Incipits being rather popish
Lubricated on May 22, 2011.
Incipits being rather popish—and typically being rather undescriptive of my weekly doings and happenings-to—I decided on Monday to dispense with them henceforthwith. And on Tuesday I decided, after yet another display of complete and utter uselessness by my faithful Carpathian Yapping Hound, Yappie, that it was time to sell the senile old bugger and replace him with a scrappy new Carpathian Crapping Hound: A dog described by everyone who owned one as being far superior in virtually every way to the yapping breed of Carpathian. And so, into The Bouillabaisse Boulevard Bulletin went the following classified ad:
Carpathian Yapping Hound, brown, large, slightly used. Missing one leg, talks in his sleep, speaks several languages. Yaps a lot. Answers to the name of “Yappie.” Spayed and neutered. Has had his shots for rabies, syphilis, Madagascan hooting sickness, scabies, and babies. Fun around children, especially those you’d like to get rid of. Batteries not included. For external use only—not housebroken! Void where prohibited by law (all 48 contiguous states, HI, AK, and Burkina Faso). $3,500 OBO.
And then, as I so often do… I waited. And waited. And waited. Wednesday and Thursday blivened by, yet still no one called about my offer that no sane person could refuse. I ensured that my moose antlers were in good working order—by calling everyone in the phone book whose name ended in “-wicz” and neighing at them until they hung up—but still no one called and offered me a suitcase full of dimes for my useless Carpathian Yapping Hound. Clearly, something was wrong, and I had to get to the bottom of it.
Empurpled about the countenance, I rang up the The Bouillabaisse Boulevard Bulletin and demanded to know what happened to my ad and why no one had come clattering at my doorknob to buy Yappie. The managing editor (I think his name was Borb) told me that the ad hadn’t even been printed yet, since the Bulletin is a weekly paper and I had sent it to them just the day prior. I had expected him to concoct some ludicrous excuse, perhaps by blaming the upcoming rapture, UFOs, or that catastrophic lemon-sucking accident that wrecked Monday, but instead he kept his excussion simple and unassailable. After I responded with π2 minutes of irate and unintelligible baying and howling, I regained my composure and threatened to sue Borb and his paltry newspaper in every manner possible. Borb (or maybe his name was Norb?) laughed heartily into the phone, dared me to do so, chuckled twice, laughed some more, and finally hung up. I had the terrible feeling that he continued to laugh heartily even after he hung up, probably for more than π2 minutes… or even more than π3 minutes!
“—No, it was Forb!” I eructated suddenly, interrupting my train of thoughtbloggery. I fell backwards out of my computering chair and landed with a squickening schtroumpf! on the hard, dirtwood floor beneath my computer and its yernicious chair. Yappie cocked his head, raising one ear, and eyed me curiously. I mumbled something unprintable and clambered back into my chair, then corrected the awful, awful mistake in the previous paragrumph. “Now, where was I? Ah, yes! ‘On Friday, I moose-antlered…’”
On Friday, I moose-antlered my faithful yapping lawyer, Engelbert Vlabbitteehoothie, Esq., and demanded to know precisely how many different ways that I could sue Forb McBorbley and his pathetic little newspaper for angering me by not publishing a special issue just for my ad. Vlabbitteehoothie, after a long and awkward pause, informed me that the precise answer was zero: Not only did I have no grounds for a lawsuit of any kind, but I would be, quite literally, guffawed out of any court in the land for attempting to file a suit over such a silly, silly matter. Becoming even more empurpled about the countenance, I then demanded to know how many different ways I could sue my lawyer for such horsefeathery. Vlabbitteehoothie just guffawed loudly and hung up on me. I had the terrible feeling that he continued to guffaw even after he hung up, too.
I glared at Yappie reproachfully. “This is all your fault!” I mooblespouted. “If you weren’t so useless, we wouldn’t be having this problem right now!” Yappie just growled softly and covered his face with his paws. I attempted to cut off my own nose to spite my face, but my nose launched a devastating counterstrike that left all ten of my fingers either dead or missing in action. (And I had tried to use a really big knife, too!) I then decided that my best course of action at this point would be not to crawl in a hole in the ground and cry, but instead to crawl in a hole in the ground and cry… so I did so at once.
The next morning, Saturday loomed at my doorstep in its usual gloomy and saturnine way. I was thus reminded that today was once again Saturday—not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Gongsday, Friday, Sunday, or even Aliphaticpaternosteringday. The relentless march of time apparently wanted to keep marching (relentlessly), regardless of my fervent desire to make it stop, if even for a moment. I stayed in my hole, Yappie kept yapping, and my electric space heater stayed nestled all snug in its bed (to wit, a folded-up pair of jeans).
And then came Sunday with all its sundry horrors. Sunday found me crouched behind my couch while wearing an old-lady broach shaped like a butterfly, because old ladies love butterflies and today I wanted to pretend I was an old lady. Having put my abortive attempts to disenhornswoggle myself of Yappie out of my mind for now, I also pretended I wanted to find out what really happened to Parndiddle McForsterbaster: He had lived his entire life on the head of a pin but now had most likely fallen to his death through a crack in the floor. But—being a bony old lady today instead of my usual effervacious self—all I was capable of was sitting in my rocking chair and croaking out orders to my crack team of gnomish live-in nurses (whom you may remember as my crack team of gnomish EMTs and crack team of gnomish construction workers). Yappie looked on in confusion. Dinglebuckey kept running, running, and running in his little hamster wheel. The cockroaches kept multiplying behind my wainscoting. And Alyssa Milano kept invading my fantasies with her slinky, lubricious little feet.
And thus the week came to a close, bizarrely and confusingly once again.
Or… did it…?