Bloviating and brachiating
Wrenched away from me on December 3, 2006.
“Dingleberry… hamster!!” a man shouted on the street ahead of me as I walked down Skullduggery Lane near Parsimony Plaza this Thursday. I was immediately incensed, and hence, fenced in, I tensed: How dare someone mention my hamsters, or their dingleberries, without adding the obligatory ligatures about signatory gerbils and their loquacious acquaintance with Loquisha and my recurrent amnesia?
And how dare someone let my hamster dingleberries cross their synapses without offering a prayer of thanks to the voluptuous insect goddess Strahazazhia Kalamazoo-Kintaki-Meeps and Her six-legged delights?
Then I realized it was none other than Maximilian X. Wilson who had spoken blasphemy about my hamsters: My old neighbor, presumed dead and zombified after one too many run-ins with the trained assassin, that knave Samuel Dreckers. Last I had heard, Dreckers had dispatched Mr. Wilson with a roundhouse kick to the left cornea. My heart pounded in my chest as I clenched my toes and drenched myself in the sweat of pure, unadulterated rage. Lithe porcupines slithered from my pores. How dare he?!
Bloviating and brachiating like a chimp running for higher office, I made my way up to not-so-poor Mr. Wilson and answered him with as much effrontery as I could muster (my mustard having run out three days prior, and the mouse turd with which I replaced it a pallid substitute): “How dare you, sir?”
He was taken aback—much like the damaged pair of socks I had taken back to Spend-O-Mart the day prior.
“How dare I, Mr. Årp? How dare you, sir?” Mr. Wilson retorted, snorting, and not the least bit sporting—certainly, it was disaster that he was courting. His nostrils flared as he confronted my effrontery with a frontal bit of grumpery—I believe I caught him off guard, my audacity beating his sagacity and mendacity to a bloody pulp within the confines of a few seconds of metaphoricalistics. My eyes met his—then they were gone, lost in the fleshy flab of his overblown face.
“How dare I, Mr. Wilson?” I blustered, not the least bit flustered, again thinking of my empty jar of mustard and the mouse turd that replaced it. I tried to buy time, by spelling out in no certain terms how I felt: “Well, I never, sir—I am just shocked, shocked that you could do such a thing. Shocked—and appalled!”
“You’re ‘appalled,’ Mr. Årp?” he sneered, as I had feared. Then he slipped up, falling into the trap I had so artfully engineered, or so it appeared: “Mr. Årp, you are a hamster dingleberry, sir. And I call you this with a clear conscience.”
“Oh… ‘You’re “appalled,” Mr. Årp?’ Ha!” I mimicked him, sprinkling quotation marks liberally about the sidewalk. Then I made my final move: In one swift motion, I pulled a hat pin from my isosceles valise, and stabbed him right between the eyes with it! Squealing like a little piggy separated from its trusted swineherd, he collapsed in a pile of sticky goop, flowing into the drainage ditch alongside the road. He would never mention my hamsters or their precious dingleberries again. I stared down at his liquefying gobbledygookery with not a little satisfaction, knowing he would be in Hell—or possibly northern California again—by the end of business on Friday. I pulled out a stopwatch and started counting down the minutes, first in English, then in Xhosa.
“Good bye, and good riddance, ‘poor Mr. Wilson,’” I chuckled, then buckled my hat pin to a passing cuckold, and knuckled under and finally bought myself some terrorism insurance from a passing armadillo man. Walking off into the sunset, my furry boots atwitter with victory, I offered one final comment to anyone who watched from behind the bushes and under the shrubbery:
“Pah… pah… pooey.”