The Dingleberry–Hampsterist–Schmarnocks war
Embattled on November 21, 2021.
A snootful of paternostering greeted my unbolius self this past Monday morning. I gurned alabasterously. This snootful surely presaged a day of infamy, a day of epiphany, and a day of nippah-pippling grurlthrork.
I paused. Very little of the previous sentence made any sense—in English or any other language. “Monday?” I asked myself. “That’s not even a word.” I scratched it out, chicken-like, and tried again.
A snootful of paternostering greeted my unbolius self this past Schmarnocksday morning. I gurned alabasterously. This snootful surely presaged a day of infamy, a day of epiphany, and a day of nippah-pippling grurlthrork. [“Yes, that’ll do quite nicely,” I concluded, breaking out in a satisfied smarm. I continued:] Despite the late date, the Schmarnocks flowers were still in full bloom. As autumn trundled onward, most flowering plants had been reduced to desiccated corpses by now, but these were Schmarnocks flowers: Not a killing frost, nor a foot of snow, nor even a thermonuclear winter could keep these ungrulious plants from rearing their ugly heads—their awful, awful, mucous heads—once they set their damnable minds to bolting. And now that my back yard was full of these malodorous plants with their wrinkled, fleshy flowers turning to glower balefully at anyone who dared pass too close, I knew one thing was certain: My front yard would be full of geese. Angry, frightened, hissing geese who had been exiled by angry, unpredictable, bile-spewing flowers overrunning their goosey stomping grounds.
I decided that goose, rather than turkey, was on the menu for this coming Thanksgiving.
A wise gnute once told me, “Once the whining starts, it degenerates quickly into sloth.” Honestly, I prefer koalas to sloths, but what are you going to do? Eat all the sloths and replace them with koalas? Stuff the sloths into unconvincing koala suits? A less-wise Newt once told me, “Once the looting starts, the hooting starts.” My eyes darted around the room: Were the Owl Gods watching me, about to claw my eyes out? Or was I safe from their owlish gaze for one more day? I could never be sure.
Us vs. them. Because we are us and they are them. They aren’t us and we aren’t them. It’s so poor a justification it’s not even grammatical. But it was the best rationale we (us) had going forward, so we (us again) went with it. Not only was this the sophisticated social theory behind the Dingleberry–Hampsterist revolutions breaking out all over the world this year, but it also explained in simple terms why my thermometer was stuck at 57 °F for the past two weeks. And there was nothing I could do about either of these things. Turning the thermometer upside-down, poking it mercilessly with a claphine pencil eraser, even dangling it from the ceiling beneath my steventory ceiling clock—nothing seemed to get it working again. 57° forever. I murped a little. My geese hissed. The Schmarnocks flowers continued to drip bile and glare balefully at passers-by… waiting. Growing.
It was Tuesday. All morning I had been deeply ensconced in making juvenile bird calls at my meatspace social network, but then I recalled that Twitter was a more appropriate venue in which to do such things. When I loudly tweeted this at what remained of my meatspace social network, they heartily agreed. So I put away my meat mallet (pound, pound, pound!), put away my meat (fap, fap, fap!), and took my garrulous gregarying online.
The day wore on. Two’s Day lurched into Wend’s Day. I finally wore out my welcome on Twitter after a particularly expectorant rant that concluded with 280 emojis depicting all the possible places that my twittering, twatty opponents could shove their Dingleberry–Hampsterist propaganda. I stormed away from my spittle-covered keyboard in a huff. I’d had quite enough of their guff—quite enough. To calm my nerves (lest they leap out of my skin and return to slamming their axons and ganglia against the keyboard in a neuronal fury), I went out to water the now frighteningly turgid Schmarnocks flowers. The swollen, pulsating things reminded me of other fleshy horrors I had encountered in a greasy cabin in the Brundlesphere long ago. And now these profane plant–things were overrunning my entire back yard, pressing their ungruliform petals, sepals, and even their tepals up against my windows and fences and walls. And water was no longer enough for the Schmarnocks flowers: I was now forced to feed the herbaceous beasties all the jars of horse mucus I’d accumulated over the years.
Finally I could take no more. I fled to my front yard and hid amongst my geese again.
Third’s Day. The Schmarnocks flowers were on the move now. Having reached slimy maturity, they uprooted themselves and trundled off. They were beginning to mass in the street, readying themselves to launch a counterattack against the Dingleberry–Hampsterists encamped across the way. I lay prone in my front yard, still amongst my geese, and observed the oncoming horrors through a pair of monoculars.
Somehow, those sloths and koalas played a role in all this, but I couldn’t put my finger on how. And Nicki Minaj’s feet kept popping into my mind. Half-formed, distracting, and furciferous thoughts like these only served to further my hopes that Dingleberry–Hampsterism would ultimately be defeated by the bloated, phalliyonic flowers crowding my back yard and side yards, encircling my front yard, and now oozing out into the street—a mivulating mass of corpusculent horrors.
The mass of mucous Schmarnocks flowers continued to grow, ever bigger, now spilling across Bouillabaisse Boulevard, into the neighboring yards, onto the side streets, and all over everything else in sight. My geese were all gone—swallowed up and digested alive by the slithering mass of oozoid obscenities. The visage of these swollen, pustular plants flooding the streets wasn’t quite as bizarre a sight as androids drinking champagne with each other. But it was close. Momentarily distracted by thoughts of how alcohol would affect positronic brains, what happened next I never saw coming.
Grumbumptuously I lay in bed the next day. My bed lay in the street and the street lay between two no-man’s lands—one swarming with angry, animated Schmarnocks flowers and the other still firmly in the hands of the Dingleberry–Hampsterists. The Schmarnocks flowers, despite some early victories and the hopiest hopes of yours truly, were unable to vanquish their Hampsterist foes. A thin layer of viscous ooze covered the street, deflated flower parts were strewn everywhere. Not a single hamster had died or even bent a toenail in the rout.
Bewildered as always how I and my bed had landed in the midst of this predicament—let alone how a silly rodentine typo had inspired a revolutionary political philosophy that was now devouring everything in sight—I clambered out of my road bed and decided on the only course of action that made sense at the time (and still makes sense, to be honest): I stripped naked and ran up Bouillabaisse Boulevard shrieking that we would all surely die a florid, slimy death next.
“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Again the all-encompassing motto of my life.
“Oh, krigglegrink!” I squawked. “Cooncargle and imdurate harborbutting!” Some people worry about COVID-19, others about carcinogenic toe fungus lurking in their gym socks. I worry about fading into the mists of history—vanishing from the pages of time. Growing old and gray-green with only the silverfish and cockroaches remembering my docile & perfunctory pages. Those are the things I worry about. (And also gnomes.)
It was Fry Day. All I wanted to do was go riding a two-legged, long-necked potato-horse into the wilderness in search of my scantily-clad, barefoot, winged fairy queen. But I knew that was impossible now. Someone had planted all the potato-horses in the ground, fertilizer for the Schmarnocks flowers, and my barefoot fairy queen had gone off to northern California in 2019. Not even Larry the lizard or Ψýxmal the gnute could change the past.
The wormhole opened and a worm popped out, turned to me, and said:
“Major, lark’s true pepper. Let birds go further loose maybe. Shout easy play. Round the turbulent quick. Well, close the reverse harbor. Ankle try sound. Reset gleaming. Dinner to bug. When? Flame the dark true salt way link complete strike limits victory frosted wake simple hesitation. Strike limits, flame the dark true salt. Way link complete. Way link!
“Glass lunch judge a bin to let it.
“Bread the arrive, seen earlier!
“If you need me, use this string impact. Lot show red intense.”
“Oh, the worm turns once again!” I remarked triumphantly and got my meat mallet.