A snootful of donuts
Imbibed before October 2, 2011.
Wrapping the tablecloth around me like a cape, I clambered up onto the table. My growing audience watched me with expressions of concern mixed with barely-contained panic, as I reared up on my hind legs, spread my arms wide, and began hooting like an eagle.
The table wobbled; my sudden and frantic attempts to maintain my balance in response only made it worse, and the table overturned. The Grand Pnårpissimo hit the floor, landing flatly on his buttocks, but quickly regained his aplomb—and the customary upright bipedal posture that his species is noted for. Seeing my chance, I returned to the first person and darted toward the door, red and white checkered cape fluttering madly. I made my escape before Pam or Meg emerged from the kitchen and tried to beat me asunder with their lovely pink or orange flip-flops.
“Another successful breakfast… at Pam & Meg’s!” I toot-toot-tootled to myself as I ducked into an alley. I ignored the fact that I hadn’t actually received any breakfast prior to fleeing the restaurant, but that was only a minor detail—a minor detail which had no effect on the overall success of the visit.
I strolled down the street and finally settled on breaking my fast this fine Thursday morning at the Drunken Donuts, my town’s best donut shop / liquor store, located conveniently on Strontium-90 street between the eigenmongery and the butler cutlery store. Rum-soaked donuts and fortified coffee duly noshed upon, 21.11½ minutes after entering the shop, I exited—in a considerably more wobbly state than when I had entered.
Purple monkeys washing dishes flitted by me as I wobbled, Weeble-like, back down the alley way and then finally stopped near a familiar pile of empty buttwash crates. Pink elephants I had heard of, but purple monkeys—washing dishes, no less!—were news to me. Not even that time I had ingested 12,001 µg of delicious, delicious lysergic acid diethylamide had I experienced such melanderously muldersome visions of poppycock and hogwash. Dizziness filled my brain, as if a dog had chased its tail one too many times inside my cranium. Those donuts sure packed a punch! My futile attempts at preventing myself from impacting the pavement on the thick, flat portion of my forehead resulted in me impacting the pavement on the pointy thing a few inches below it. As I landed, it dutifully broke and bent sideways. This naturally allowed the rest of my face more intimate contact with the sweet, sultry asphalt, and by the time I scrambled back up into a half-sitting, half-sprawling, all-inebriated position, my stomach had decided to divest itself of those sixteen rummy donuts and half-gallon of fortified coffee—all over the pavement and everything else in sight.
“Truly… I must be… a Weeble!” I panted as I worked on standing back up, over a period of sixteen minutes. This whole situation was even sillier—or, as some would say, noodlier—than the investiture controversy, the thirty years’ war, and Jada Fire’s buttocks combined. (And those big brown buttocks sure combine well with just about anything!) “For… Weebles… wobble… but they don’t… fall… down!”
I fell down again.
Much to my chagrin, the abortive Concordat of 1111 then suddenly reared its ugly head right then, but a quick slicing motion with my one free hand made short work of it. (My other hand was busy trying to straighten out my broken nose before it was too late, but that’s a story for another day.) I wobbled to my feet again, declared my Weeble-like nature at the top of my goaty voice, and then began wobbling—wobbily, I might add—in the general direction of 229B Bouillabaisse Boulevard. Even in my intoxicated state, I was still sure that I could rock the cynics if I tried. And try I would…
Hours later, I awoke under a dark and starry sky with the sound of rapidly vrooming traffic to the right of me. My first instinct was to go vroom! myself for a while, answering the call of the passing motorcars and blunderbuses, but then I realized I had no earthly idea where I was, nor what time it was, nor where my pepperoni-patterned necktie had gotten off to.
My head was pounding as if a thousand industrious little gnomes were hard at work with pickaxe and shovel inside, and my serpentine tongue felt like those gnomes had already gotten around to replacing it with a bale of cotton.
I reared up on my hind legs once more, emerging from the muddy ditch in which I had remained for more hours than I could count. I peered out from under my atavistic brow ridge and took in my surroundings: It was night time (hence the stars), and fewer than fifty smoots away there was a freeway of the most elephantine nature (hence the vrooming). Back home, my terrycloth dishrags were most likely sputtering and nuttering and wondering where their master had gotten himself lost this time.
The dogs chasing their respective tails inside my brainpan lurched into action, and within moments I had concluded that, as there was no freeway within fifty miles of Bouillabaisse Boulevard, my effort to wander home with a snootful (of donuts) had turned out to be less than successful. I also concluded that by now the shuggothlings in my bestiary had probably devoured every other creature I kept, and covered the entire room floor-to-ceiling in an iridescent green slime. Other random thoughts popped into, and out of, my reeling mind, but I tried to push them all away, for now was not the time to start fantasizing about Alyssa Milano’s slender young feet, nor Britney Spears bathed head to toe in shuggoth mucus!
I looked down and murped a little. My typical efforts to maintain my clothing-clad status had also turned out to be less than successful while I was unconscious, or so it appeared, for I was missing not only my pepperonial necktie, but also my shirt, undershirt, pants, underpants, underunderpants, socks, undersocks, oversocks, shoes, cummerbund, codpiece, wainscoting, leisure suit jacket, homburg, fez, and fedora. Even my shirt’s buttons had gone missing. There was plenty of mud encasing my squirrel-like body, but that made a paltry substitute for my usual overdressing and layer-upon-layering.
At least there wasn’t any paltry Malthusian Fluffernutter to deal with in this ditch next to the freeway, I mused to myself while my brain-puppies went to work trying to figure out how I would get home with nary a speck of dryer lint to my name now. I didn’t even have any soy sauce packets to use for barter either. Minutes passed, then more, and then even more. The puppies kept chasing their tails, barking, and whimpering.
“If you flea-bitten mutts don’t come up with an answer soon, it’s the dog-boxing plant for the lot o’ you!” I threatened. Zippy and Fluffy, the two most loyal members of my schizophrenial chorus, immediately threw their support behind me; Shnarkey just hid under my amygdala and started shrieking about Hitler.
Time marched onward in a relatively straight and constant direction (but even time has to stop to take a leak every now and then). At last an idea sprang forth from my addled little pate: Go flag down a passing motorist and beg—nay, demand!—a ride back to Bouillabaisse Boulevard. The first objection that the rational sliver of my brain raised, concerning my state of obvious nakedness and mudcakedness, was quickly dismissed by a combined chorus of all the little voices and the pack of running dogs serving as my “thought process” this fine day. Further objections, one concerning my additional lack of a loaded AK-47 or any other similar device of gentle persuasion, and another objection relating to my peculiarly square and horse-shaped face, were also quickly dismissed—or met with a barrage of “Hitler, Hitler, Hitler!” until I acquiesced.
So, my mind was made up: Bum a ride from some bum with a car, it would be.
The next thing I knew, I was resting comfortably in a hospital bed as a team of quack and semi-quack doctors and nurses worked feverishly to squeeze my macerated brain matter back in through the several orifices that my head sported. I was back in the Ollanthorpe Memorial Hospital, a hospital that was named after a man who was trampled to death by a pack of underdogs. How fitting, I thought. From what the attending obstetrician told me, I had allegedly attempted to chase the tires of the first vehicle I had intercepted on that freeway, and, as expected, this rather canine course of action had met with brain-squishingly disastrous failure.
“That’s the last time I ask a pack of dogs in my brain for advice!” I interrupted the doctor’s narrative, cross-eyed and -nostriled. Looks of concern broke out across the faces of everyone in the operating room. Were they working on a crazy man? I spied a body bag lying on a cart next to the operating table—no doubt meant for me if the brain-stuffing procedure had gone poorly. I began shrieking like a bird of prey; the looks of concern around me began giving way to barely-contained panic. Ha! Just where I wanted these quacks!
Wrapping the body bag around me like a cape, I clambered up onto the operating table. My growing audience watched me with expressions of concern mixed with barely-contained panic, as I reared up on my hind legs, spread my arms wide, and began hooting like an eagle.
The operating table wobbled; my sudden and frantic attempts to maintain my balance in response only made it worse, and the table overturned. The Grand Pnårpissimo hit the floor, landing flatly on his buttocks, but quickly regained his aplomb—and the customary upright bipedal posture that his species is noted for. Seeing my chance, I returned to the first person and darted toward the door, black plastic cape fluttering madly. I made my escape before any of these doctors were able to pick up their steely implements of medicinery and try to beat me asunder with them (or the blue flip-flops that one of the lovely young nurses was wearing).
“Another successful breakout! Now… back to Pam & Meg’s!”