The tubular boob tube
Cubed on April 27, 2025.
Back in ’12, a shimmering gnute had commanded me to replace my idiot box with something smaller and more compact: An idiot box I could carry with me wherever I went. So I trotted down to the Spend-O-Mart, at full gallop, and bought myself one of those newfangled “smart” phones. It was smart but I was still dumb. And it was sharp and pointy, so it smarted when I sat down on it one day.
I kept that old idiot box though—sitting quietly in the corner of my living room (except when I turned it on and it blasted non-stop static at me). That iridescent and telepathic gnute, satisfied I now had a portable and always-on idiot box, returned to the p-brane from which he had come. My own pea brain resumed mindlessly consuming all that static. It tried to sell me things but I was unmoved. And so I changed the channel.
My pocket-sized idiot box tried to sell me things, too. But this one knew exactly what I wanted somehow, so I was indeed persuaded. And this is how I ended up with a living room full of Cheez-Its, a bathroom jam-packed with designer cotton swabs, and a garage stacked floor-to-ceiling with tools I didn’t even know how to use.
Back in ’13, I replaced my old idiot box with a genuine boob tube. This new boob tube was indeed quite tubular—and it did show me a lot of boobs. Tubular boobs. Now I wasn’t sure what to do with that old Magnetbox™ idiot box—could I turn it into a planter? Could I melt it down for all those valuable minerals in it? Perhaps I could put wheels on it and use it as a second car—it would be more reliable than my Trabant and the hobby horse I currently keep as a backup vehicle.
I ended up just putting my new boob tube on top of the idiot box.
Back in ’14, I accidentally stabbed myself in the eye with an apostrophe. I started drawing my apostrophes without corners but no one knew what the hecklegroober °14 meant. And then I accidentally choked on it. So, I went back to writing apostrophes like non-doofuses. If only I knew then what would happen in ’28, I would have stopped drawing apostrophes altogether!
Back in ’15, I forgot that the entirety of ’14 existed. As a trained forgetty, this forgetfulness came naturally to me—until I remembered that I forgot my forgetty training in ’14, too! So, I suddenly remembered the whole year. And what I remembered was being thrown in a hole in the ground by my dear sister Plårp, who then sadistically filled it full of spiders. Then I remembered, that was actually ’82, not ’14. Plårp actually just threw her sandals at me.
’15 was also the same year I suffered a bout of hemiballismus of the testicles (but only one). It crawled right up into my throat! And took a lot of coaxing to get it to go back where it belonged.
I then heard (through the grapevine) that people were again accusing me of schtupping a goose. Yet I realized the telephone I had hacked together from two steel cans and a grapevine was probably just transmitting lies to me—from the gnutes lurking in the æther. My clenirations and armiphlage got the best of me then! I didn’t die though: I just oozed down the nearest storm drain.
Back in ’16, I briefly held a job as a senior chair warmer at a tech company—before realizing I had simply wandered into a daycare center which strangely took adults as clients. After a few months of that, I wandered back out and nearly got hit by the Blunder Bus which—as luck would have it, was blundering down the street that very moment!
I hadn’t seen the Blunder Bus since ’10 or ’11, so I hadn’t expected it—in fact I had least expected it right then! (When else does your luck run out and Luck run you over with a big, honkin’ bus?) Then I ran out of apostrophes—but fortunately the Spend-O-Mart had them in stock!
Back in ’17, Luck, sadistic goddess that she is, caused me to suffer a severe lizard infestation in my palatial abode—almost as bad as that earlier one four years later in ’21. Then it was ’16 again, as time ran backwards and shimmering, scaly gnutes emerged from the intersection of our three-dimensional space with their 26-dimensional realm. The p-branes had collided with our own Δ7 planar space, and there was nothing—other than that laughably bad run of Catlips the Clown postage stamps back in ’08—that could stop it. I shrank myself to the size of an apostrophe and hid in my six-horse garage.
There once was a zebra who worked here but he got canned in ’18. He couldn’t blog fast enough. I still had some of that canned zebra in my pantry, too. It tastes like stripey chicken.
Comets made of pure einsteinium kept cropping up in my dreams: An ominous portent if there ever was one. But I brushed it off; surely it was nothing more than hallucinations caused by devouring all that cobalt-salted yogurt back in ’19!
It was also in ’19 that I got spanked for writing all these dates as only two digits. “Didn’t you learn your lesson back in ’00?” I was scolded. “Y2K could happen again at any moment!” So in ’020, I started writing my dates with an extra digit. Then Plårp beat me with her sandals again.
[As an aside: This melanderous blargh entry will be pinched out on time this week, or my name isn’t Nurdlebutt the Cat! (Wait, it isn’t.) Becasue’s boobs aren’t tubular. But the Internet is still a series of tubes and it has plenty of boobs on it. Some of them write blogs!]
In ’21, processed ham rained from the sky for weeks. Off in the distance, the grog frog ribbitted to life, croaked, made some other nameless frog noises, and then leapt off into the sunset. But the Sun never sets anymore. Blame global warming.
In ’22, processed goat bubbled up from the ground for weeks. Off in the distance, the grog frog ribbitted himself to death. Preternatural surreality had not only set this in motion but also replaced my last bottle of groinrinse with a can of Pepsi. I didn’t notice for 71±5 days.
[As an aside: “Smee again! Goan f——— yourself!”]
Not a day went by in ’23 where I didn’t wonder if I’ve too few nose hairs, but I then remembered how many other hairs I’ve. They more than make up for my balding nostrils. But also, my butt isn’t bald.
But butts. I put too many commas before my buts. I once put a comma in my butt, but that didn’t work. (See!?) I tried that with Becasue, but that’s how I ended up in the doghouse again. Fortunately I don’t have a dog… which is why I actually ended up crammed upside-down in a barrel and rolled down a hill into the Whatanagawatchee Swamp. My huzzey-muffet has such a temper sometimes!
But nothing. Butt nothing? But I have plenty of butts—each more voluminous than the last!
If I told you I pinched out 888 words in a single sitting, would you believe me? [No. —Ed.] Well, I didn’t ask you. [Fine. —Ed.] If I told you I found all of these words already written down and just rearranged them to make sense, would you believe me? [They don’t make sense. —Ed.] Go edit something, you stuffy old doddery-codger!
That was embarrassing. I totally forgot about ’24!
Now, in ’25, my plump little huzzey-muffet’s boobs are in fact tubular!
I want to customize my cloud-based web sockets with some new HTML and a bit of JSON served over XHR, but then realized, this is why I’m a blogger, not a software engineer. I’m also unsure what Becasue’s sandals and panties are up to right now, but it’s no doubt pudibund!
And then? This is the story of a flurb: It’s shaped like a blurb! But more dodecahedral in nature, wooboolly in texture, and glubricious in feel. It doesn’t fit into an apostrophe but it’s not bigger than a breadbox either! It’s the size of one of those metal dish things with the handles that you put on top of your stove to cook food in. I forget what those’re called. No, not snronks—it starts with a P. Maybe my axons are being devoured by gnizzles again.
And still the harooloos howl their doleful howl, and still this meanderous stream of consciousness drips from the holes in my skull. I tried to plug those all up but then I couldn’t breathe. So, I unplugged a couple of them. That at least afforded me the ability to hear my head hit the floor and crack open like an egg.