Where does Santa poop?

So it's two days until Christmas, and I'm really excited! This will be my first year to celebrate most of the holiday with someone else's family. It will also be the first year I get to watch a bunch of little kids open their presents early on Christmas morning. Did I mention I'm so excited!

Thinking about that, however, has made me ponder other things, like Santa Claus. I was listening to the Skepticality podcast, and this week they're talking to a 7 year old who doesn't believe in Santa. He's got some excellent points. Why don't we ever see Santa making DSs and Wiis on TVs and movies? Why do poor kids get fewer toys? Where does Santa poop? I remember how I discovered Santa wasn't real, and I wish now that I'd asked the same questions as that little boy.

I can't remember exactly what age I was when it all went down, but I do remember the situation. Now, I've always been a nosy child; prone to snooping for presents in my mother's closet. This particular year, I found not presents, but wrapping paper. This in itself wasn't a big deal. After all, I'd done my fair share of wrapping gifts, and was perfectly willing and able to accept that my parents might keep their wrapping paper in the closet.

However, bright and early on Christmas morning when I went to look at the bounty from the fat man in red, I noticed something...disconcerting. All of the presents from "Santa" under the tree were wrapped with the paper I had just seen in my parents' closet. I don't recall how I handled this information, but I can almost imagine myself trying to explain it away. "Oh, Santa is just very busy, so he brings the presents to my parents and they wrapped it for him." But eventually I had to come to the conclusion that mommy and daddy were, in fact, Santa Claus.

Of course, as long as I kept getting presents, I didn't care who gave them to me; I was a wee child after all. It makes me wonder, though, what I'll do with my own children some day...

Thoughts on privacy

I just read an article snippet about the founder of Facebook deciding to make his profile entirely open under his site's new Privacy rules. I'm sorry, but if I want to share everything about myself with everyone I've ever known, I'll just use Twitter. There's never been any real illusion of privacy on Twitter, but you don't see me posting pictures of wild parties on twitpic (or Facebook, really). All I know is that a lot of people put their phone number, address, job title, etc. on Facebook, and if we assume most people are idiots when it comes to computers and protecting themselves, it stands to reason that a lot of people are going to have problems unless they pay VERY close attention to who is on their friends list.

Maybe I'll just remove every single bit of pertinent information about myself from Facebook. You won't get to know who I'm dating, won't get to know my favorite quotes, and won't know where I work. I'll remove all links to my outside websites except maybe the podcast, and forget about tagging me in any more pictures. In fact, I think I'll just keep my pictures elsewhere! You can see my name and my email address, and that will be all.

On the other hand, what if every single person on Facebook shared every single bit of pertinent information with the world? What if we flood the internet with a glut of personal information a la Myspace? Would the incidents of ID theft go up or down? Would there be more underage stalking? More regular stalking? I'm torn here. You've got a company who has all of your info stored on its server space and wants you to share it with everybody, so you react by removing stuff you don't want everyone to see. It's almost like Facebook thinks it can control the info you put online by scaring you into deleting things.

So either I allow them to control what I post online, or I try to find another place for all my friends to plan parties. So far it looks like Facebook wins, because I think I am the only one who loves Google Calendar as much as I do. God I love Google Calendar....