New Gardegnomia
Navigated to on July 30, 2006.
I was sailing in tight little ellipses in the middle of the Indian Ocean on Friday morning, drinking a broad swath of fish juice and rye with beans, enjoying my dizziness aboard the Alyssa Milano’s Feet, when suddenly I spied a small doofus-shaped island that hadn’t been there before I had started my loopy journey.
“Oh my doG, what is it?!” I shouted to my first mate. He didn’t answer. “Is it… is it an island?! A giant bar of Dial soap!? A gaggle of Strom Thurmonds out for a stroll!? What is it, what is it, what is it?!” I squealed like a little pigtailed girl, still in her pigtails. If I had had pigtails, they would’ve been bouncing up and down and flailing about like I was horsebuttock riding.
Suddenly remembering I didn’t have a first mate—that I was completely alone aboard the 2,200-ton vessel—I panicked and began slithering lithe porcupines from my pores. Unfortunately, that didn’t help things much, but checking my email and listening to some MP3s on my iPoodle soothed my wracked brains.
I decided that, after firing my buttocks across the island to subdue the natives, and noshing on my trusty AZERTY keyboard for a spell, the best course of action would be to put ashore and conquer the place in the name of Her Royal Majesty, the Queen of Spain. Being completely alone and with only a wet noodle for a weapon, I imagined I would have no difficulty engaging in this endeavor, as the island looked to be completely uninhabited save a few yaks and trollops milling about, and Larry Appleton hiding under a bush with his Mypiot cousin.
I scootled ashore aboard Alyssa Milano’s Toes (my trusty dinghy), waving the imperial Spanish flag high about my head, and immediately proclaimed the island the property of Her Majesty. I planted a flagpole in the nostril of the first native I found. He didn’t appreciate my presumption; he just stood their and laughed and giggled and even chortled at the women’s panties I had jammed up his nose.
“Now just wait a gall-darned minute!” I shouted frabjously, taken aback at his bergrumptuous perflocasity. “Now see here! This is my isla—” I borked abruptly, freezing my veins in dried ice as I looked him over. “Just… just what the hecklegroober are you?” He was pale as a pail of snow, wore a pointed white beard that came to his knees, and had a little tapered cap on his head that would have looked like a fez if only it had looked completely different than it had actually looked. And… and he only came up to my knees.
“I’m a garden gnome, dear boy,” he answered me in tones that spoke volumes about entomology and endometrial reticulography. “Gnomus horti.” He snorted at my ignorance of his proper Linnaean binomial, his eyes twinkling, his beard snorkeling up and down enquiverously. “…Family Gnomidæ? Order Gnomidoptera?? Hello, are you slow or somethin’? I’m a bloody gnome!” He snobbled impatiently.
I stared, wide-eyed—my countenance vaguely reminiscent of a Carpathian Stinking Hound when it finds itself outstunk by another, stinkier animal.
He sighed and continued. “My name is Haldûrburðgar, and this is New Gardegnomia that you just tried to claim like Christopher bloody Columbus. Oh, and you should also know—those screaming stars? They were gnomes, too, in truth: Interstellar Sprongling Gnomes. Now, son,” he finished, his voice taking on an edge of hexadecimal warning, “don’t you think you should think things over about that flagpole there? Ehh, sonny?”
My answer was brief, succinct, and got quickly to the point: “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!” I fled back to Alyssa Milano’s Feet (alas, not the real ones!) faster than a Bermudan peasant can destroy an entire hemisphere in a thermonuclear pie-eating contest.