This year, on Christmas, I improvised a story. It's like last year's, except with different stuff in it.

SPOT VISITS SANTA

a Non-Interactive Learn-U-Tainment Enricher for Children of All Odd-Numbered Ages

Written on Christmas Day, 2009
by James "Kibo" Parry

(Copyright © 2009 James "Kibo" Parry, all rights reserved, you little bastards)

Poor Spot! While visiting Santa Claus, he had forgotten to bring a sweater, and it was chilly near the North Pole!

"Now, Spot," admonished Santa, "Whatever you do, don't put your tongue on the North Pole!"

"Okay," said Spot as he put his paws on it. And his genitals. And his left eyeball. And his priceless collection of wadded-up Kleenex shaped like all the Presidents.

Spot was frozen to the pole, and as usual, Santa was angry with him. "JIMINY CHRISTMAS!" he cursed as he ran off to phone the fire brigade.

Of course, the only thing the firemen knew how to do was to squirt cold water at things, so they hosed Spot down with a thousand gallons of it, and he turned into a giant Popsicle (dog-flavored.)

"I QUIT!" yelled Spot. "I never want to be in another one of these stupid, childish, misspelld stories again! I demand to speak to the Author!"

Everything disappeared expect for Spot, who was now in the center of an empty white space with "Untitled Document 1" floating overhead. The author spoke:

"Who dares question the sophistication of my writing?" A chocolate cream pie hit Spot, making him fall on his butt (where the farts come from.)

"Ow!" squealed Spot, "See, that's the sort of stupid stuff that's too stupid, stupid! Instead of being in stories where I get subjected to infantile abuse, I want to play a serious character! Like, I heard that the guys who write the 'Halo' games have a secret 700-page dossier with all the backstory of that Master Chief guy. And that's just a videogame -- I'm REAL! Do I even have that sort of documentation?"

"Sure you do," said the Author, pulling a tiny scrap of paper out of his pocket. "This is my complete description of your character: 'Likes gum. Is a puppy.' See, you are well-written after all!"

Spot scowled, while chewing his gum. "That's not enough. I want to be the hero of this story. What I mean is, I want super powers. The kind I could use to get my way and win the story! Even Gumby had the power to walk into any book, especially public-domain ones, and he was just ten cents' worth of the sort of old-timey modeling clay kids can't bend. I'm an actual, living dog so I demand powers at least as good as lame Gumby!"

"Spot, I can't give you the power to walk into any book, because that super power is copyrighted by Gumby, and he has super-powerful lawyers -- he can make as many as he wants out of clay. I only own the copyrights to stories I wrote. So, I'll grant you the power to walk into any Spot story."

Spot looked upwards at the part of this story where he had the eyeball ouchie. "No! I don't want to walk into any of my own stories! How about if, instead, I get the power to go into any movie?"

"It's very expensive to buy the rights to movies."

"Well, then, what if we limit it to me interacting with brief clips of stock footage from one particular movie studio, say Twentieth Century Fox?"

The Author winced. "That's 'Muppet Babies'."

"EWW! EWWWW! EWWWWWWWW!" Spot struggled to not vomit as he remembered Baby Kermie, and Baby Piggy, and Baby Gonzo, and Baby Fozzie, and Baby Scooter, and Baby Rowlf, and Baby Statler, and Baby Waldorf, and Baby Sam The American Eagle, and Baby Lu Zealand, and Baby John Denver, and...

"Tell you what, Spot. Because I'm a generous Author -- handsome, too -- I'll buy you the rights to walk into the movies by one director of my choosing. One of his films won an Oscar. Even better, almost all of his movies went straight into the Criterion Collection!"

Spot perked up slightly. "Sounds good, Mr. Author sir! My only question is, who's the director?"

"David Cronenberg." With that, the Author picked up Spot and drop-kicked him towards the "C" shelf of the nearest Blockbuster.

"NOOOOO!" screamed Spot. "This doesn't make any sense, especially since Blockbuster doesn't alphabetize their movies by the last name of the director, even if they're still in business which they probably won't be by the time this story's over! And I don't like David Cronenberg and all his movies about weird-faced guys with eight penises and nine vaginas talking endlessly about the New Flesh during erotic car crashes!"

Spot landed in some sort of science laboratory. He looked around and saw a pair of teleporter pods. "Uh oh! I'm in 'The Fly'! This means that not only will there be an unnecessary sequel, I'm going to encounter the most hideous creature ever imagined, Jeff Goldblum!" Spot was terrified of Jeff Goldblum because not only was he nine feet tall with eyeballs the size of dinner plates, he had somehow survived falling to his death in New Zealand. Spot looked around the lab for a good place to hide.

The telepod doors were open. "Perfect!" yapped Spot, "If I go in there, I'll be completely safe from Jeff Goldblum and his face!" Spot ducked into the nearest pod and waited for the movie to end. To pass the time, he popped a stick of gum into his mouth. Suddenly, the teleporter activated.

(beepbeepbeepbeep)

+++ ANALYZING DNA

+++ SPECIMEN ONE: CANIS FAMILIARIS (STUPID LITTLE PUPPY)

+++ SPECIMEN TWO: PURE CHEWING SATISFACTION

+++ MERGING GUMDOG... GUMDOG... GUMDOG...

(zapppppppppp)

Spot stepped out of the other telepod. "Wow, what a ride!" He felt like a piece of gum. He popped his head into his mouth and began to chew.

He tried to yell "Help, I'm anatomically impossible!" but couldn't because his head was crammed into his oral cavity. He was bright pink and all stretchy and sticky and covered in dog slobber. Spot had turned into cheap bubble gum, the kind dogs like!

Spot thought about his situation, while he tried to pick off some hairs that had gotten stuck to him. He was super-sticky. That meant he had a sort of barely super power. He could fight crime. These would be...

THE ADVENTURES OF

THE WAD

!

"Bang! Bang!" yelled a bank robber who was pretending to have a gun. The cops all ducked because the bullets were invisible, so the cops couldn't be sure he wasn't aiming at them. "You'll never take me alive, coppers!"

Spot slowly oozed down the street after the robber. "I'm about to gum up your plans. Here comes The Wad!" He yelled the magic word, "GLOM!" as he hurled himself at the evildoer.

The robber merely scraped Spot off the bottom of his shoe and kept running.

Spot was crestfallen. (Also, unpleasantly moist.) His super power was more of a ho-hum power, like the backs of Post-It Notes. "If I'm going to fight crime, I'll need help! I should team up with a bunch of other loser superheroes so we can catch criminals while teaching kids about the important of teamwork and respecting people who have lousy handicaps such as being made of pink goo!" With that, Spot oozed off to join the appropriate organization.

"Welcome to The Legion Of Squishy Heroes, Spot," said Gumby. "As you know, I'm Gumby, dammit! I'm made of clay, and I can walk into any book." Gumby pointed to a huge shelf of books, most of which had large grease stains on their covers, especially "Panty Salesman's Privilege". "And these are our fellow team members. This is Mr. Bill..."

"Hellooooo!" shrieked Mr. Bill. "I'm made of common household Play-Doh! And I used to have a little dog named Spot!"

"No relation," said Spot. "Whatever happened to your Spot?"

"Oh, he was hideously crushed and mangled and killed over and over. And every time that happened, I said 'Ohhhh noooooooooo!'"

"That's... nice," said Spot, making a mental note that if he ever saw this other Spot, he would torture him to death for stealing his act. The next superhero introduced himself.

"Hiya, Spot! I'm Plastic Man! I'm one of the world's first superheroes, especially if you only count the openly gay ones! I've got plastic teeth and gums, and plastic legs that reach up to my bum. My powers are stretching, being able to wear any pair of sunglasses -- no matter how large -- and looking fabulous in my lace-up singlet!"

"Onesies are for BABIES," scoffed Spot.

"Waah!" cried Plastic Man. There was no call for that sort of insult, and Plastic Man was already cranky from not having his nap. Spot decided to ignore him from now on and looked at the next superhero, who appeared to be Jon Stewart.

"Hello, Spot. I'm Dr. Reed Richards, star of the incredibly bad 'Fantastic Four' movies, as well as 'Death to Smoochy', which wasn't nearly as bad as the godawful horrible 'Fantastic Four' movies. P.U., those stunk. I hope you asked for your money back, especially after the last movie."

"Well, yeah, the fifth time I saw it I realized it was bad, and I did ask for my money back. But they just laughed and sold me a t-shirt."

The final member of the Legion of Squishy Heroes spoke. "Hello, I'm Elastigirl, from 'The Incredibles', which was just like 'The Fantastic Four' except without all the suck. I was created by Pixar, a company which makes consistently enjoyable movies."

Spot made a mental note to ask the Author if he could visit Pixar movies instead of Cronenberg movies from now on, but of course that would never happen because the Author neither talked to chewing gum nor chewed talking gum. Spot, a.k.a The Wad, would remain trapped in this story until it was over, whenever that might be, and knowing the fickleness of the Author, this story could end at any moment, even after this very sentence!

Or this sentence!

Which was actually a sentence fragment!

So was that!

Or the story could end NOW!

Or NOW!

NOW!

It didn't.

Spot realized that Gumby, Mr. Bill, Plastic Man, Reed Richards, and Elastigirl were all staring at him because he had spaced out. "Well, seeing as I'm a dog made of rubber and mucus, can I fight crime with you guys now?"

"Of course," said the one who looked exactly like Jon Stewart, "but first we have one item of old business to take care of. None of us has a skeleton, so we cannot hold a pen for long enough to write a rent check, and as a result, our headquarters could be demolished at any moment --"

At that moment, a bulldozer demolished their headquarters ("Yay!" yelled Spot) without ending the story ("Rats!" yelled Spot.) All six of the Legion of Squishy Heroes were mashed into one big glob. The bulldozer scraped the glob off its blade and dumped it into the ocean, where it sank to the bottom and remained there for a billion years.

During those billion years, humans evolved bigger and bigger brains, until they had to leave Earth to go live in the fourth dimension (the only place with enough room for their big brains.) The Earth was abandoned and slowly became a green paradise.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the ocean, evolution proceeded at its normal, tedious rate. The blob of mixed superhero mucus evolved into a mass of flatworms, and then roundworms, and then glowworms, and then one of the worms changed into a 53-legged thing that could crawl out of the ocean onto land. The next day, it turned into a pathetic little puppy. "Wow," said Spot, "I've evolved back into myself! I'm completely normal again!"

Spot looked around at the green leafy goodness. There were mango trees and raspberry bushes and fragrant orchids and a host of golden daffodils. But all Spot wanted was a piece of pink gum. He began to cry.

THE END

RETURN TO KIBO'S LIBRARY