With a bubble and a squeak…
Bubbled and squeaked on March 7, 2021.
With a bubble and a squeak, the Pnårp returns.
The veritable Babylonian captivity of my docile & perfunctory page, which hid my babbling from the world for eight years, has come to a close. At last now leading my blog out of its long, anserine, piriform captivity, I am become like a prophet of yore. For nearly a decade, I had been a silent Zerubbabel: He of absolutely zero babble. For eight years, I had bloviated in silence. For sixteen ha’years—for thirty-two qua’years—I had gesticulated madly, but where none could see. I had shrieked and babbled where none could hear.
Each and every one of these days I had frittered away, taciturn and bitter—a bitter and tacit tern, that is, and one might even say a bittern—frittering away the days all feathered and peckish, my pointy beak high in the air, but yielding up no audible babble for the runcible world to witness, until suddenly—
“Great Kmart’s ghost!” I exclaimed one day in July of 2020. It struck me: “I should blog again!”
And so: Exactly twenty-two years since this curious little bald spot on the Internet first appeared, again it returns. It’s almost like it was planned that way, isn’t it? Almost as if 2021’s 365 miserable little days intentionally lined themselves up on the calendar so March 7 would be a Sunday again, exactly as it had been in 1999, all so I could bump and gurgle out a new blog entry—fresh, and steaming lightly—on the same day this year as the first year that I had taken to bloggery like a dromedary takes to commentary.
With a bubble and a squeak—but no bangers and mash, not this time—the Pnårp returns.
Why had this docile & perfunctory web page, this little pile of turgid burbling, lain dormant for so long? Why had the squiffling & babbling gone unrecorded for 2,989 long and ungrulious days? Where did yours truly (that’s me) go for eight years, two months, and one final week? (But who’s counting?)
Did I fall in a hole in the ground and fill it full of spiders?
Did I hide out in my I’ve-been-hornswoggled corner all this time?
Did I take too many exaltation transference pellets? Eat too many tommygoff eggs or drink too much harooloo milk?
No, the answer is much simpler than that—so simple it ought to be expressed as obliquely inscrutable as is possible, in order to compensate both for its own ouvert simplicitude and my obtuse dirigibility: “Aut tace aut loquere meliora silentio.”
Shortly after those Christmas goats went off that fiscal cliff, I had had a revelation. Two days (Tuesday, I might add) after smearing that nonsensical entry across the eagerly awaiting face of the Internet, I had had a revelatory elevation. Two days, three hours, fourteen seconds, and fifty thirds after—to be so precise as to mildly irritate my readers—I had suddenly experienced a revelatory, elevatory reverie: While sitting atop the loo in my lavatory, deep in revelry at my most recent productivity, I realized:
A man is only as good as his tools.
I sat bolt upright. Then I stood too quickly, tripped on my underwear, and hit my head on the sink, then the radiator, and on the way down, the wainscoting, the baseboard, the corner of my bathroom scale, and finally the hard, cold tile floor below all. Right then a second revelation revealed itself, to my elation:
A poor craftsman blames his tools.
“A conundrum!” I wondermuttered at the conflicting aphorisms. I began to drool amidst this concussive discovery. “How to resolve this seeming pair of ducks…?”
I never resolved it.
My desultory, docile & perfunctory blog fell into abject desuetude for seven years.
I was snapped out of my reverie in July of 2020 by news of Kmart’s demise reaching even my private lavatory. (It was very loud news.) At once I had to do something, and simply removing the percent signs from all my URLs as fast as I could simply would not suffice. At first I tried replacing all the percent signs with the far more attractive permille sign (‰), but that didn’t suffice either. I contemplated going all the way up to the permyriad sign, but that was too ornate for even the Grand Pnårpissimo. So, as another bitcoin scam broke out, this time directly in my living room, I decided: I would begin blogging again.
And, nose hair dandruff notwithstanding, nothing would stand in my way.
Except for one thing: Another seven months. The nigh-impregnable months of August through February. They did stand in my way, stout and grim—unyielding in their mensual ways. So I waited.
And waited.
In August, Thomas the Tank Engine and his evil minions tried, but failed, to keep me down. I won, they lost. I had always known all those derailers I had stolen over the years would come in handy some day. So I waited some more.
And waited some more.
In September, Barney the Dinosaur and his evil minions tried, but failed, to keep me down. I won, they lost, and I have a nice purple throw rug as a memento from this brouhaha. And I waited some more.
And waited some more.
October took the direct approach: Rather than rely on any minions, General October assaulted me himself, followed by the slow approach of Generals November and December. I won, they lost, and my 2020 calendar went into the shredder with a satisfaction I hadn’t experienced since witnessing that mass-discalceating mishap on Ooidonk Avenue in 2007.
January arrived, furiously hurling all thirty-one of its days at me all at once, but I persevered. I won, all four weeks of January lost. I didn’t just turn the page—my whole 2021 calendar went into the shredder just to spite January. Then I waited some more.
And waited some more.
Squat little February was next, squatting in the midst of my living room like a stalwart dwarf hovering over a Japanese toilet. I waited. February simply tried to out-wait me, but I was an expert abider, a professional cunctator, and February’s days were numbered. I ticked them off, one every twenty-four hours, while February sweated bullets and refused to get off the pot. Thanking my lucky stars that 2021 was not a leap year, I smugly called out the twenty-eighth day, to the gorgothine month’s unremitting horror, and waited out another 5,184,000 thirds.
February finally withered up and died, blown away on the retreating winter winds like a used COVID-19 mask, and I went to work. A-tapping and a-rapping on my board o’ keys, I worked. I worked and I worked, typing out reams of bloviating nonsensitude, careening insanity, and unwaveringly obstinate nonsequiturity. March looked on balefully. I smirked. March slowly unveiled its wily plan: Sending first March First, then March Second, then March Third, and even March Fourth at me, one after another, like comic book henchmen surrounding the superhero but only attacking him one at a time. Alas the tables had turned—now I was racing against the clock, sweating bullets, and forgetting to flush too—but I was unfazed. With grim determination I marched on to my March 7 blog entry. March finally lost its resolve, letting March Fifth hang around for a full three days without doing much of anything. And so I typed and typed, and tapped and tapped, until my latest blog entry—the whole bubbling, squeaking affair—was complete. And just in the nick-knack, paddy-whack of time!
I’m back, baby.
With a bump and a gurgle, the Pnårp returns.
With a bump and a gurgle, and a big, turgid burble—the Pnårp returns.