Dogs that ate backwards
Reversed on June 25, 2023.
He looked as if he were still waiting for his dog to come home, but I soon realized he was just waiting for the ham in his fridge to go bad so he didn’t have to eat it. I had some ham in my refrigerator, too—by the brick. But all the man had was ham in non-brick form and he wanted something else for a change. So, petulant and puerile, passive-aggressive as ever, he resolved to simply wait for the ham to spoil. Then he could have something else to eat. With it spoiled, he would have the perfect excuse as to why he refused to eat that ham. It had gone bad, you see. It had become inedible. It was an ex-ham. If only he didn’t starve first.
But he did starve first. For this ham was laden with state-of-the-art preservatives, vacuum-sealed, UV-sterilized, pasteurized, pascalized, parkerized, and kept at a cool, refreshing 41 °F (5 °C). Such a ham can outlast any man. And it did outlast the man. Long after his refrigerator had rusted away and his house turned to dust, that (non-bricked) ham would still be sitting there, amidst the debris and rubble. It would be good as new.
And then I would eat it.
I had a dog once. A pet dog. His name was Yappie. He was a Carpathian Yapping Hound. But he died. He died when he was transformed into a fifty-pound log of cheddar by forces unknown and inscrutable (and not the least bit minty). Yappie’s death hit me hard enough but the clincher was… I didn’t even get to use any of those fifty pounds of cheddar before they all went all rancid-like. That was a lot of cheese. I wanted to eat it.
After Yappie’s untimely cheddaring, I hatched a plan to open a kennel and breed narcoleptic dogs, like Stanford University had in 1976 (that’s 1080 in °C). But instead I ended up with dogs that ate backwards. They probably got into the radioactive spearmint, I expertly surmised. How else could a dog end up with a head growing out of its—
There was a knock on the door. A loud knock. A hard knock. It knocked me out of my reverie and onto the floor. (I was perched upside-down atop my Hopeless Slack-Ass® recliner, if you must know.) I righted myself, tried not to look like a helpless dung beetle on its back, failed in that endeavor, and then after much squirming, squiffling, and babbling, did indeed right myself, albeit still on the floor on all fours. Rising onto my haunches proved to be the next challenge, which I met with grim determination, then lastly, I raised my six-foot-tall manly–squirrelly body back into the upright bipedal posture and habit conventionally expected of six-foot-tall man–squirrels such as myself.
I succeeded—and, as Luck would have it, the knocking on the door continued amidst all my writhing and whiffling.
I murped preenishly—I daresay I even preened murpishly—proud of my accomplishment, then mooblesauntered over to the door which was receiving all those hard knocks on its hard, wood-like outer surface. Eyes narrowing in grimmer determination, nostrils flaring to their utmost, I swung open the door—
In the corner of my seventh-floor drawing room, there sat a grue. A grue who grew fat off the tasty fat of poetasters sat satisfied in that corner—fat, dumb, and happy itself. The grue too would be tasty (if you’re a gruivore, which you may be, but I am not). All I want to eat now is more ham by the brick. Meat meted out by the brick. And the man with the spoiled ham (not by the brick) had been eaten by a grue, too. Two grues. That was after he starved. The two grues fought over the emaciated cadaver. All they got was skin and bones. So now they want more to eat.
I want to eat another chicken but I’m no longer allowed within 500′ of a fried chicken joint. Even KFC told me to go yerk a turkey—and that’s not even real chicken. So, my options limited and increasingly birdless, I chose to make something resembling an emu drumstick out of toothpaste and eat that.
Since 1943, the Dickin Medal has been awarded to pigeons for gallantry in war. Many a pigeon fought bravely in WWII and many were awarded with a fine Dickin. My own efforts to award the same to a chicken went over like a lead balloon. I was still buttsore about that. As for the chicken’s butt—
Then I realized it was “oboe at low velocity.” Now everything made sense. My flub greatly embarrassed me. I blame that awful clutch of bad, bad Poet-Men for my mishearings, misspellings, and missed sheep-shearings this month. But those smithering spoonervillains now rest gently at the bottom of the stomach of a gorgothine grue, digesting slowly. That’ll show them! For their dissonant cacophony and doofoid poetastery. For their ungering, malungering, and especially their unga-pelungering! I laughed. Just like a 1980s sitcom, everything worked out in the end. It took more than 30 minutes (−1 °C), but it did.
But not for Messrs. M’Nummenschantz, Snulbug, and Biv!
I choked down another oversized, minty drumstick. Then I choked on it—because this one, fake as it was (yet minty!), had a bone in it. I was perplexed how that bone came to be there. Had the derbfine and obolus men put it there? Had they stolen one of my finger bones? Had they stolen one of my boners? Had they—
I cranched, then grinsped. Anxiety rose to high dudgeon and then panic. But then I uncranched (and degrinsped). All my fingers were still there, finging along merrily. As were my boners. Calm washed over me. Then it all made sense. It cohered. I comprehended—one might even say, I apprehended.
Alas I had again confused my honey bucket with my lunch bucket.
But that made eating backwards a lot easier.