAN. It's probably nothing - so don't let it interfere with your holiday festivities.)

This newsletter is Part One of our Annual Crispness Card to you.

Part Two is, once again here at the annual SANTA JOSEPH WEBSITE.

Santa Joseph's Personally Revised and Amended Crispness Spam Act 2006 requires that electronic newsletters, Crispness Presents and all Sucky Gifts, contain a functional "unsubscribe" Alarm Buzzer and Smoke Detector to allow people to opt out from receiving messages from that source in the future, or to be able to return lame-ass presents to your ugly relatives, and to even sue the butt off Santa Joseph if he messes up your chimney or carpet while delivering his rocket-science Ikea-like constructions he refers to as 'newsletters'.

This "unsubscribe" facility is clearly marked at the bottom of Santa's mailout, spam, inbox garbage, rubbish, funny business, or whatever he's calling it this week. MAKE SURE YOU SEND THE REMOVE NOTICE FROM THE ADDRESS YOU WANT TO REMOVE, IF YOU HAVE MORE THAN ONE EMAIL ADDRESS. DO NOT SEND A REMOVE NOTICE FROM AN ADDRESS THAT YOU DO NOT WANT TO REMOVE OTHERWISE AN UNWANTED REMOVAL, OR MORE LIKELY, A NON-REMOVAL, WILL OCCUR. AN UNWANTED REMOVAL (HEREIN REFERRED TO AS AN 'IRREMOVAL' MUST BE OVERWRITTEN BY THE ORIGINAL 'MOVAL' THAT WAS INITIALLY RE-MOVED, OTHERWISE, A DIS-MOVAL MAY OCCUR. (This could be especially awkward if there are no toilets near your computer.)

FAVOURITE LETTERS TO SANTA JOSEPH OF THE WEEK

Dear Santa Joseph,
Subject: Your Song: 'The 12 Days of Crispness - Italian Style'
I am a member of a group of 12 teachers, clerks, etc. called the "Elm Street Singers" who enjoy singing together.  We give 2 free-will offering concerts a year.  Since many members of the group are also part of the community theater, I think we would have fun "staging" your song.  What do I need to do to gain permission for that? Peace and Blessing, Kathy

(Note: Dear Little Kathy, most Italians will be 'staging' the '12 Days of Crispness' around their dinner tables without even knowing it on Crispness Day. If anyone wants to hear Santa Joseph's version, go to the SANTA JOSEPH WEBSITE as indicated in the first paragraph - if you can survive the 'Sanity Clause' audio, that is! Ho Ho! HINT: For a truly bizarre listening experience, go past the Santa Joseph homepage to the Italian version of 'Shaddap You Face' which will play on Realplayer - then hit the back button to return the the Home Page, and the 'Sanity Clause' loop will play over the top.!)

Dear Santa Joseph,
Thanks for another crock of bandy-wallop poo. I've got all the time in the world  to wade through miles of cut-and-paste tripe week after week for, if I'm lucky, one chortle (the recipe was this weeks chortle). BTW you should be in bed when Jay Leno comes on. Walter
(True or False. There is a point in New South Wales that is further south than parts of Metropolotan Melbourne.)

(Note: Dear Little Walter, climb up here on Santa Joseph's knee, you little brat and give ol' Santa a big kiss! xxxx. It's Crispness and ol' Santa's in a jovial mood so I won't have you hung on a hook over the holidays for your naughty mouth. True. There is one point in New South Wales further south than Melbourne. Obviously where you come from - and it's called Geelong. By the way, it's Metropolitan, not Metro-polotan. A polotan is what you get when you play polo with no shirt. Boom Boom! Ho Ho!)

Dear Santa Joseph,
My grandma bought your Crispness album when it first came out. Our family loves it and still try to sing the songs to this day. I still have the album but it is in pretty rough shape from all the use. The other problem is that no one in the family has a record player anymore. Merry Crispness and Happy New Year! LRM

(Note: Ho! Ho! Don't you just love it? "My grandma bought your Crispness Album when it first came out . . . ." Am I that ancient? I still feel like a kid - well, most of the time. Maybe I'm still immature mentally. This great email sounds to me like: "Mr. Dolce, we found artifacts of your work still preserved in amber at our archelogical dig in Africa and was wondering if you could verify the carbon dating." Also, LRM, I'm pretty sure they still have a functional record player on the fourth floor at the Museum of Natural History. Tell them Santa Joseph said it was ok for you to borrow it; that I'll leave my skull to them in return. The album that LRM is referring to was called 'Crispness in Australia'. One of the great financial faux-pas of my career - as I paid for it myself. $120 Large - in 1980 money. Probably equivilant to a house in Carlton today. I sold maybe 100 copies? There is a story too complex to go into here but in summary: I hired a slick producer from LA who promised to get Woody Allen on clarinet, Joe Cocker on vocals and a host of his other 'musical' friends to help out. Naturally, for a big production advance out front. Who we ended up with was Mary Wells, ex-Supremes, who happened to be in Melbourne during the recording and came in to do 'Jingle Bell Rock' with me. Oh yeah, and Joey Perrone, from Young Talent Time, who was twelve years old at the time. After the little kid went home, my LA producer and I would spend night after night in all-night recording sessions, snorting lines of coke, with empty bottles of whisky strewn about to help us get through take after-take-after-endless-take of classics like 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,' sung in broken English. I paid for twelve 2-inch multitrack master tapes at $250 a pop to perserve this masterpiece. And just to be sure they didn't get lost or damaged, we made twelve MORE as back-up safety copies! Not one of them remains today. Nor does even a stereo master tape of the album. It only exists on vinyl somewhere out there in the aethers. I only have two copies left myself. And one cassette copy. (Cassettes - another forgotten artifact from bygone days.) Now the really strange thing is this: if I had to do it all over again, and spend the money again, to get what I got - I would still do it. Why?

(Let me digress here for a moment . . . . I have quite a few friends with beautiful children they adore who are no longer with the partner they had their kids with. They talk poorly of that person. Can't believe they could have been so stupid, etc .. I ask them that, well, if they could go back in time and avoid that relationship - but also have to give up having the children they had with that person - would they do it? Not a single person I have ever suggested this to has ever said Yes. In other words, the Prize was WORTH the Price. So . . . back to the Crispness Album . . .)

One of the side benefits of making this crazy album was that I was persuaded to bring in an arranger from Canada, named Chris Dedrick, to orchestrate the strings, brass and choir. Chris was a gifted film score composer and part of a way-out-there experimental twenty member a capella vocal group called The Starscape Singers who lived on a commune in Canada and who only left to do these kind of commerical projects now and then to make some money to give back to the commune. But Chris grasped the serious side of my music, my potential, like no one else, straight away and told me that I should go back with him and live on the commune, that I had an extraordinary musical gift and could develop it there. Watching him work day after day, and with his encouragement, the seeds were planted in me that I could learn to compose seriously and orchestrate. A couple of years later, I discovered the music of Johan Sebastian Bach in a BIG WAY and self-taught myself orchestration and theory. (Bach was self-taught too - so it's ok to do it that way, all you music students out there.) That led to my first full Oratorio, 'Joan on Fire,' performed twice by the Melbourne Chamber Orchestra and the Chorelation Choir at the old Baptist Church on Collins St. I started getting film score work. More importantly, my song writing started improving in quantum leaps. JS Bach - and Chris Dedrick - changed my musical imagination, in those years, much in the same way that Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles did in the 70s. So would I trade the Crispness Album in for the $120 K, if possibly I might also miss the Bach? No way! I look at it like this: that was what it cost for my higher education in Music School. So Mary's Crispness to you, LRM! I hope you find a new copy of that friggin' Crispness Album on eBay and someone puts a record player under your tree.)

Crispness Music No 1
OH HOLY NIGHT!
(Sung as you may never wish to hear it again!)

FREE BETTY BOWER GIFT TAGS
(America's Greatest Christian Woman)
GIFT TAGS

A Lawyer's Crispness Donation

The United Way realized that it had never received a Crispness donation from the city's most successful lawyer.

So a United Way volunteer paid the lawyer a visit in his lavish office.

 The volunteer opened the meeting by saying, "Merry Crispness, Counsel. Our research shows that even though your annual income is over two million dollars, you don't give a penny to charity. Wouldn't you like to give something back to your community this holiday through the United Way?"

The lawyer thinks for a minute and says, "First, did your research also show you that my mother is dying after a long, painful illness and she has huge medical bills that are far beyond her ability to pay?"

Embarrassed, the United Way rep mumbles, "Uh... no, I didn't know that."

"Secondly," says the lawyer, "my brother, a disabled veteran, is blind and confined to a wheelchair and is unable to support his wife and six children."

 The stricken United Way rep begins to stammer an apology, but is cut off again.

 "Thirdly, did your research also show you that my sister's husband died in dreadful car accident, leaving her penniless with a mortgage and three children, one of whom is disabled and another that has learning disabilities requiring a huge array of private tutors?"

 The humiliated United Way rep, completely beaten, says, "I'm so sorry, I had no idea."

And the lawyer says, "So . . . if I didn't give any money to them, what makes you think I'd give any to you?"
(Adapted from Elf Bill Lempke)

Christmas is Weird

What other time of the year do you sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy out of your socks?
(thanks to elf Ramon Sender)

Favourite Crispness Porn Spam

From: "The North Pole" Subject: People are Sick of Your Candy Cane
Our program can add up to five inches.

The Fifteen Shopping Days Before Crispness Letter of Complaint

Dear Mrs. Claus,
Our store is considering banning your husband from future Crispness appearances with us again unless he stops his antics in the store. Below is a list of offences over the past month, all verified by our surveillance cameras:

December 10: Took 24 boxes of candy cane flavoured condoms and randomly put them in people's carts when they weren't looking.
December 11: Set all the alarm clocks in house wares to go off at 5-minute intervals.
December 12: Made a trail of tomato juice on the floor leading to the ladies' restroom.
December 13: Walked up to an employee and told her in an official tone, "Code 3 in the Toy Department".
December 14: Went to the service desk and asked to put a bag of M&M's on lay away.
December 15: Moved a "CAUTION - WET FLOOR" sign to the carpeted Santa appearance area.
December 16: Set up a tent in the camping department and told the children he'd invite them in if they'd bring pillows from the bedding department.
December 17: When our clerks ask whether they can help him, he begins to cry and asks, "Why can't you fucking elves just leave me alone?"
December 18: Looked right into the security camera, used it as a mirror, and picked his nose.
December 19: While handling guns in the hunting department, in his Santa suit, asked the clerk if he knew where the anti-depressants were.
December 20: Darted around the store suspiciously, loudly humming the "Mission Impossible" theme.
December 21: In the auto department practiced his "Madonna look" using different sized funnels.
December 22: Hid in a clothing rack and when people browsed through, yelled, "PICK ME! PICK ME!"
December 23: When an announcement comes over the loud speaker, he assumes the foetal position and screams, "NO! NO! It's those voices again!!!!"
December 24: Went into a fitting room, shut the door, and waited a while; then yelled very loudly, "There is no toilet paper in here!"
(Adapted from Elf helper, Dai Woosnam)

Crispness Music No 2
THE LAST TRUMPET!
(Gabriel has definitely left the building.)

Howe: The Eleventh Reindeer

You may recall that last year we told you the story of the long forgotten tenth reindeer, Olive, who had been exploited by the pack, receiving no official credit in the well-know reindeer songs. To refresh your memory, according to the song, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", Santa had only nine reindeer. "There's Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen..." That made eight. Then, of course, Rudolph, so that made nine. But last year we found Olive. ie. " Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names..." Ten.
Well, this year, an eleventh gay male reindeer, named Howe, was spotted, trying to mount one of the other males. "Then Howe, the reindeer, loved him..." (For my mate, Alan. He knows who he is. I have photos.)

'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual Crispness celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebrums. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal head coverings, were about to take slumberous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous 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 thereof.

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 precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself - thus permitting my incredulous optical sensory organs to behold a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by eight diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a minuscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his ungulate motive power travelling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated 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 way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebony residue from oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance 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 scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his malar regions and nasal appurtenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supralabials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsute facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose grey 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 nor less than an obese, jocund, multigenarian gnome, the optical perception of whom rendered me visibly frolicsome despite every effort to refrain from so being. By rapidly lowering and then elevating one eyelid and rotating his head slightly to one side, he indicated that trepidation on my part was groundless.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned appended hosiery with various of the aforementioned articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith effected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, 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 hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation 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 period between sunset and dawn."

Crispness Factozoid 1:

World's Top Santa
Japan's Santa was named 'Santa of the Year' in an international Santa Clause contest in northern Sweden. Hiroshimi Suzuki was one of the 10 'Ho ho ho' - ers, including an Australian, in the contest held for the fourth year in Gallivare, 100km above the Arctic Circle. The competing Santas took on chimney-climbing, porridge-eating, kick-sledding and reindeer racing. The chimney event entailed climbing a high ladder against a roof and waving and tip-toeing across a stage to put a gift under a Crispness Tree.

Crispness Music No 3
SLEIGH RIDE FROM HELL!
(Music to slam a sled into a tree by.)

Crispness Tongue Twisters
How many deer would a reindeer reign if a reindeer could reign deer?
Santa's sacks sag slightly scraping salty sidewalks.
Santa stuffs Stephanie's striped stocking with his succulent silverside.
Silly smelly Sam Snowman slips & slides like soap down slopes sloppily sucking Santa's salami .
Winter whacks with a whistley wind West Wing Washington wankers.
Santa seems seriously sick since Sally served sour salmon soup to that smiling sack of shite.

Crispness Factozoid 2

Mistletoe and Holly

Two hundred years before the birth of JeSuis Crisp, the Celtic Droids used mistletoe to celebrate the coming of winter. They would gather this evergreen plant that is parasitic upon other trees and used it to decorate their homes. They believed the plant had special healing powers for everything from female infertility to poison ingestion. Scandinavians also thought of mistletoe as a plant of peace and harmony. They associated mistletoe with their goddess of love, Frigga. The custom of kissing under the mistletoe probably derived from this belief. The early church banned the use of mistletoe in Crispness celebrations because of its pagan origins. Instead, church fathers suggested the use of holly as an appropriate substitute for Crispness greenery.

(Note: Frigga, the Goddess of Love! Oh man!)

St John and St Peter Story

St John Howard called St Peter Costello into his office one day and said, "St Peter, my boy, I have a great idea!  We are going to go all out over the Crispness break to win the country voters."

"Good idea, PM, how will we go about it?" said St Peter Costello.

"Well," said St John Howard, "we'll get ourselves one of those Driza Bone coats, some RM Williams boots, a stick and an Akubra hat, a bag full of mince pies, a couple of fake Santa beards, and a Blue Heeler Cattle dog.  Then we'll really look the part.  We'll go to a typical old outback country pub, we'll show them that we're really at home there."
      
"Right, PM," said St Peter Costello.

On the day before Crispness, all kitted out and with the requisite Blue Heeler, they set off from Canberra in a westerly direction.  Eventually they arrived at just the place they were looking for and found a typical outback pub.  Walked in with the dog and up to the bar.

"G'day mate," said St John Howard, to the bartender, " Merry Crispness, and two middies of your best beer."

"Good afternoon, and Merry Crispness to you, yer Saintship," said the bartender, "two middies of our best coming up".

St John Howard and St Peter Costello stood leaning on the bar drinking their beer and chatting, nodding now and again to those who came into the bar for a drink.
 
The dog lay quietly at their feet.  All of a sudden, the door from the adjacent bar opened and in came a grizzled old stockman, complete with stockwhip.  He walked up to the Cattle dog, lifted it's tail with the whip and looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the other bar.

A few moments later, in came another old stockman with his whip. He walked up to the dog, lifted it's tail, looked underneath, scratched his head and went back to the other bar. 

Two minutes later, in staggered the local town Santa Claus, royally pissed, with a big sack of gifts over his arm. He walked up to the dog, lifted it's tail, looked underneath, scratched his white beard and walked out.  Over the course of the next hour or so, another four or five stockmen, assorted transexuals, women drovers, Tamworth country and western singers, the Chinese cook from the kitchen, and a Mother Pauline Hanson supporter, came in, lifted the dog's tail and went away looking puzzled.

Eventually, St John Howard and St Peter Costello could stand it no longer and called the Barman over.

"Tell me my good man," said St John Howard, " I can understand the Mother Pauline Hanson supporter, but why did all those old stockmen come in and look under the dog's tail like that?  Is it an old outback custom?"

"Strewth no!" said the barman.  "It's just that someone went out and told them that there was a cattle dog in this bar with two arseholes!"
(Adapted from Elf Doug Ashdown.)

Right After Election Time . . . .

Right after Election time, as Crispness was approaching, I passed an older gentleman in his yard and noticed he had several signs, each proclaiming support for a different political candidate. "I guess you couldn't make up your mind," I said to him.
"That's not it," he smiled. "My grass was looking a little brown, so I thought I'd put in some fertilizer sticks.
(thanks to elf Ramon Sender)

FAVOURITE CRISPNESS CAROL SONG TITLE

"I Still Haven't Forgiven Jesus For Stretching Out Last Crispness's Lovely Elie Tahari Paulo Sweater By Allowing The Entire Trinity To Try It On All At Once."

More Crispness Carols for the Challenged

1. Schizophrenia
'Do You Hear What I Hear?'

2. Multiple Personality Disorder
'We Three Kings Disoriented Are'

3. Dementia
'I Think I'll be Home for Christmas'

4. Narcissism
'Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me'

5. Manic Depression
'Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and then sit in the corner and cry.'

6. Paranoia
'Santa Claus is Coming to Town to Get Me'

7. Borderline Personality Disorder
'Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire'

8. Personality Disorder
'You Better Watch Out, I'm Gonna Cry, I'm Gonna Pout, Maybe I'll Tell You Why'

9. Attention Deficit Disorder
'Silent night, Holy - oooh look at the froggy - can I have a chocolate, why is France so far away?'

10. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
'Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle 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(thanks to Elf Marcus Whitaker)

Crispness Factozoid 3

Crispogram

A Crispogram is a monogram or combination of letters which forms an abbreviation for the name of JeSuis Crisp, and is traditionally used as a Crispian symbol. The most commonly encountered Crispogram in English-speaking countries in modern times is the K in the abbreviation Kmas (for "Crispness"), which represents a misspelling of first letter of the word Crisp.

In the Latin-speaking Crispianity of medieval Western Europe (and so among Ca-Foul-ics and many Prostate-nts today), the most common Crispogram is "IHS" or "IHC", derived from the first three letters of the Greek name of JeSuis, iota-eta-sigma or IHS. Here the Greek letter eta was transliterated as the letter H in the Latin-speaking West (Greek eta and Latin-alphabet H had the same visual appearance and shared a common historical origin), while the Greek letter sigma was either transliterated as the Latin letter C (due to the visually-similar form of the lunate sigma), or as Latin S (since these letters of the two alphabets wrote the same sound). (Yeah Yeah, yada yada yada. Cut to the chase already!) Because the Latin-alphabet letters I and J were not systematically distinguished until the 17th-century, "JHS" and "JHC" are equivalent to "IHS" and "IHC".

"IHS" is sometimes interpreted as meaning IeSuis Hominum Salvator ("JeSuis, Savour of Menses", in Latin), or connected with In Hoc Signo. Some uses have even been created for the English language, where "IHS" is interpreted as an abbreviation of "I Have Suffered (Fools)". Such interpretations are known as backronyms.

(Note: Yeah, Backronym Good Ol' Days! Boom boom!)

21 Things You Can Only Get Away With Saying at Crispness
1. I prefer breasts to legs
2. Tying the legs together keeps the inside moist.
3. Smother the butter all over the breasts!
4. If I don't undo my trousers, I'll burst!
5. I've never seen a better spread!
6. I'm in the mood for a little dark meat.
7. Are you ready for seconds yet?
8. It's a little dry; do you still want to eat it?
9. Just wait your turn, you'll get some!
10. Don't play with your meat.
11. Stuff it up between the legs as far as it will go.
12. Do you think you'll be able to handle all these people at once?
13. I didn't expect everyone to come at the same time!
14. You still have a little bit on your chin.
15. How long will it take after you put it in?
16. You'll know it's ready when it pops up.
17. Just pull the end and wait for the bang.
18. That's the biggest bird I've ever had!
19. I'm so full, I've been gobbling nuts all morning
20. Wow, I didn't think I could handle all that and still want more!
21. I do like a good stuffing.
(thanks to elf Philip Walker)

A Crispness Tale

There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job it was to
process all the mail that had illegible addresses. One day just before
Crispness, a letter landed on his desk, simply addressed in shaky
handwriting to "JeSuis Crisp".

With no other clue on the envelope, he opened the letter and read:
"Dear JeSuis, I am an 83 year old widow living on the State pension.
Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had £100 in it, which was all the
money I had in the world and no pension due until after Crispness. Next
week is Crispness and I had invited two of my friends over for Kmas
dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with. I have no
family to turn to, and you are my only hope. JeSuis; can you please help
me?"

The postal worker was really touched, and put a copy of the letter up on
the Staff Notice board, at the main sorting office where he worked. The
letter touched the other postmen and they all dug into their pockets and
had a whip round. Between them they raised £96. Using an official
franked Post Office envelope, they sent the cash on to the old lady, and
for the rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of
the nice thing they had done. Crispness came and went.

A few days later, another letter simply addressed to "JeSuis Crisp" landed in the
Sorting Office. Many of the postmen gathered around while the letter was
opened. It read: "Dear JeSuis, How can I ever thank you enough for what you
did for me? Because of your generosity, I was able to provide a lovely
dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day, and I told my friends of
your wonderful gift - in fact we haven't gotten over it and our Vicar is
beside himself with joy. By the way, there was £4 missing. I think it
must have been those thieving bastards at the Post Office." (adapted from
Elf helper, Geoff Newson and Elf First Class Dai Woosnam)