Ever see that old Night Gallery episode where John-Boy Walton‘s mom asks him to be a sin eater, which means he takes in the sins of the dead person so the departed can go to Heaven? If not, I’ll ruin it for you. His mother tricks him and forces him to eat the sins of his father, who was the village sin eater, which means he’s taking in the accumulated sins of someone who’s already eaten everybody else’s sins. A holiday classic, I tell you.

Anyway, today’s tale is something like that. But I’ll let Rick Damigella take it from here with his LDBCer Dispatch.

I’m writing on behalf of a friend regarding an event I’ve nicknamed the Company Holiday Party Drummassacre and ask that you rule on the actions of a notorious individual we will call DJ Fun Ruiner. A good friend of mine works for a large company. Large enough that different divisions have their own holiday gatherings. Yesterday, their division gathered for a mid-day holiday lunch and party. The very moment the party started, the DJ immediately played a classic instrumental version of “The Little Drummer Boy.” The collective groans and gasps from the revelers indicated a very large number of them were playing The Game. This was absolutely intentional on his part because at this point DJ Fun Ruiner began laughing hysterically. Laughing hysterically at nearly 1,500 people who he thought were just drummed out.

The egregiously evil DJ laughing at the upset players resulted in a large number of the party goers to begin pelting him with cookies. Now, as you can imagine, there were a lot of very distraught people at the Company Holiday Party Drummassacre who believed they were eliminated. Now, while I know the rules, I was hoping you could find it in your heart, to publicly post a ruling on this particular incident, so that I can share it with my friend, who can then let their coworkers know that they are in fact, still very much alive.

The dyspeptic John-Boy

Well, those of you already familiar with this year’s new “Hoist with His Own Petard” rule know what comes next. The partygoers are still in the game, but the jerk DJ is himself out due to the jerkiness of his jerky attempt. Even worse, he’s out 1,500 times over—once for each attendee. Which means his face probably looks much like John-Boy’s did at the end of the episode. [Editor’s note: John-Boy is no relation to The Boy.]

I’ve helpfully included an image for those of you who never saw that Rod Serling classic. It ain’t pretty. But it helps if you can imagine cookies launched by angry attendees bouncing off it.

Anyway, we’ve reached day 22 of this thing of ours, and we’re approaching nearly 600 victims of The Boy who’ve reported in via the form. Those who’ve turned in LDBC-elfies since our last report are featured in the gallery below.

We nearing the home stretch, people. Let’s not go wobbly now.

For Mike!

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