Let's Have a (Slim) Christmas Party

Today, I'm kind of double-booked. First, I'm taking part in Briane Pagel's

The Merry Christmas

To All

(e)Book A Day

Traveling Blogathon

(of Doom!)

There will be more of this

in relation to that

Also, today is the release party of

by the guys from A Beer for the Shower, and I'm supposed to be throwing a party for Slim for the release of his new book. I figure the best way to handle all of that is to combine the two events.

So we're gonna have a Christmas party for Slim and his book!
[Now, there are a bunch of rules for throwing this party, but I'm not gonna go through them all here. If you really want to know what they are, you can click this and go read them.]

The first thing you need for a Christmas party, a real Christmas party, is a Santa Claus, so that was the first order of business. I beat the pavement at the malls and shopping centers and found a few down on their luck Salvation Army Santa's that were more interested in the bottle than their collection buckets, if you know what I mean. I even recognized a couple of them from the local shelter where they would stumble into during other parts of the year. I'm pretty sure one of them didn't even work for the Salvation Army and only used his money for booze. I convinced them to show up at the park around noon on Saturday, figuring that at least one of them would make it.

Yeah, the party had to be on a Saturday, because on Saturdays the park is always full of jumpy houses from the birthday parties going on there. There's always at least three and, sometimes, a lot more. I figured with that many parties going on, big family parties and stuff with tons of extended family, that we could mingle amongst them, and no one would know which party we belonged to. Plus there would be plenty of food already laid out, and that would be a big bonus on only a $10.00 budget.

And, then, there's the pool. It's a nice heated pool there at the aquatic center on the other side of the park, not the kind of place that's likely to let in Slim and his homeless friends in any normal circumstance, but I figured I could catch the side gate at some point and block it open and really throw a party that Slim and his friends had never seen before.

It was a perfect plan and one that almost worked out perfectly.
I got not one but two Santa's, both with their Salvation Army buckets in tow. There were four jumpy houses. The people at the parties thought the Santa's were part of someone's celebration, and the kids swarmed them, eager to unload their Christmas lists. Who cared if the Santa's didn't exactly smell the best? And all the kids gave me the chance to unload them of their half full bottles of assorted spirits and their money buckets, not they had much in them, having already splurged on alcohol. Still, I managed to scrape together $6.38 from the two buckets, bringing my party money up to more than $16.00!

Slim and his friends started filtering in, and, sure enough, no one noticed them. At least, not for a while. I suppose the fact that they quickly took advantage of the jumpy houses while the kids were off seeing Santa clued a few of the adults into something being wrong, and I saw little groups of them start to whisper and point and shabby men bouncing around somewhat like fleas or lice. I gotta tell you, though, you're not likely to see a more amusing sight than 20 homeless, inebriated guys bouncing around in a couple of jumpy houses. It was so funny that it delayed anyone making any calls for at least 10 minutes. In fact, it wasn't until little Jimmy started complaining about the smell while he was trying to bounce that one of the parents finally had enough.

At that point, I thought it was time for a swim, so I propped the gate open and announced to the guys that it was time for the hot tub. You will have never seen such a sight as 25 homeless guys charging a swimming pool, half of them getting ready to go in in their own birthday suits and the other half viewing it as wash day. One of the Santa's dumped a lap full of kids onto the ground and started stripping out of his Santa suit. I gotta tell ya, those kids are gonna need some therapy when they grow up.

Slim had never dressed up as Santa before and, seeing the distress of the kids, he gathered up the costume as the buck naked Santa ran for the pool. You know, that Slim is certainly a nice guy to get dressed up as Santa at his very own party, and he sat right down there and started taking requests from kids while trying to tell them about his unfinished novel, Genghis Khan's Mongolian Starship.

But that's when all the trouble started. Not with Slim, with all of his party goers. The people working at the pool didn't appreciate the swarm of homeless, especially since the pool water went from crystal clear to a somewhat soupy mud color fairly quickly. Not to mention the number of naked men and the fact that several of them were hanging their now washed clothes up on the fence to dry. Those guys at the pool called the cops before you could say Jiminy.

I took that as a sign to get out of there, having kept my head by staying away from the punch I spiked with alcohol I liberated from the Santa's. Come to think of it, it was just Slim's friends that were doing the inebriated bounce in the jumpy houses. I suppose the parents just thought their kids had been doing a bit too much jumping and that that explained why they were walking funny and slurring their words.

Most all of Slims friends got arrested and held over night, but they still thought it was a swell party. They got to bounce around, get a heated bath, and get a free meal down at the station. The cops left Slim at the party, thinking he was, in fact, Santa Claus. Before he left, the parents made sure he took his collection bucket with him, which many of them had donated to, especially after he'd sat so patiently listening to all the children. Slim made out even better than I did: $87.42! But that Slim is a bit too generous, and he took the money and dumped in some other Santa's bucket after the police wouldn't let him bail his friends out of jail with it. But Slim had a pretty fine time, too; he told me so.

And now for the gift part, because I'm supposed to give Slim a gift for the release of his gift. So I'm gonna give to Slim the same thing I'm gonna give to you, and this is where it ties back in to the blogathon. Today only, today being Monday, December 17, I'm making "Christmas on the Corner"

FREE! one more time.
But that's not all! Today is also the release of

"Part Eleven: The Kiss" and that's FREE!
And, because I'm such a nice guy and I want you guys and Slim to have such a nice Christmas, I'm making all of these others FREE!, too:
"The Evil That Men Do"
"Part One: The Tunnel"
"Part Two: The Kitchen Table"
"Part Three: The Bedroom"
"Part Four: The Cop"
"Part Five: The Police Car"
"Part Ten: The Broken Window"
and
Charter Shorts!
That's a lot of FREE!

Also, I want to support Brandon and Bryan in their endeavor to get Slim out into the world, I'll give one lucky person that says "I want it!" in the comments a copy of The Sensationally Absurd Life and Times of Slim Dyson. They've been posting chapter segments about Slim on their blog for a while, and it's shaping into a great story, so let me just say, "You want this." And you do. I'm not gonna just gonna pick a random commenter, you have to let me know you want a copy, then I'll use my super secret technology to pick a winner from those of you that let me know you want one. A Kindle copy, that is, that I can email to you.

And, last but not least, my book The House on the Corner is part of a special 12 Days of Christmas give away. You can win a signed, physical copy of the book and read the interview with yours truly over at Into 'da Fiyah. Make sure you stop by and check it out!

So... go grab all the FREE! stuff, and let all your Kindle app bearing friends know about them, too!
Oh, and have a

Merry Christmas!