Happy new year from our fictional parody of a family holiday newsletter
With the dead end of 2019 looming in the dark, it’s deadline time for the annual parody of a family holiday newsletter.
A cursory review of previous editions shows no consistency in story line or character development, so each is like a new Netflix series with a fresh cast and a plot as open and malleable as the year ahead – if you think that’s the sort of promise that comes with a new calendar:
Happy New Year from the Percy Keats Shelleys!
Dear friends, relatives, government agents reading our mail, and strangers to whom this was sent accidentally:
To say it has been an eventful year for the Percy Keats Shelleys would be an ironic understatement no one today would get!
Bill just got promoted to president of his company after what first was reported to be a “tragic accident” and later described in an official press statement as a well-planned and executed strategy for corporate streamlining that combined synergies and core competencies to establish attainable goals through peer mentoring.
Bill swears he knows what that means, but he’s still not sure how he wound up in charge, or whether he’s next.
The promotion came with a $5 million bonus he used to make a substantial campaign donation, and now he’s worried it may get him appointed interim ambassador to a country that does not exist.
First he was told he would go to Wakanda, before the State Department retracted that, telling Bill that’s actually a fictional nation in a comic book series, and it popped up as a free-trade partner in the computer system only as a test name.
But we know that’s not true, because we saw the movie.
Still we assume some Deep State conspiracy is afoot, and Bill in fact will be assigned to some fictional country to ensure he never gets a real post. So we went through the list of other nations, looking for one that sounds fictional, and now we know where Bill would go:
Switzerland.
I mean, “Switzerland”? Seriously? Just how gullible do these people think we are?
Anyway, we’re pretty sure that once this plot comes to light, Bill will be appointed ambassador to a real country, like Narnia or Middle Earth.
Still he’s a little paranoid, despite the seven code-named bodyguards he just got for reasons we’re unsure of, and that’s probably why he wears a gun to bed.
Meanwhile our vegan daughter Ashley got a new iPhone for Christmas and Googled research proving that plants experience pain, and now she eats nothing but dirt.
She’s doing OK, on a dirt diet, but Bill ran some numbers on the potential mineral deposits, and he has taken to calling her “Goldie,” as short for “gold distillery.”
The details of this endeavor are unfit for a family newsletter. Suffice to say the goose has yet to lay the golden egg.
Ashley says her first son Naland Jr. just got a good job in the gaming industry, which sounded promising until we found out he will not be dealing cards or serving drinks in a casino. Instead he will stay home inventing video games for a major online distributor, which hardly sounds like a career.
His daddy Naland Sr. has not been heard from since he packed up and headed south to get in on what he called the “seafood boom.”
“That oyster market’s hot as a skillet!” he hollered as he fishtailed out the backyard in his Ford F-150, an old fishing net in the gun rack and a six-pack riding shotgun.
As for Bill’s wife Wimsey, whose real name no one can recall because she’s always listed as “Mrs. William Percy Keats Shelley III” on local foundation donor lists, she is making progress toward establishing a nonprofit to provide permanent homes for birds who nest in public buildings because they’ve nowhere else to go.
“Consider the birds,” a prophet said once, in a movie, and she has, naming her organization “CTB,” to which donations poured in until people realized “CTB” was not a derivative of hemp oil.
So, as the year nears its end, we hope that no matter where you land, here on the tail end of 2019, you arrive at the best nest you can build with what’s left of the passing year, and have a fine hatch in the year to come.
May your dreams take flight, and not get sucked through a jet engine and spit into a windmill.