Transfixed, perplexed, and duplexed
Eased on June 9, 2024.
A raft of dreidel-spinning golems floated by right then—a baleful sign if there ever was one. Then, a crocodile joined them—floating belly-up, nose-down, in the same fetid, viscous brook. When a squadron of tadpole commandos followed, I knew I was in for a rough time of it. I backed away from the brook as the water begain to boil—to roil, to roil and boil—and something emerged from the squickening muck.
It loomed over me. It towered over me. It loomed and towered. I didn’t know what it was, but it meant my doom—my doom at the hands of stinking tadpoles and clay-footed golems. I tried to scream but I had no mouth; I tried to murp but I had no tonsils. Fire was all around me—the burning cows of last week’s infrandabulous bovinations had returned to harry me and sally at me. The crocodile mivulated toward me, snappier than glorpf-snakes in a snake-treading competition. Suddenly, I could murp again—and I did, loud and sonorous. Then I grew a new pair of feet (the golem had stolen the originals) and I ran out of there, like a football bat out of northern California.
These were the images that met me in my somnolations on Tuesday. And these were the images that caused me to bolt upright in bed, screaming and murping, and run for the nearest window to jump out of. And these were the images that made me buy a new set of bedsheets on Wednesday.
“Dickies! Eases your dick!”
And then on Wednesday, I received a text message consisting of a series of inscrutable symbols that left me transfixed, perplexed, and even duplexed. They weren’t letters—at least not in any earthly alphabet. They weren’t emoji—unless that clutch of typographical technocrats at the Unicode Consortium had decided to add what appeared to be calligraphic glyphs of every rude gesture used by squirrels to their risible “standard.” I texted back my own rude gestures, including my latest photocopy of my buttocks—but no one replied. Could Bouba and Kiki have texted me from beyond the grave, hurling a final insult at me for not feeding them enough nuts? One may never know. I know I didn’t.
When I asked Becasue her thoughts on this great matter, she just reminded me to go buy more canned corn—and make sure it was not corn gone wrong this time. I assured myself that if I found a can of corn gone right, it would be the first thing that had gone right all week.
That glorpf-snake defenestrated itself right then, as Nurdlebutt disemboweled a mouse and I discalceated my big little redheaded huzzey-muffet. Off in the distance, a foghorn barked. That fetid brook in my dreams was still roiling and boiling. But the crocodile had eaten all the golems and slunk back down into the sewer where he belonged. Fortunately, crocodiles can’t squeeze through the pipe leading to my toilet.
“Poopies! Eases your poop!”