A paean to panic
Glibbered about on September 25, 2011.
An assemblage of interlinked tomfoolery on my newest favorite website recently asked me if I thought that panicking was a “good idea.” After much vacillating and inscruminating, procrastination and underdunkery, I composed a responderance of the most muldersome verbosity, which is set forth below in its entirety, for posterity, and with the usual temerity of which only the Grand Pnårpissimo possesses the capability.
Panic is always a good idea. I panic when I wake up in the morning and realize that I’m awake. I panic when I realize everything that just happened was only a dream. I panic when I stand up and my Pnårpy little heart starts beating like a drum smacking against the head of a crotchety old man. I panic when I turn on the bathroom light. I panic when I see the mirror. I panic when I use the toilet. I panic when I have to flush the toilet. I panic when I can’t. I panic when I make breakfast and find I’m all out of garefowl eggs once again. I panic when I have to sift through thousands and thousands of gnomes in order to get the actual cereal out of the cereal box. I panic when I read the newspaper and learn about some horrible new development such as Mayor Rhoodie raising dog licensing fees 15%, global warming coming to kill us all in our beds, or Pope Palpatine visiting my hometown in his Death Star. I panic when I turn to the obituaries and see someone with a P in their name died. I panic when I read the birth notices and see the same thing. I panic when I realize the newspaper is made from at least 35% recycled content.
I panic when the phone rings. I panic when it doesn’t. I panic when there’s a knock on my door. (Surely it’s Samuel Dreckers, come to assassinate me in broad daylight!) I panic when there are no knocks on my door. (Did my house fall out of the known Universe again?!) I panic when my door knocker goes missing. (Those damned squirrels stole it again!) I panic when someone knocks me over the head with a door. (Squirrels! Squirrels! Squirrels!!)
I panic when the Sun comes out. I panic when the Moon comes out. I panic when the Sun goes down, left, or right. I panic when the Moon goes into hiding again. I panic when the Moon is yellower than usual, or the Sun is a bit greener than tacos. I panic when it rains. I panic when it snows. I panic when I try to blow my nose (…and can’t).
I panic when I realize that it’s Sunday afternoon and I haven’t enscribbled a single byte in my efflubious little blog yet. I panic when the gnomes and the squirrels and the detestable reticulated cockroaches conspire together to prevent me from reaching my computering machine in time to do so. I panic when the FTPing takes more than 26.6 seconds, or when it stalls after the “zoot suits” tag as it inevitably does. I panic when my “connection” is “reset by peer” or “set on fire by fnords.” I panic when I get a new dynamic IP. I panic when I still have my old IP. I panic when my IP ends in an even number. I panic when the light blinks on my QDSL modem. I panic when the gnomes blink on my QDSL modem.
I panic—madly and loudly. I panic—insanely and incontinently. I screech and I babble, I hem and I haw, I huff and I puff, I sometimes even make chicken and goose noises at the top of my clavicle. I gibber, I glibber, I even go flabbling (if I’m not already babbling). And if I’m babbling, I pwee and I pwee and I pwee my Pnårpy little brains out. (They usually come out my nose, but sometimes out of my lower left ear instead.) I spin about and squeal and pray to the great insect goddess Strahazazhia Kalamazoo-Kintaki-Meeps, She of the six-legged delights, to protect me from the evil, vile Fate once again. But She never does. She just sends her grasshopper paratroopers after me. So I panic some more.
So, yes. I panic. And it helps.
My panic once singlehandedly took down the Hormel spam-canning plant in my hometown, in an explosion not seen since the Boston Molasses Disaster of 1919. My panic once sent me on a ballistic farting spree all the way to Patagonia. It once saved me from a lawsuit over my raving foot-fetishism. It once prevented me from freeze-drowning in the middle of the Atlantic. It’s done more for me than the combined forces of all the other frantic paroxysms that I suffer from, such as rage, gusto and glee, bamboozlement, and even Pnårpgasmic goonflayvination. It does everything for me, solves all my problems, even waxes my moustache and rotates my tires for me. I wouldn’t give it up for the world.