Beaujolais and Meli Kalikimaka! The Pigdog Journal Fourth Annual Christmas Essay Contest is OVER, and you are MOMENTS AWAY from reading the GRAND PRIZE WINNING ESSAY! Destined (ha ha) to be a holiday classic for years and years and years and years to come!

The results are IN and our panel of expert judges has once again chosen a GRAND-PRIZE winner essay for the Pigdog Journal Christmas Essay Contest! Previous winning essays have helped launch a SPIRITUAL RENEWAL of GOOEY CHRISTMASY GOODNESS in the hearts and minds of Americans and foreigners alike. Because on Christmas, we're ALL Norman Rockwellian chicken-necked google-eyed Midwesterners with a taste for pork products. THIS IS THE PROMISE OF THE HOLIDAYS.

The UPSET winner -- versus a powerful entry from none other than veteran essay contest winner Lenny Tuberose -- is Pigdog Journal's very own EL DESTINO. Mr. D. wrote a FINE ESSAY on the topic,

Hoes! Hoes! Hoes! A Very Pimpin' Christmas

...with a fabulous CELEBRITY TWIST. The judges had a hard time this year -- we had so many mind-altering entries that it was hard to choose -- but after only a few trial-by-combat robot flamethrower duels, they settled on El Destino's entry as the NEW CHAMPION of the Christmas gestalt. (Other essays will be published over the next few days.) Mr. D.'s PRIZES will be awarded the next time I see him, if he's lucky.

Beaujolais and Meli Kalikimaka to you, GENTLE READER! Sit back and read the WINNING ESSAY to your children around a hearth with lots of eggnog and fruitcake -- it's a seasonal treat for the entire family.

-- Mr. Bad - PDJ Sappy Christmas Contest Editor

---

Christmas in Modesto

Through mists of opium I saw Lewis Carroll. He was molesting J.R.R. Tolkein, while William Burroughs watched. They threw a lever, laughing maniacally. And then I was under an orange sky.

"They're going to steal Christmas," whispered Jenna Bush, licking my ear. I looked up to see four goons brandishing weapons. They were all speaking French, calling themselves "Team Neo-Gonzo." One was dressed as an evil clown.

Jenna Bush fired a rocket launcher, a giant orange explosion erupting at their feet. Pebbles zinged through a cloud of black smoke. We heard angry French jibberish. And then we heard metal bouncing across the ground. One of them had tossed a grenade.

"Run!" Jenna shouted.

We crouched breathlessly behind a cement wall.

"I wish I hadn't drunk all those Margaritas," Jenna said unsteadily.

"They make you fearless," I said soothingly.

We were at Lake Tahoe, surrounded by peaceful green pine trees covered with snow. A giant candy cane stood in the yellow glow of a shoe-maker's window. "The last elf," Jenna whispered. We hurried along the cement wall. Grenade after grenade arced upwards into the mysterious orange sky, falling to the ground in explosions of shrapnel and snow.

And then we heard eerie wet footsteps clomping towards us. Across the battle-torn ground came a giant frog, its dark green head remorseless with glassy amphibian eyes. "We call heem Santa Frog!" the Frenchmen taunted. "He weel be breenging you zee Christmas spirit, no?" The frog wielded a giant ball covered with spikes. Jenna launched a hail of grenades. They exploded in rhythmless kabooms, as we ducked into the shoe-maker's cottage.

We stumbled over the corpse of Frank Sinatra, Jr.

They'd broken his spine.

"He was no match for them," the elf was saying sadly. "It was horrible," he whimpered. The elf was sitting perfectly still as we approached, but his frightened eyes gestured to a figure in the corner. Three feet of unadulterated evil had been holding him hostage. The French bastards had manufactured a cybernetic fighting machine shaped like Jon-Benet Ramsey. It resembled the robot from Small Wonder, but angry robot eyes fired red lasers, and sparks shot from its rotating head. Spewing green vomit and fire, it wheeled menacingly towards the door, the elf still babbling a sad story about a mysterious French company that had offered him an elf-sized inflatable women.

But Jenna had heard enough. "EAT FLAMING DEATH," she screamed, hurling a sharp icicle into the robot's torso. The machine spun, frantically trying to dislodge the frozen point, arms waving ineffectually. There was a yellow explosion of sparks and electrical arcs, and screeching horrific metallic sounds as a cloud of blue smoke filled the cabin, the machine's obscene metal frame melted to the cabin floor.

Then, silence. But we were out of ammo now, still surrounded by godless Frenchmen. From outside the cabin came plaintive strains from an Edith Pilaf record. The Frenchmen were joining in.

Je me fous du monde entier Tant qu'l'amour inond'ra mes matins

"We've GOT to save Christmas," Jenna murmured desperately.

"Dans le bleu de toute l'immensit," the Frenchmen sang. "Dans le ciel plus de problmes."

They were taunting us.

Just then a special agent repelled through a hole in the ceiling -- wearing a utility belt crammed with weapons and ammunition. In a black jumpsuit, the silver-haired agent gestured to us to cover the door.

"Hey, aren't you Gary Condit?"

"Cover that door," he pointed frantically to an opening behind me.

"Didn't you dump Chandra Levy in a --"

"There's no time for that, man!" Condit shouted, handing me a sack of fresh grenades as he retracted back through the ceiling.

I pulled the pin on a handful of grenades, then tossed them maliciously into the snow-covered night.

"Stille Nacht, motherfuckers..."

"That's German," said Jenna. I kissed her passionately.

The night was silent. Nothing but the sound of snowflakes and dead Frenchman. Suddenly, the blackness was filled with a mechanical whirring. Dozens of grey metallic figures scurried across the battle-torn snow. The last Frenchman had sicced his armada of Sony robot dogs on us. But something was wrong with his targeting device. It was running the French version of Windows XP -- Le Windeaux XP. "Sacre Bleu!" the Frenchman exclaimed, running around comicly, black beret and ascot flapping in the winter breeze. Flames climbed from the console. The robot dogs were bursting into puffs of fire, yapping in a cackle of sparks.

Furious, the lone surviving Frenchman had heaved a deadly rocket launcher to his shoulder, slowly leveling its muzzle towards Jenna and me. "Oui oui," the Frenchman taunted. "Stille Nacht, ey?" We could see his arm moving towards the firing mechanism.

Then above us came a voice booming over a loudspeaker. From a metal hull, rusted red, came orange jets of rocket exhaust blasting the snow as it descended gracefully with hot gusts of wind. It was Jed Sanders, the legendary Pigdog hillbilly scientist, flying a home-made contraption that he'd built from the hull of a rusted Ford, propelled by home-brewed fusion generators.

Jed laughed maniacally, pointing the deadly rocket sleigh towards the Frenchman's stronghold and firing a shotgun over and over again.

"Ho ho ho! BLAM! Ah ho ho ho ho! BLAM!!!"

The Frenchman collapsed to his knees, chest covered in blood, crying out in French anguish as Jed continued firing.

"I got me some good hootch. BLAM!!!! Ho ho ho ho ho ho! BLAM!!!!!"

Shotgun shells fell to the ground like snowflake corpses, no two alike. And then, a soft plop in the bloody snow. The Frenchmen would bother us no more. Jed Sanders was carrying an over-sized bag on his shoulder -- a gunny sack filled with critters -- and he dumped the varmints over the edge of the flying contraption. Jed had unleashed a rain of red-eyed Sqrats onto the Frenchman's corpse.

"Mon amour crois-tu qu'on s'aime Dieu runit ceux qui s'aiment -- "

And the recording was shut off.

Jed fixed a twinkling eye on Jenna and me, his voice jolly with holiday spirit and moonshine. "You saved Christmas," Jed said warmly. And suddenly, from beyond a hill, we heard the voice of Elvis Presley singing O Tannenbaum in a clear baritone. We could just make out the silhouette of Elvis's high collar amid the December stars.

"Merry Christmas, Elvis," Jed Sanders said.

"Merry Christmas, Jed," Elvis answered.

We listened to the music, reflecting on everything that was good in the world. Like American Spirits cigarettes and pie and hot desert nights and getting drunk. And Jed gave a little speech. About how Christmas comes 'round every year, jes' like a Reno hooker. How it comes without Jim Carrey, or Lord of the Rings light-up goblets, without shopping malls, or even lesbians masturbating with candy canes.

And without dead evergreen trees -- or dead elves.

I closed my eyes and sighed peacefully.

And Lewis Carroll began shaking violently.....

---

"You mean -- it was all a game of Quake?" I murmured. "And my drug-addled brain turned it into an orgy of Christmas-y goodness?"

"You'd had a hard day of ferrying drugs from Sacramento," my incestuous lesbian twin sister Jenna was saying.

"But you were in my dream," I said to her. "And you," I said to Gary Condit. Making a mental note to get out of Modesto as soon as possible before "Santa" molested me in my sleep.

Gary finished paying Jenna and me for our two-way girl/girl trick -- he was into the whole incest thing -- and then scurried furtively out of our humble room in the Modesto Holiday Inn. "These tricks are always alot more fun when we're stoned out of our gourds," I said to Jenna. "But for some reason I took way more than usual, and I had the strangest dream. About frogs, and Frenchmen, and..."

"Rest now, Babs," Jenna was saying soothingly. "I understand." She stroked my cheek affectionately. "And these are two hoes who are going to save some quality time for themselves!"

"It will be the best Christmas ever," I blurted drunkenly, and Jenna looked back lasciviously, a mischievous gleam in her eye.

Tomorrow would be another hard day of humping in hotel rooms. Whether it was Christmas or Valentine's Day, Easter or Thanksgiving, life had become nothing but a drug-filled parade of gawking strangers for Jenna and me.

But we wouldn't have it any other way.

"At this special time of the year," Jenna was cooing sweetly, "we should always remember the true lessons of the holiday season."

"That it takes a lot of drugs to get through a Christmas with your family?" I suggested.

"I'll drink to that!" Jenna answered enthusiastically. We laughed merrily, joking about how every day was a holiday for hookers like us. Jenna poured us both another stiff round of her famous opium, absinthe, and Margarita cocktails.

Dressed in a festive green and red, we saw William Burroughs beginning to laugh again....

maclisp@pigdog.org