The hobnailery on Hobgoblin Street
Borfnagled on March 6, 2011.
While contemplating the roundabout dog they recently begin kennelling in Parsimony Plaza this past Thrudsday, it suddenly hit me like a long ton of Dunkin’ Donuts bagel twists: Not only did I need a new pair of hobnail boots, but my latest attempt at product placement in this little blog of mine had been so ham-fisted that I once again clearly deserved to be beat about the head and shoulders with a large and pointy summer sausage.
Immediately I freebirded out into the street in front of my palace-like home and demanded from the first passer-by that he do so at once; I even provided the summer sausage, properly whittled to a fine point on both ends. But said passer-by was completely uninterested and just continued passing by, albeit it at a quicker pace and with a more disturbed state of mind than he previously possessed.
The second through forty-fifth passers-by proved equally as useless, but the forty-sixth was like striking a gold mine: For, not only did he agree to smack me upside the head with my increasingly thawed and floppy summer sausage, but he also took a solid brick of gold out of his man-purse and proceeded to conk me over the head with that not once, not twice, not even thrice, but fwice! He even used the corners of his aureal brick to really drive the point home.
Sufficiently imbued with purpose once again, I gathered my wherewithal and skull fragments from the sidewalk and continued on toward the hobnailery on Hobgoblin Street. The hobnailery was located three doors (but sixteen doorknobs) down from the hobnobbery that I had visited long ago and where I had been booted in the buttocks by a delightfully barefoot Jennifer Love Hewitt. At the time, I had been under the misapprehension that I worked at the Hobgoblin Street hobnobbery, but a mere 107 weeks later I had, while firmly immersed up to my eyebulbs in the Brundlesphere, come to the realization that the job for which I had applied was not at the hobnobbery, but at the doorknobbery next door (and seven doorknobs down). And now, I realized, the strange and disastrous surplus of doorknobs on every Hobgoblin Street storefront was all my fault—if only I had shown up to work that day!
“Enough wallowing in self-underdunkery!” I reminded myself once again, for self-underdunkery was even more humiliating than self-pity, self-immolation, and even self-fornication. “You have some hobnails to buy!”
Pride restored to a fever pitch, I continued my manly journey toward the hobnailer’s shop, employing a shortcut across the goatburping park on Shoehorner Street. Taking a few moments’ break from my hubristic and turgid freebirding, I stopped to admire the goats and their sonorous eructation. But! My hobnails awaited, so off I went again, freebirding merrily down one avenue after another, Hobgoblin Street my final destination.
It was said that Hobgoblin Street earned its name from the fact that, over a century ago, in a most mysterious turn of events, George W. Bush had stopped here to quietly sip a cup of coffee that he had brought with him for just that purpose.
Passing by the hobnobbery, I decided to stop in for just a moment to see if Miss Hewitt was around to boot me in the buttocks—preferably barefoot—again. She wasn’t, so I asked to take a rain check. The deceptionist, who bore a striking resemblance to the knobby old crone that had worked for the late Dr. Unterguggenburgerheimer, said no rain checks were available, but I could have a flower pot if that would suffice. I told her it would suffice merrily, and, upon taking it, promptly cracked it over my head. She just watched—as if suddenly confronted by the fact that her ham sandwich had turned out to be a spam sandwich instead.
Then, behind me came the sudden, thundering eruption of the loudest series of belches I had ever heard; realizing it was almost four von clock in the afternoon and that the hobnailery closed in a mere eight hours, I decided that I had best be on my way! I thanked the ugly old bag of mostly water for the flower pot, swung the door shut, breaking the glass, and freebirded on outta there like a baseball bat exported from Hell, Michigan.
Thrudsday was quickly expiring, and in a mere eight hours I would be disfronted by the stark, wriggling madness that was Frooeyday. In a vain attempt to prevent such a perhappenstance, I stopped for a moment outside the hobnobbery and quickly made a supplication to Þrúðr, patron gourd of Thrudsday and protector of lilly-white Pnårps like myself. Þrúðr—more eloquently referred to as Thrud in this language’s abecedary, refused to answer; instead she pelted me with doofus-colored hailstones until even more fragments of my addled little skull fell off.
I blacked out. I dreamed madly of that hot lesbian scene with Ezri Dax and Jadzia Dax that I’d seen on TV years ago, the wild twitterings of Britney Spears, and I on the Pnårpsichord.
I un-blacked out—“whited out,” a more ubblabumptuous writer may have scrivened—and lifted myself off of the cementy sidewalk. The hobnailery was still there, and, even more intriguing, I was surrounded by a crowd of people concernedly chittering away like inebriated, six-foot-tall squirrels.
“What are you all looking at!?” I angersputtered, angrily flailing around like an angry, angry madman who just lost his mind in a donkey-punching competition. “Haven’t you ever seen a man without a skull on a mission to buy a pair of hobnail boots before!?” I bled out my ears to drive the point home.
The man-squirrels dispersed; I swayed slightly in the breeze, lost my balance six times (but regained it each time!), and then finally hobbled into the Hobgoblin Street hobnailery.
Hobnails, as far as the eye could see!
…At least that’s what I expected, but instead what met my beady little eyes was a vacant store, bereft of all hobnails, with only an amateurishly made sign pasted to the door: “We’ve moved,” it said in elegant 72pt Comic Sans, “Check out our new store on Hoboken Street!” This was followed by a phone number, website URL, and threat to nail my head to the wall (with genuine hobnails!) if I actually set foot in their Hoboken Street location. The threat was punctuated childishly with seven exclamation points: Clearly, these hobnailers meant business.
“We’ll see about that!” I spluttered, my usual aplomb transmogrifying into grim determination. My nose set, my eyebulbs even beadier, I marched across town to Hoboken Street, intent on giving these hobnailers a piece of my mind—and hopefully a few fistfuls of banknotes for a pair of new hobnail boots.
Passing through the goatburping park again, the source of the earlier belchkrieg became clear: In the moments since I had been here last, the town had installed an enormous clock, rivaling Big Ben, which tolled the hours with a flock of eructating goats. A placard announced the clock was a gift from one Herbert Hebert Hobbes, a resident of my tiny little podunk. “Curiouser and curiouser…” I pumbled softly. But there was no time to stop and smell the rows and rows of goats, for I was on a mission: To Hoboken Street!
Arriving at the intersection of Hoboken and Bokonon, I glimpsed a gaggle of granfalloons assembled outside the hobo mill. (The moment that I had discovered the true nature of the stumblebum stables on Wiggensworth Street, they had clandestinely relocated all the stumblebums to the hobo mill at the corner of Hoboken and Bokonon Streets. They thought I didn’t know… but I, the Grand Pnårpissimo, know all!)
The gaggle dispersed as I freebirded on by, merrily whistling Murderdeathcock’s latest hit “Killer Phallus” to myself and whipping it out most shamelessly. Clearly these Hoboken Street hobos were no match for me, and knew it! Even their ringleader, Ken, squiffled off when he saw me freebirding. Another few hundred yards, and there it was… as big as day: H.H. Hobbes’ Hobnailery, right where Hoboken Street crossed Hobbyhorse Lane. It all made sense now! My nose still set in grim determination, I rode my own hobbyhorse right up to their front doorstep and demanded that the latest, greatest pair of hobnail boots, size 38D, be placed on my clownishly large feet at once!
Instead they nailed my head to the wall.
“That does it!” I shouted to the four winds (and one horse factory—the one right across the street on Hobbyhorse Lane). “I’ll never shop here again!!!!!!!”