What is Christmas Eve Eve with Santa Claus his wife Jane 23 missing elves and WikiAnswers all about?

Answer 1

Christmas Eve EvewithSanta Claus, his wife, Jane, 23 Missing Elves and WikiAnswers 'Twas the night before the night before Christmas and all through the shop not a creature was working, not even the 23 elves who should have been at their worktables making toys. That was Santa Claus's problem. And now it's yours. He had to find them since his departure time was coming up fast, but he needs your help. The elves are hiding somewhere in this story and you have to find them. Elves are pretty good at hiding. You will be able to see some of them, but you will only be able to "hear" the rest. Listen for them carefully as you read this and help Santa get them back to work. The missing elves you must find are: An8thg, Amlove32, Brave3, Catpaw01, Crystal, Deb, Delltechie, Eviltechie, Gray and Grumpy, Hoowestik, Jadeacres, JoyceP, Katz2, PeterC14, Marcy, Martinel, Plumbing Guru, Robin, RoibeairdWA, Takamo, Wikiwriter, Zanbabe and Zandkey. (Caution: The elves are listed at the end in the order of appearance, so if you want to keep looking with no help don't read the final credits.) It was Christmas Eve eve and Santa Claus was taking care of some last minute details. He went to the workshop to see how the elves were coming along with the toys. He was surprised to see a note on the door: "Be back in 3 hours. Maybe more" He shook his head in disbelief. It's Christmas Eve eve and they're taking a three-hour break without permission? Two hours was pretty brave. Three is foolhardy. They're lucky they even have jobs in this economy. He walked to their break room and passed a workbench that had a three-legged Siamese kitten on it. Next to it was a memo to the Parts Department. 'Order one Siamese cat paw." "Oh, wonderful," he thought. The elf didn't order the whole leg. He pictured some kid with a toy kitten that wouldn't stop tipping over. He couldn't go looking for them now because he had to go to the IT department to see Inge, the person who mapped out his route, and find out how his itinerary was coming along. Like most people, Santa was afraid of the IT people mostly because they spoke in a language he couldn't understand. And the Department head was the worst. Dealing with her, you'd think she owned the place, but he had to put up with her, because computers made him crazy and key-boards were beyond his motor skills. Walking through the department, Santa noticed Inge was the only one there. He passed the IT department head's desk and read the nameplate: Adele: Techie With An Attitude. You got that right, he thought. The missing elves had him upset, but he was glad to see the ITs out of the way. When he got to Inge's station he saw that she wasn't doing the routes. She was on some site called WikiAnswers. "What are you doing?," he asked. "You're supposed to be doing my routes." "Lighten up, I'm a WikiAnswers Community Assistant too and right now we're having a crisis. We're getting inundated with questions about you and it's overloading the system. Every question about Christmas was going into our new "Christmas" category, but it couldn't handle the load and it just crashed. We have a lot of Supervisors working trying to hold things together. It's unreal how many questions are pouring in. You'd think WA is running some kind of 'Ask one question, get two contribution points' special." "Excuse me, but I pay you to do the routes", said Santa. "Excuse me, but WikiAnswers pays me more." she answered. "I know it's Christmas Eve eve, but I still have to take care of this." "So is this what you've been doing all night? Writing answers to questions about my ETA?" "And re-cats, too." "What are Re-cats?" "The way Wiki works is people ask questions, which go into different categories and tonight everything was going into "Christmas'. Half the kids celebrating Christmas in the world are asking how far away are you and how long will it take you to get to their homes from the North Pole." "Only half?" Santa asked. "I'll explain that later. Anyway, I've been re-categorizing those questions into 'Distance and Travel Time.' I even had to make a catch-all question called "This information is classified." and I've been merging like crazy ever since. Then right in the middle of all those travel questions, someone makes a thread in the Supervisor's Forum and says, 'Before you ask how long it takes for Santa Claus to get somewhere, you have to ask 'Does Santa Claus really exist?' As soon as that was posted, things really went wild. In fact, that thread got so contentious; the WA IT people had to lock it down. Now there's a big fight going on in the Forum about re-opening it." "They locked down a discussion about me? On Christmas Eve eve? Those evil tekkies again. There's no end to the mischief they can do." Still he was so thrilled that there was so much attention in cyberspace about him he couldn't hide his excitement. "So there's all these people all over the world who want to talk about me? Wow that's great." "If I were you, I wouldn't rejoice, pea-brain. Most of the people in that Forum don't even think you exist. Even the polls in the Community Forum have your existence rating among the under 15 year olds at barely 50%. Remember, before when I said only half the kids were asking those questions? WA thinks even those numbers are unreliable. We found out that there are a lot of moms out there using assumed names or just IP addresses trying to convince the kids that you do exist." "That's ridiculous." Santa argued. "I'm sure those usernames are real kids." "No they aren't. Some IP addresses have been traced to existing user names for kids already signed up with WA, but the questions are being asked with proper capitalization, full spelling of words and not a single LOL or ROFLMAO, or BFF. Don't tell me they aren't adults. And that's not all. Our Vandal Patrol noticed a pattern of almost identical contributions from a number of IPs. They traced several IPs to a number of toy and computer game makers." "Really? How can they tell that?" "They keep putting their websites in the related links section. That's a dead giveaway. Those vandals think we can't spot them, but they better beware, because we can. The Vandal Patrol force might be overworked tonight, but they're holding on. We have Site Guardians monitoring all new questions coming in. Even the Generalists volunteered to help. We just have to stop these new questions from coming in so our Site Investigators and Alternate Specialists can get to work cleaning up the questions that already slipped by before we knew what was going on. You wouldn't believe how many questions are either misspelled or with bad grammar. "What are you talking about? A question is a question. So what if they're worded a little differently?" "Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how many ways they can find to spell Christmas? Almost every new spelling adds another question that has to be merged. Here's another problem we have. Look at this nut's question.: "If Santa Claus is Kris Kringle, is Mrs. Claus Kristle Kringle? What kind of idiot could even think of a question like that? We don't put up with vandalism like that." "Seems like just some harmless non-sense to me," he said. Inge just rolled her eyes. "I'll do the re-catting here, thank you. This one goes into 'Riddles'." "Hey, if it's a riddle, I know the answer," he began, "actually her name is…" "Not now, OK? Things are really crazy right now. These kids just keep asking the same question over and over every five minutes 'Is he here yet. Is he here yet?' Our catch-all expert made a catch-all question for them called 'No, and if you ask again he won't come.' Normally we would block person from asking the same questions again and again, but WA disabled our blocking powers because it's Christmas. Right now all we can do is warn them and that makes it tough on the Vandal Patrol. Normally they knock out at least three-quarters of those vandals, but with the volume tonight they'll be lucky to get an eighth. Gee, they're in for a long night, but they always get their vandals" "OK", he said, "but what about the routes? When are you going to finish them?" "Relax. I'll do it on Map Quest later. It'll take me ten minutes. Now go. I have my WA addiction to take care of." "Did you say 'addiction'?" "No, I said "responsibility". "No, you said 'addiction'. Besides, if you don't finish the routes, I'll be in a real sticky wicket.". "Sorry, I'm sticking with WIKI, right or wrong." "So you're a WIKI sticker?" "And with the badge to prove it, too. Now, if you keep interrupting me, I might just have you evading anti-sleigh missiles over Russia. Do I have to tell you what Rudolph looks like on an infrared radar screen? Hmmm?" "You can't scare me with that." Santa said, "They'll know it's not a threat, because that's an attack a moron wouldn't even make." "Well, there you have me." Inge said. "Making you look like a moron might be easy, but it is the one way to make sure everyone knows it's you up there." Santa was fuming, but could do nothing about it. He knew what Inge was capable of when she put her mind to it. He still remembers that one year she almost got him mugged in Grammarcy Park in New York. He was the Boss, but he realized she wasn't going to change her mind. "OK, OK, but where is everyone?" Santa asked. "Where's who?" Santa started to rattle off the names of the missing elves. Inge looked nervous. "Umm, I uhh have no idea," she said. Santa got the feeling she was hiding something. Inge needed to get rid of him fast before he started asking a lot of questions. "All right," she said, "one last time. If you don't go away now, I'm re-catting you into Urban Legends." "You know", said Santa, "between the elves, the IT people and you, it's no wonder I'm so gray." "And grumpy." she said under her breath. "What was that?, Santa asked. "What was what?" "What you just said?" "When?" "You should be a little more respectful. This job is a real plum, Inge. Rumor has it that some of the elves want this job and you might want to think about that before you give me another smart aleck answer." He left, muttering to himself, "She always acts like she's some kind of debutante." Inge said to herself, "I bet he wasn't very smart in elementary school either." Santa went back to the shop to see if the elves were back. There was only one elf in the back in the Teen-Ager section, feet up on the table, snacking on a boiled egg and reading something called 'The WikiAnswers Newsletter.' Something was strange though, because he didn't recognize this elf. None of them had ears like his, but he had no time to waste. "Why are you just sitting there? Santa demanded. "This worktable is assigned to making the caps for the cap-guns and I don't see any done yet." "Sorry, doc, no caps this year. Our ITs got a memo from an IT guy from WikiAnswers, saying that guns were not allowed on WA. So our IT guys decided they shouldn't be allowed here either. We can't make the gunpowder without all the ingredients because they cancelled the order for saltpeter. See, for teen age kids it's just not right. By the way, I'm the union elf. We had a meeting about their schedules and they all want more days off or they all go on strike. Every one." "Oh really? I don't think so", Santa laughed and said, "I know of several elves that will never walk out with you." "Oh? Who? We stick together here, "he said, "More days off or we walk." Santa had no choice with time running out. Just then a muffled voice yelled out, "And we want Christmas Eve off, too." Santa and the elf both rolled their eyes at that one. Christmas Eve was out of the question. Even though they couldn't see anyone else in the shop, they knew who said it. "Is he under the worktable already?" Santa asked. "Yeah", said the elf, "They can't do anything with him. With Roy, beer doesn't agree with him by this time of the day." "The problem is that he agrees with beer too much." said Santa. "Besides I thought his name was Rob in here." "Rob, Roy, what's the difference? Even he can't pronounce his name. You know, he doesn't really look like any of the other elves here and he just doesn't seem to fit in with them." "Well, that's because he isn't really an elf." Santa said. "Actually he is a leprechaun that someone left in my sleigh on a stop-over in Ireland one year. We had no choice but to keep him." "Why didn't you just take him back the next year?" the elf asked. "How would I find the right place? I'd have to check thousands of cottages spread over thousands and thousands of jade acres." "Emerald acres, doc, emerald acres. It's the Emerald Isle, not the Jade Isle." "OK," Santa sighed," what will it take to get them back?" Eventually Santa gave them another 30 vacation days plus 2 more major holidays. Early the next day they were back to work looking exhausted, which was odd, Santa thought, because they had had several hours doing nothing on their break. But they did finish everything in time and Santa successfully made his rounds. Well, not everything. There was this toy kitten that kept tipping over. After Christmas Day, Santa and the Mrs. were on a flight to the Caribbean for their usual warm-weather vacation talking about the past few days. Mrs. Claus asked her husband, "I hope you're not angry with the elves for leaving the work room for a few hours. After all, they did get everything done in time." "I suppose not," he said, "actually, they're a remarkable bunch of workers. Did you know that every one of them is some kind of Supervisor or something on this WikiAnswers thing? They just pretended to be in a union meeting so they could help with that crisis. They were all on their laptops catching vandals, merging and re-catting questions all night. And all the ITs are supervisors too. Now I know why the elves looked so tired when they got back to work. By the way, I bet you wouldn't believe how many ways there are to misspell Christmas" "Actually I do. We Alternate Specialists see all sorts of misspellings," she said with a wink. "By the way, you're not upset about the number of extra days off you had to give the elves, are you, dear?" "Yes, I am, love. Thirty-two is way too many." he replied. "Especially since that weird union elf with the big ears really tricked me into it. Something still bugs me about him and the way he bounded out of the shop after we made the agreement. It just seemed like he had something to hide." "Well, don't think about business. You know how much I look forward to getting away and just being by ourselves." So, another Christmas was in the books. The elves had saved Christmas and WikiAnswers too. And not only did Santa prove that he was for real, but Mrs. Claus showed that she had a bit of a wild side. At their hotel, Santa was lying in the bed watching 'A Christmas Carol', when Mrs. Claus came out of the bathroom dressed only in a leopard skin negligee, and leapt onto her husband shouting: "Me, Jane. You, Tarzan, babe." THE CAST of CHARACTERS The missing Elves were played by: (in order of non-appearance) Brave3 Catpaw01 Zandkey Delltechie Katz2 Eviltechie JoyceP Crystal An8thg Wikiwriter Takamo Marcy Gray and Grumpy Plumbing Guru Deb Martinel PeterC14 Hoowestik * (see below) Jadeacres Robin Amlove32 Zanbabe The leprechaun was played by: *RoibeairdWA Santa and Jane Claus were played by : Themselves Inge was played by Special Guest Star: Mary M. Q. Contrary The union elf was played by Special Mystery Guest Star: T.E. Bunny