why we love lileks

It’s stuff like this that got me writing in the first place:

‘They called it Bloodmas Eve – aye, the older reindeer still talk about it. The red-nosed one stood in the stable door, eyes wide as wagon wheels, gore-flecked foam gushing from his mouth, the entrails of our friends wrapped around his antlers like string in a cat’s cradle. His nose burned like a coal from Satan’s furnace, it did; the snow made a horrible hiss as it touched the nose and sizzled into steam. He made a cry they say no reindeer has ever made before, or since – a sound of pain and fury that would chill the blood of the Abominable One himself.

“Then he started in on the elves.”

You can almost hear his rocker.