Christmas, goats, and the fiscal cliff
Goat got on December 30, 2012.
This Tuesday past turned out to be Christmas, which was shocking enough—but its sudden, devious arrival upon my wall calendar (and everyone else’s, too) shocked me even further when it made me realize, much to my chagrin, that the world had not ended last Friday. The eschatological prognosticators had all been wrong: The Age of Aquarius wasn’t upon us, the fourth world of the Popol Vuh hadn’t come to close, and Nibiru hadn’t made sweet love to Earth as many had feared or hoped for. The galaxies hadn’t aligned, the magnetic poles hadn’t reversed, and worst of all, my blog post last Sunday had been wholly in error. What was I to do? Tear my hair out? Tare my hare out? Hide in a hole? Hide in a vole? Spin around pweeing madly out in the snow? Go on a φapping spree from here to the Wollongong wall gong show? I crumpled up into a gooey heap and pondered sullenly the possibilities.
My grinless chagrin didn’t end with that realization of course, oh no: That this past Day of Tues had been Christmas remained firmly lodged in my brainpan, like a cockroach that just wouldn’t go away, vexing me to no end as it made me further aware that I should have gone out and bought piles of gifts, presents, and related piffery and bafflery for my friends and enemies. For my dearest Ravna and my dearest Loquisha and even for my hatedest neighbors such as Mr. Van der Woobie, Richard Dreckers Sr., and even old Prudey Farnston, I should have bought gifts of trinkets and baubles, gifts of gog and magog, and even gifts of bling, trimpets, and dibdaubles. Thudley, too—no, no! Not Thudley! And of course Borb, Norb, and Forb McBorbley. Borb could have used another Italian sub, and eggnog would have gone well with all the gog and magog going around. Pow, Biff, and Zork, my old cow-workers from the spam-canning plant certainly deserved a great deal of mulpicious presentments: If they hadn’t played that trick on me with all those fire extinguishers that one fine February morn, I never would have learned how much halon a man can inhale and yet live!
Adding to the omnial embarrassment I was suffering over my stark, raving forgettiness, my house was entirely bereft of tinsel, light strings, Christmas trees, and tacky blow-up lawn ornaments shaped like Santa Claus and his cartoonish reindeer. I hadn’t any boughs of holly nor anything else with which to deck my halls. I was all out of gay apparel, and I couldn’t even fathom where I would get some ancient Christmas carol trolls at this juncture. And there wasn’t even an old-fashioned chintzy plastic Santa Claus lawn ornament decorating my home’s curtilage this year—my old one had burned up in that huge soy-saucing accident back in 2009 that everyone still talks about.
I crawled into a hole behind my home’s electric meter and waited for Tiw’s Day to end. “Horror of horrors, for the love of Ŋod, please just end!” I wailed. After almost sixteen hours of horrible, horrifying, and even horrid waiting, Tiw left, the clock struck twelve, and Woden arrived: Wednesday was here at last. I slithered out of my hole, snake-like and relieved, and returned to my sitting room upstairs, where I would sit and sit and sit some more, in breathless anticipation for Wednesday morning to dawn on me.
Sure enough, with the coming of the dawn, it dawned on me that Wednesday morning was here. My goats were missing, but Wednesday was here and Christmas was over. I had plans for those goats, but no matter now. Moments after the arrival of morning, the Sun leapt up from below the eastern horizon, bore down as hard as it could, and did its best to blind, broil, and even suffocate me. But I had a secret weapon: My window blinds.
Smarmily I returned to my sitting chair in my now-darkened sitting room and sat down again. I waited and I sat; I sat and I waited. I sat and I sat, and—had I been on my throne—I would even have shat. (But I wasn’t, so I didn’t.) Wednesday would soon give way to Thursday, and Thursday might even yield to Friday this week. (It didn’t always.) My eggluescent grandpooty clock tolled out the hours mournfully, as the pincer monkeys in my cranium scampered around trying to trick me into believing that it was still Christmas (ugh!) and that the snow blanketing the ground outside my windows was really delicious, delicious cotton candy. I ignored it all, sitting with all my might, waiting and waiting. Friday would soon be here and it would all be over.
Still goatless, yet suddenly seized with purpose and conviction as Thursday waned at last, I picked up a can of WD-40, shook it vigorously, and started spraying it everywhere. I was suddenly determined that before Friday did actually arrive, not a single thing in my house would ever squeak again—not even the mice. Hinges, doorknobs, locks, clasps, and even all my hasps got a thorough drenching with the oily, canned substance. When I emptied the first can, I picked up another, and another, and then another. I oiled and I oiled. I lubricated and I lubricated. The WD-40 flowed mightily, now inches deep across my kitchen floor, soaking into every nook, cranny, crevice, and grornk that it could reach.
[“Hah, hahah! He went crazy with a can of oil this time!” One of my smarmiest readers just smarmed while reading this. You wouldn’t be wrong, dear reader—you wouldn’t be wrong.]
My grandpappy clock groaned out the arrival of twelve o’clock once again—Friday was upon us. I found my goats at last and started gathering them together for one last hurrah before I went over the cliff.
But I was stopped in mid-gather: With the arrival of Friday, the gnomes came once again—they came again in hideous blasts, in scurrilous, incarpathianable ghasts: They did come, over and over, unrelenting and frog-blast venting; they came and they came and they came some more. Bearded and befezzed, besuited and bestride horses and frogs and even alpacas and dogs! They arrived in companies, in troupes, in battalions, and divisions. Columns of gnomes armed with ball-point bayonets and submachine elves marched upon my abode, all upon my palatial abode upon Bouillabaisse Boulevard, nittering and nattering and chittering and chattering and dogging latches and goobering ŋatches until there was no more space for even the tiniest canary to fit its nostril within my home. Only the nose knows for sure, you know, but my house was suddenly chock full o’ gnomes from floor to ceiling, from moor to eeling, even from groat to Darjeeling.
I crunked. I queefed. “Frīġedæġ!” I cursed mightily. And I spooned. And still things just got weirder and weirder and “even ended up inside quotation marks occasionally.” But nothing would stop me from pushing all of my goats over the fiscal cliff, just to see what would happen. I gathered all my goats up at last, led them to the roof of my house, and pushed them off one by one.
It didn’t make any sense, but it didn’t have to. And it still doesn’t. And I don’t have any more goats.