Omental cakes and tires (or a blunch of underwear)
Portended on July 16, 2023.
I stood up and bid yesterday’s fine dinner adieu. It had served me well but now it was time to say farewell. Then, I flushed.
The day was getting off to a good start. A good start indeed. It was Sunday. The whole week was behind me (except today, which had just begun, rather than ended, which wouldn’t happen for another sixteen hours). It was eight o’clock in the morning.
And then it was 8:01 a.m. and I wanted a bagel. The question at hand was what kind of bagel, however. One with sesame seeds? Or one with sprinkles? Or just an old lawnmower tire painted a light, bagely brown? Murping pensively, I wandered out to my garage to see what I had in stock.
I wanted to complain that someone in the Sanjak of Sakız had forgotten to dot all his Is, but then I found them in İstanbul.
A sense of wan satisfaction swept over me. My broadly caprine face broke out into a winsome gurn. I’ve always been a bit of a dotty individual and dotless vowels leave me with a vague, liminal sense of unease. Like when you walk into a room and worry if a rabid pangolin is hiding behind the door, or when you start your car and worry the gnomes wired up a car bomb under your seat overnight.
But my mind quickly turned to more pygian things: I had forgotten how to reattach my symmetrical underwear to my strangely asymmetrical frame when I emerged from the loo six hours ago. If it wasn’t for my supernumerary buttocks, I grumbled, things like dressing myself would go so much smoother.
And today, there was nothing smooth about the maximally gluteal ordeal at all. It was a hairy situation all right, and when I had finally solved the conundrum and managed to re-swaddle myself in these damnable dormfuddies, I had dugongs falling out of my ear canals. Snorting indignantly, I decided to forego underwear entirely. Soon my outerwear and middleware joined them on the ash heap of the day’s history. I gurned again, more pensively. Doubt at my solution omentarily arose. What would the neighbors think? Then I remembered: I don’t care. I flung open my front door and stepped out into the world.
My breakfast of omental cakes and an old wheelbarrow tire had gone swimmingly—until I discovered that a freshly-hatched clutch of Athabascan Wreathing Gnomes had taken up residence behind my wainscoting. Quick, decisive action was needed, lest they embed themselves so deeply in those coquinarial walls that not even comminatory imprecations to Ka‘ū and the dread Owl Gods would dislodge them. Dealing with this problem called for the most stalwart implements of destruction and deflagration that I possessed. I wandered back out to my garage to see what I had in stock.
The gnome extirpation had gone well. Except my kitchen was now inside-out and upside-down. Dealing with this problem called for the most stalwart implements of construction and conflagration that I possessed. I wandered back out to my garage to see what I had in stock.
But that just raised more questions than it answered, such as: Val Kilmer, Keir Starmer, or even Jeffrey Dahmer? I scratched my head and it began snowing.
Remaining unanswered this week was that other age-old question: Was it better to be punched in the face by Strom Thurmond or kicked in the face by Uma Thurman? If Uma was barefoot, the answer was clear. But that wasn’t.
Ol’ Strom’s propensity to use a pair of knuckledusters every time he had gotten into a scrap on the floor of Congress also tilted the balance in this dilemma, I concluded. Definitely Uma.
It was then that I realized that eating that brain tumor for breakfast had been a bad idea. The ensuing emesis made me totally forget about that shopping cart tire I had eaten first, though!
My kitchen had been joined by my other 156 rooms in its inside-outtedness and upside-downedness. Constructing that conflagration upon my kitchen table and hoping it would right things had instead made them much, much more wrong. The Athabascan Wreathing Gnomes were gone but my wainscoting (all 157 rooms of it) was a total loss. And I had also burned up the last of my tractor tires in the ensuing firestorm.
Meanwhile, I learned that Moldova had completely molded over once again. “Well, that’s a shame,” I muttered, as I gingerly sliced it away from the remaining edible countries, like the green fur that sprouts on my cheese when I leave it on the floor too long. “I am still going to eat the rest of this for my blunch tomorrow.”
At least that was my best-laid plan. Then that angry pangolin leapt from my dishwasher and chewed my tongue off.
Was Bessarabia best Arabia? North Korea after all was best Korea. But one thing was sure: Ungabuganda was the best place to find the finest cow flops. Ungabuganda celebrated its independence day a month ago. Those barefoot and pantsless peasants sure knew how to party hard, too—a month later, word was they were still recovering from the drunken, manure-fueled revelry that had gone on late into that June 16 night. Their fellow sans-culottes wouldn’t be awarding them a Grenoble Prize anytime soon, but they were definitely in the running for this year’s Darwin Award.
Cities of Canadian obsidian rose into my mind from the abyssal cracks beneath (my spine) when I tried to sleep on Saturday night. I ended up locked in mortal combat with my own amygdala. Again my goat-like clairvoyance had gotten the best of me. I awoke squeeorling in terror. I knew what was coming but until my tongue regrew I couldn’t warn anyone. The shock of it all was less like being kicked in the face by a barefooted Uma Thurman and more like being punched in the face by a bare-knuckled Strom Thurmond.
I also wonder why they don’t just call “semaphores” “twos.”