: Sounds great. By the way, what does the initial � ���"X� �� � in your name stand for?
: Your Uncle Santa traditionally used helpers in his work, by which of course I mean his elves. I gather they'll be considered redundant at ClausCare?
X. Claus
: It's a nom de guerre, really. A nickname I picked up at Harvard Business School. It's short for "Exclusionary." You see, the guys in my fraternity just started calling me "Exclusionary Claus� �� �, since my major in business school was insurance underwriting, and it just sort of stuck. In fact, my grad school professors got together and presented me with a special award for "Most Creative Writer of Exclusionary Clauses."WSJ
: Can you give us some examples of your work in that department?X. Claus
: Sure. I was the driving creative force behind several industry favorites, including � ���"Whereas the party of the first part, having failed to disclose his or her previously unforeseen medical condition...� �� � And then of course there's � ���"In the event the insured fails to meet any of the extrinsic financial obligations imposed after the fact by the insurer in a timely manner...� �� � And my personal favorite, � ���"Under no circumstances shall a condition or complaint resulting from, or perceived as having resulted from, a nuclear conflict not directly attributable to the actions of the insurer result in...etc., etc.� �� � That last one got me an honorable mention at the Health Care Expo in Las Vegas last year.WSJ
X. Claus
: Unfortunately, yes.WSJ
: Will you be retraining any of those elves to perform jobs at ClausCare?X. Claus
: Well, there's a bit of a problem there. You see, because Uncle Santa insisted on paying his employees a living wage for the past 1700 years or so, he had the luxury of skimming off the top of the elf gene pool. But because we here at ClausCare believe strongly that Freedom means � ���"working for free� �� �, we put a lot of advertising dollars into convincing working-class people to undermine their own best interests without expecting any compensation in return. This philosophy requires us, for obvious reasons, to dredge the bottom of that same gene pool as it were, to get at the deep sedimentary layer often referred to as "the salt of the earth." What we recover by this process is a different class of helper: less mercurial and more leaden of mind; less cerebral, more visceral in nature. But suffice it to say these workers serve our purpose quite well. Because of their near total absence of annoying brain wave interference, the predigested talking points we provide them to recite at public meetings are retained in their pristine state, you know, right off the printed page, as it were...WSJ
: Are these creatures even elves?X. Claus
: Well, genetically speaking, we're not exactly sure. We refer to them as � ���"Oaves.� �� �WSJ
: If I'm not mistaken, the Urban Dictionary defines � ���"oaves� �� � as the plural of � ���"oaf.� �� �X. Claus
: Hmmm...Interesting. That may be true, but for us it's a useful acronym. It stands for � ���"obtuse, agitated, vituperative, and educationally stunted.� �� � But for all that, these oaves are worth their considerable weight in gold, and frankly, we couldn't operate without them!WSJ
: Yeah, I've seen them on TV; they can suck the intellectual oxygen right out of a room.X. Claus
: Damn straight.WSJ
: So, everybody knows Santa used a magic sleigh pulled by flying reindeer to make his appointed rounds. How do you get your � ���"oaves� �� � from town hall to town hall?X. Claus
: Well, Pamela, now that, thankfully, we're out of the toy business, we decided to scrap that old wreck of a sleigh and replace it with a fleet of brand new, state-of-the-art coal-burning buses.WSJ
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