Yuletide Shapeshifter

The Cantaloupe

As I sit down at the computer and try and write the Christmas edition of the Cantaloupe, I can't help but wonder...why is this going to be a Christmas edition? I mean I seem to have missed American Thanksgiving. Oh well, I guess next year is as good as anytime, right?
This is going to be my first issue, since Richard Nixon became President or so it seems. Or at least since he became head of the International Committee for the Extinction of the Chimpanzee. By the way, in case you've been out of the loop, this is real news!
I'd like to ask your forgiveness as providing you with humor should triumph over all other responsibilities and time commitments I may have. Either that or I should train a bunch of kids over in Vietnam to write for me. They'll be cheap and efficient. If they do a good job, maybe I'll give them a slice of bread on top of the nothing I pay them. Although I decided against that, because you all would hate me. The Vietnamese children don't deserve bread...(there now that I've appeased the anti-children folks among you, I can tell you what I really think. I think Vietnamese children are special, maybe even as special as you or me. I didn't want to offend people who believed otherwise.)

(Oh yes, just in case you're wondering why I just said what I did. The people who hate children, and Vietnamese children don't ever read what is written within the context of parenthesis. It's an unwritten rule for them)

Holiday Wish List

Before I go too much further I wanted to talk about a certain medical condition and it's cure. The medical condition is death. There are people who die and this is sad. People should not die.
Another thing that is common knowledge is that people will usually become more generous at Christmas. If there is a cause to do something about people rally around it. Like the time that guy on TV told us about a poor man who was starving and he didn't have a big enough place to live and then the world rallied around him, even small children gave him their only nickel. You see, the man who had nothing now has a gold-plated house to sleep in with five swimming pools. All thanks to your generosity!
Back to the issue at hand. Melissa tells me this idea is really stupid and that's the brilliance of it. Or more probably, the stupidity of it. (You can't spell brilliance without "ill crab" and doesn't the idea of that sound stupid). There are people who have diseases that are not curable. It is not a single organ that must be transplanted or anything. Some people just need a new heart for Christmas or a new liver. We are not talking about those people, although you could donate them a heart or liver out of Christmas spirit. What we need these holidays is for people to recieve a full body transplant.
Let's bring up a hypothetical idea for you. Jack Prickle has a disease called "Chronic Death Syndrome", a disease that has never been cured. He has about three weeks left to live. His family is not a very rich one, his wife and six young children are on the verge of starvation. All because Jack Prickle can't survive. It appears the only present his children will recieve this year is well not a present at all. It's a lack of father.
Now, this is time where you can donate. You can save Jack Prickle and his family. For all that Jack Prickle needs is a full body transplant. What's a full body transplant? Let's explain, a heart transplant involves the removal of the bad heart and the insertion of the new heart. A full body transplant involves removing the bad body and insertion of a new body. That way, everything is healthy again, heart, lungs, brain, face, legs and all.
The difficulty in full body transplants is finding a willing donor. In the case of most organ donations, they are removed from bodies that are dead. When you are to transplant an entire body, that would be useless. So how then should we find donors? Well, you have to ask. At Christmastime you need to consider being generous enough to give up your own body. Think about poor Jack and his family. Wouldn't you rather solve that problem?
Here's what will happen. In the time they have left with Jack they will get memories and attributes from him. Then they will take you and wipe your memory completely clean and insert the memories and attributes they have taken from Frank. Viola! Frank returns and he's completely healthy!
Think about the joy his children will feel when their father comes home for Christmas!

Sally (age 4)- "Daddy, you're home!"
Timmy (age 5)- "You look different"
Radioactive Sludge (age 9)- "Are you a girl?"

Well, okay, it is common practice for full body transplants that you don't change the gender of the transplantee. If there is enough urgency though, you can't be picking and choosing. Frank is going to die, would you rather him be gone forever, or be a girl? That's right, I figured you'd rather him be a girl. As well, it is common practice to keep the ages of the two people as close together as possible and almost always to make the person a little bit younger, but if all you have to transplant for the 45 year old father is a twelve year old girl, you have to do it. Little Nancy heard about Frank's family and she wanted to help. All she had to give was herself, so concessions must be made. Little Nancy is now a high ranking executive at a trampoline manufacturer and a father of six. After our highly trained brain washers get through with her, that's what she'll believe anyways.
Christmas is a fabulous time of giving and you might want to think about making it an extra special Christmas for a family without hope. Give the gift of life, your life.

Any Bodies?

With Christmas around the corner we could talk about many things, the meaning of Christmas, but that's already been done. We could talk about Christmas memories and songs, but I've already done that. What haven't I done?
I don't know what I haven't done, but I could tell you some of the coolest gifts to get your loved one this Christmas. A $2 gift card is always a very thoughtful gift. I mean who can resist those especially to a VW dealer or something?
Sometimes at Christmas it isn't so much the gift, but the thought that counts. Do you love this person enough to save their life? Well maybe you can do it! Just arrange to have some crazed lunatic hold them hostage and then appear to rescue them. That way, they'll have the happy Christmas feeling of knowing there's always a friend there for them. Ditto for driving a car at them and other possibly tragic circumstances.
The beauty of this of course is that even if they find out it was you behind these terrible things, at Christmas they will know it was the thought that counted and they will forgive you and you'll be able to sing "Away in a Manger" as loud and poorly as humanly possible.
Isn't Christmas a great season?

Celebrate the Ball of Cheer

In the spirit of this wonderful holiday (and I actually mean that), I'd like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas free from any of the mayhem I have suggested above.
If you have any questions or comments about what I have written or Christmas in general, feel free to respond.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Trevor YVR Plett

(Remember when I said Christmas was 81 days away? I was wrong. It is only five or longer for some of you maybe who don't get to celebrate Christmas right away. For example, it may be that some of you are attempting to break the world record for the most time between Christmas and when you celebrate Christmas. This is a difficult record to break because if you wait too long, you are simply celebrating an early Christmas. Thus you have to celebrate Christmas sometime between 1:00 p.m on June 25 and 1:00 p.m on June 26. But how to tell if that's a record because maybe the exact middle of 1:00 a.m is the time to celebrate. Does that mean beginning or end? Who knows? I'll let the scholars devoted to such things answer that question)