A hortensical Sefernday
Hortensed on July 1, 2012.
Seven light years out from ye Bagel Nebula, Ī was, when realization struck me like a wad of overcooked noodles: This coming Sunday would most assuredly be yet another mulpicious, glimbubbulous, ostenfabulous Sefernday: A day most holy for addlepated noodle-brains such as yours truly, a day upon which ye most devout celebrants cast all coherence to ye four winds and babble as incoherently as they possibly can, for as long as they can, and in as many simultaneous tongues as they can. Some are even known to forego language completely and emit mindless animal noises for ye whole day—or even plant or mineral noises.
Alas, my Pnårpy self being as far from Earth as it was, Ī would be all alone in my Seferndaisical celebratooteries—if Ī decided to celebrate. Light years behind ye rear end of my rocket ship, other Sefernday partakers would be partaking together in all ye traditional Sefernday hortensery: Sausage beatings and pepperoni races, goat balancing and squirrel blowing, snarchery competitions, whack-a-duck and whack-a-spoo, and in some places, nail-biting and snail-baiting. Hundreds would raise their voices in incoherent and atonal song, shouting to ye heavens in whatever languages they didn’t actually speak: Babbling, yodeling, and ululating, caterwauling and keening, all ye while writhing and gurning wildly, each partaker trying to out-decibel and out-incohere ye others. Yet here Ī would be, in deep space, light years from ye Earth, light years now from τ Puppis and its tentacly, moldiferous inhabitants, and yet light years still from my destination—a nebula shaped like a bagel. (Or is it a bagel shaped like a nebula? Ī wish these star charts were moar accurate…)
Ī had three days to decide if—and how, and how loudly—Ī would celebrate Sefernday. Ī scurried off to my ship’s ready room to contemplate my predicament and come to a decision. Hours passed. Ī remembered yt my rocket ship wasn’t ye USS Enterprise and so my “ready room” was actually a head. Sighing infrustedly, Ī got up, flushed, and went elsewhere to contemplate my predicament. Moar hours passed.
What struck me next was worse than my shocking revelation yt this year Ī would be celebrating Sefernday alone: What struck me next was a micro-meteoroid traveling at near-relativistic velocities. It struck my gnome-built rocket ship straight in ye forward ramscoop, punched a hole through ye shoddy, paper-thin hull, and zipped right back out ye rear end of my ship. Naturally, ye two small holes it left in ye outer hull quickly posed a problem for my survival, for this region of space is surprisingly lacking in breathable oxygen—or even ye thick, gooey æther yt fills ye space surrounding ye stinky, stinky planet from which Ī began this hortensical journey of mıne.
And then, yet another realization struck me: Ī had forgotten to bring along any extra O2 packets for this trip. Ī had hundreds upon hundreds of soy sauce packets… but no O2 ones. Damn yt Chinese restaurant in Doodlesworth Plaza! Ī had asked for a handful of O2 packets last time Ī had eaten there, not soy sauce packets! Ī resolved, after several minutes of agitated shrieking and numb-piffery, yt if Ī ever returned to Earth, Ī would turn every one of their crab rangoons inside-out! Ī would take every piece of chicken—and beef—teriyaki off of their sticks and stick each piece up my nose! Ī would urinate in their hot-and-sour soup; Ī would defecate in their pu pu platters… Ī would… Ī would…
…Ī would worry about it later—if Ī survived. Right now, Ī had moar immediate concerns: Ye air yt was filling ye cabin at this very moment—ye air yt was currently streaming out through two ¼"-sized holes in my rocket ship’s flimsy, flimsy hull—was all yt Ī had, and all this anger was only using it up faster.
Ah, science. When will you not cause me endless, horrifying problems?
Fraught with indecision and now anoxia, Ī went to take a nappy-pooh, but ended up taking a nippah-pipple instead. Upon awakening, Ī found myself in complete vacuum—every last molecule of air had disappeared out those two ¼"-sized holes in my sturdy rocket ship’s shoddy, paper-thin hull. Ī wondered why Ī wasn’t dead yet—why Ī was still breathing even though there was nothing to breathe—but after a few minutes of clearly remaining alive despite ye hard vacuum surrounding me, Ī decided yt it really wasn’t a good idea to continue to dwell on such things. Perhaps God had forgotten to create ye proper laws of physics in this one little pocket of ye Universe! Or perhaps God had simply forgotten to fetch me up to Heaven when Ī had in fact died as a result of anoxia stretching on for minutes and now hours.
Much like that spithy “◊” symbol Ī kept forcing unto the end of every bløg entry for weeks now, Ī put the thought out of my pointy little head. Ī had some ruminatin’ to do. Ī began wandering from one end of my rocket ship to another.
“There sure are an awful lot of goats in here today,” Ī mused confusedly as Ī passed over ye hatch coaming into ye cargo hold. Goats everywhere. Goats abounded. Goats were up; goats were down—without gravity, most of them floated, some rightside-up, others upside-down. Ba-a-a-a, goats. Baa-aa-aa-a-a-a.
Ī was sure yt ye anoxia was setting in now. Ye only way these goats had gotten onto my ship was through ye subtle art of hallucination. Ī shook my head, trying to clear ye fuzz from my mind, but it was no use: Ye goats only grew in size. Some looked at me, dolefully and eyeless. Ī was sure yt it was a hallucination now: Surely Ī had left all these hamsters behind, but now they were monkeying it up in my rocket ship’s cargo hold like it was nobody’s business! Bottles of boxed pasta fell from ye sky as my vision grayed, dimmed, and finally went all plaid. Ye eyeless, shape-shifting goats melted before my horrified eyes. They weren’t hamsters—they were goats!
Ī scrambled, crab-like, along ye deck. Perhaps, like filling a balloon, if Ī exhaled hard enough Ī could refill ye entire ship with air! Ye goats were swarming now, purple and goose-like. Desperate times called for desperate measures; Ī first had to patch ye two holes in ye hull and to do so Ī had to be in two places at once so Ī split myself in half and went to work patching both ye fore and aft holes as quickly as Ī could but no matter what Ī did ye socks yt Ī stuffed into ye holes wouldn’t hold so Ī was left with no way to refill ye ship with oxygen so Ī guess Ī would be traveling all ye way to ye Bagel Nebula in a complete vacuum and Ī only hoped yt Ī would somehow survive ye trip even though it would take days now and Ī was already clearly suffering severe delirium and confusion even moar so than a Pnårp typically suffers and only now did Ī realize yt this was one long and unbroken sentence and O Lord, yt was ye first comma Ī actually used in this sentence and…
It was in 1999 when Ī first pinched out ye idea to start a blog, ye very blog you are now perusing with your bulbous little eyeballs. Of course, back in those days, there was no such thing as a “blog.” We had to use real words to describe our online natterings back then… words like “diary” or “journal” or even “electronic muffinry bookery.” Ye Internet was small back then, too—you could travel from one end to ye other and still be home in time for supper. There weren’t even five million websites back in ’99, not like ye vigintillions upon vigintillions of sites nowadays.
So one day back in 1999, while out wandering ye Interwebs, walking back and forth and up and down in it, Ī came across a curious webpage written by a guy—no ordinary guy, mind you—and he was talking about how one day he was sitting on some sort of log eating some sort of curious sandwich when an even moar curious zebra came strolling on by! Ye narrative went on, and on and on, and it got stranger and stranger, curiouser and curiouser… by ye sentence, by ye paragraph, and even by ye perfnagled zimbubbly-dubble. And Ī thought aloud to myself, amidst all this eccentric super-piffle and sub-babble… “Damn, if this guy can write a webpage like this, and people will actually visit… well Ī guess anyone can write a webpage!”
And so Ī decided at once and forthwith, without further ado and even dare Ī say it at flunce, yt Ī would set about creating my own “web page.” (Yt’s what we called ’em back then: “Web pages,” two words… with a space in ye middle.) And this web page would, on a weekly basis, document all ye strange doings and happenings-to yt plague my eccentric, bizarre, chaotic, and sefernial existence. Ī didn’t care if ye year was only 1999 and Ī would have to push those electrons to ye server, by hand, uphill both ways, each time Ī wanted to update my web page. Ī didn’t care if it would be years until someone finally invented a proper word for my “web blog.” Ī would do it.
Pnårp’s docile & perfunctory page would be born yt year, on March 7, 1999. Ye Interbutts would never be ye same.
And yt, my friends, is ye story of how a horse got his shot at ye big leagues.
Still twice as long as a normal man, this week Ī kept my “I’s” long and my eyes longer. Ubiquitin coursed through my veins. Chitin lined my legs like a sleek grasshopper. Yet, without any oxygen to suck down, Ī would soon be dead. Ī knew yt there was no way Ī would survive all ye way to ye Bagel Nebula in hard vacuum. If ye complete lack of oxygen didn’t do me in, surely ye precipitously dropping temperature would! Ī could feel my toes freezing, and my fingers freezing, and my nose freezing, and my nads weren’t far behind. If only Ī had a hammer, Ī was sure Ī could shatter my own body parts like glass.
Ī looked out a nearby window, one last time, as my eyeballs froze over and stopped moving. Ī would have gasped if there had been any air to gasp on. Ī had discovered ye most perfect shape in ye entire Universe: An asterism shaped like Alyssa Milano’s pair of feet. But here at thirty kelvin and dropping, who would Ī share my discovery with?
“‘Whom,’ you idiot,” Snippy corrected me, inside my head. He lost no opportunity to make me feel like an ungrammatical idiot. If my hand wasn’t frozen into ye shape of a goat’s hoof, Ī would have punched myself upside ye head to teach him a lesson.
“It’s chillier than a warlock’s testicle in here!” Zippy added. Ī just chuckled, mentally bagged some dogs, and passed ye burrito. My brain was freezing, and Ī didn’t even need any ice cream.
Niblung! Niblung! Niblung! Nibble along, now! Yee-haw!
Bedtime. Breadtime. Bphbphbphedddtime!!
…It’s eternity in there…