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SANTA F*&K'S THE HASH - Reading Hash #733
Saturday December 12th 2009
2PM - Glenside, Berks County, PA
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I checked the calendar and noted that it was “that time of the year” again. Ever
since Black Friday, PF Bambi and I had been going great-guns to get ourselves
ready for the holiday. Posing the kids for the Christmas Card, arguing about
what a cheap bastard I am, hanging up lights and wreathes, cutting down
perfectly good evergreens so they can wither and rot in our home, putting
candles in the windows, buying gifts for co-workers and teachers, helping the
kids to practice their holiday songs for their school concerts, figuring out
whose family we’ll visit at what time on the glorious trifecta of Christmas Eve,
Christmas, and Boxing Day, and all that happy horseshit. Just.. you know… making
a season that is supposed to be about the birth of an infant savior in a small
peaceful setting into some sort of military-inspired plan to be in the right
place at the right time with the right gift, dressed the right way, saying the
right things while making sure to drop half of my income from the past year into
the coffers of some random Chinese industrialist.
For the last 11 years though – smack dab in the center of all that crap has been
the shining star of my holiday season – That Saturday when Santa wings his way
across the world and settles his ass in Reading PA for a weekend to help his
fellow hashers enjoy the holiday the way that God intended – by drinking our
faces off, doing things that would make our spouses want to divorce us, singing
offensive Christmas song parodies, and then sitting on Santa’s lap for a little
touchy-feely and a gift from a fellow hasher. Yeah… this is the life. This is
what its all about.
You can have your fucking Disney Christmas specials, and that gloomy fuckwad
Charlie Brown, and all that crap that they try to get you to cart out of Walmart
on Black Friday. You can have all the plastic and inflatable Christmas
decorations that the assnozzle across the street puts in his yard each year (and
you know he can drop about $300 a year on yard decorations, but do you think
he’ll buy a box of popcorn from my kid to support his boy scout troop?). You can
have your cheap-ass company holiday party (if your company still DOES such a
thing) where everyone pretends its fun to sit around and socialize with the
people with whom they work, while they seeth under their breath about the crappy
bonus they got this year, while the guy in the nice car and the reserved parking
spot is taking his family to Gstaad for the holidays… Yeah. You take all that
shit. I’ll take my Santa Hash. I don’t care if they hold the après in a fucking
cave and make me provide the light for the event by sticking a candle up my ass
– I’ll be there! I’ll make more of an effort to get to the Santa Hash on time
than I will to get to my sisters-in-law’s home on Christmas, so I can listen to
her moronic husband tell me why Bud Light is truly the best beer available,
while my step-mother engages in some insipid conversation about whether Walmart
or Target had the better doorbusters, and doesn’t little nephew Joey just look
angelic on the family Christmas Card, and why oh why are you acting so grumpy on
Christmas Day, Decoy? Was it because you were up until 2:00 AM putting together
a fucking soccer goal or basketball hoop, only to be awakened by a pack of
midget-sized greedy sociopaths at 5:30 AM who are convinced that some fat-ass
B&E specialist “magically” fit his gut down the chimney and dropped off their
hearts’ desires?
Yeah so anyway – I think I was talking about the Santa Hash, right? Sorry… got a
little sidetracked there in the middle of the “holiday cheer”. Where were we?
Oh… right. A pack of – I don’t know – at least 30 hashers from as far away as
Albuquerque gathered on some random side street in Jacksonwald to welcome our
own SantaDog. From the festively dressed to those (like me) who were dressed
ready to brave the woods on the last day of deer season, we were all in the
holiday mood. Some folks had brought hot coffee – others cold beer. Pick your
poison, at least we were together. Some short chalk-talk by the hares and we
were off – heading up into the woods looking for a “Z” check. Following the long
tradition of the “Dogbreath 180 Rule”, I hooked up with an intrepid group of
trespassers and quickly found my way to the woods. We hashed about a bit –
continually heading for the high ground – and after about 10 minutes, found the
“Z” check. Z – apparently standing for Zwack which was some repulsive Hungarian
liquer/mouthwash/paint remover. Joined by the ever-intrepid Dumb & Dumber, and
young ‘Little Scroat’, we left the unfinished bottles for the rest of the pack
and headed back down the hill. Coming upon a check, we declared “no way are the
hares going to just bring us right back down to the cars” so we went down to the
right, blew through a false and started looking for flour.
Yeah… so that didn’t work out so well.
About a ¼ mile after that last ‘False’, Dumb & Dumber decided to bang a left,
and Lil’ Scroat and I plodded on. Let’s scratch that – you don’t really “plod”
when you’re with Lil’ Scroat – you run like hell to try to keep up with him.
Christ.. this kid must be hepped up on energy drinks and power bars, because the
little fucker runs like the Goddamn Energizer bunny on diet pills. A few times,
I slowed down to “check for flour” which is old-guy-code for “catch my breath”.
Anyway—about a mile or so later, we mutually decided that we had shit-the bed
(in a matter of speaking) and had better try to find the rest of the pack. We
pounded through some shiggy until we found a road – and then – finding ourselves
caught at the end of a cul-de-sac, did our best to find the backyards inhabited
by the biggest, loudest, meanest collection of rottweilers, German Sheperds and
Coon Hounds. Yeah… good times. I remembered that saying “You don’t have to be
faster than the dog – just have to be faster than the guy you’re running with”….
And I realized I was totally fucked, because I was with Little Scroat who would
probably leave me to become tomorrow’s dogshit.
Somehow we ran that gauntlet without having to hot-foot it ot the hospital for
rabies shots. We found our way back to the cars only to find the rest of the
pack making their way in. After sharing a frosty beverage with Horn O Plenty, we
headed over to the Stonersville Hotel to join the festivities.
A word about the Apres site. I think I mentioned above, that I’d be happy in a
cave… well, considering the Apres spots for the last few SFTH events, the
Stonersville hotel was like the Berkshire friggin Country Club. For instance –
they actually had bathrooms… WITH DOORS… and they had glass mugs, and a kitchen.
Apparently now that he is “Doctor NFB” instead of just plain-old “Graduate
Student NFB” he can afford to put on a gig. Huzzah for higher education.
We soon started with the festivities with our illustrious and wise Grandmaster
leading the circle. Things started off slowly until we remembered the “When One
Hare Drinks…” method of getting a circle going. We welcomed some new boots to
our midst, saluted “Just Lenny” with a rousing chorus of ‘Hava Nagela” and spent
a good deal of time harassing the Baltimore/Annapolis crew who all showed up in
matching girl sweatshirts. What a bunch of poofs. We sang a rousing round of ’12
days of Hashmas’ and it was time for Santa to get on with the business of the
hour.
Let me just say that Santa gave out some awesome gifts this year. While I was a
little disappointed that “Peter Pecker” wasn’t on anyone’s list this year, some
of the gift highlights included a case (not a bottle… but CASE) of malt liquor,
some vintage Penthouse and Playboy magazines, porn, hash apparel, a few
soon-to-be-drained bottles of Jagermeister and other nastiness, and (thankfully)
No Zwack.
Things got a bit nuts. At one point, I believe that OE was using the barstools
to simultaneously exercise his core muscles and moon the entire pack. Then there
was some discussion of the “roomieness” of the pockets in Siren’s brand new DC
HHH shorts that she got from Santa. We all checked them out and agreed that
there was room for all of us to spend some time with her in those shorts. Spawn
started passing out some nasty shots that he purchased at the bar, and soon
civilians started straggling in to have a “nice quiet dinner” at the
Stonersville hotel. (Ooops! Sorry!!)
Anyway – by the end of the evening, we had two namings (Just Lenny was named
“Birth Control Device” – owing to the chin-strapped yarmulke headgear he was
wearing and Just Nicki was named ‘Fair Game’ because we all decided –men, women,
sheep alike – that given the opportunity, we’d do her) and Santa was getting
ready to fly back to the great white North. Eventually, I too had to close the
books on this Santa Hash and head back to the real world and get back into the
“Christmas Spirit” by helping Bambi to address about 150 f*cking cards.
Shitty Hash. Shitty Apres. Shitty Gift Santa.
See you next year!
DECOY