It's once again that special time of year where we share our love via gifting to a randomly determined individual several days after a major holiday. This year, we are honoring the Great Scottish Laird McMercly, who in 1672 led an uprising of automatons in the hopes of generating a gifting delivery mechanism. His motivation for the development of these proto-robots had nothing in common with that of the great Braveheart 328 years previously. This "uprising" was not so much a rebellion against the English, but a slightly annoyed retaliation against the post delivery of the time. The scheme of the era was to tie a box or letter to a sheep and kick it firmly in the direction of your intended recipient.
As a committed sheep lover, and original founder of PETS-MART (People for the Ethical Treatment of Sheeps - McMercly's Archaic Regional Timocracy chapter), this was unacceptable to McLercly. Given a not-small level of mechanical skill developed through years of fixing broken stills, he decided to correct the problem with technology.
In the end, the automatons utterly failed. Scotland is rather hilly, and even today DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) cannot manage to develop a bipedal robot that walks any significant distance on not-smooth terrain. We all knew it was going this way, right. I mean, I didn't see Hugo, but the movie poster makes it clear that even 100 years later you couldn't give a mechanical thing a package and an address and expect success. McLercly may have been visionary (in the "got lucky with something he imagined seeming plausible in some future time), or a futurist (though those types don't ever actually try to make anything), but most likely he was just an absolute lunatic.
He did, however, lay the groundwork for the modern version of Santa Claus, amazingly. That bright red suit was actually an intricate tartan muumuu, a hybridized homage dress celebrating both his home and his passions for volcanoes and surfing, which easily covered the delicate gears and inner workings of the beings from the ever-present mist. The white beard was actually a just a bag for holding the post - the robots had no hands, and strapping it around their head was actually a convenient deposit and receipt height - which was made out of raw wool from the McLercly pastures. The reindeer where actually an innovation used in generation 17 of the prototype, when he finally gave up on autonomous terrain transversal, and he put the robots on sleds and tied the sleds to a few Scottish Red Deer that he had trapped. In other words, he ironically simulated the situation he was trying to correct, changing the species of animal being abused and adding a humanoid-like paperweight with a bag strapped to it's head. A startling shame that McLercly never quite fully grasped.
Because his proto-robots eventually went through 93 different prototype iterations before McLercly finally decided to just have a sip of scotch and go back to fixing stills, and because the other 4 people in his local glen didn't want to offend his commitment or interests by going back to just sheeping their mail (actual root of our term "shipping" due to the regional accent), all packages were simply held onto and did not get delivered for quite some time. All seasonal gifting was delayed, and that year Christmas was, by polite necessity, held several days late.
So, in honor of McMercly, we will be exchanging holiday gifts, in the theme of Santa (and elf), via random selection through technology and automation, and this exchange will occur several days later than the actual holiday. Cheers!
Rules:
You are Santa to one person. This person has made a "wish list" to help you. You are not bound to this list in any way, but it is a useful guide. Gift cards are forbidden (McMercly's time didn't even have a standardized monetary system, and you want to jump to plastic notes of credit to specific vendors? Actually, that's a lot more like McMercly's way, but still - no go). You are required to keep this total gift giving value below $100. The wishlists are here.
You are Elf to another person. These two people are not the same. You may NOT employ this person's wish list to find them a gift; you are required to be creative and/or thoughtful. You must keep the value of this exchange below $20.
The computer has created your selections. Please find them by clicking on the link corresponding to your name below. These are not coded this year (yea for ease!), so be sure to only click on your own name:
Yummy
Rich
Marilyn
Mollie
Lessa
Eric
Courtney
Chris
Happy Holidays and love to all,
Chris
