Not a typewriter
Tabulated on July 25, 2021.
I.
I realized my blog needed a catchier advertising slogan to get all those eyeballs out there to glue themselves to monitors and read about my adventures in banal surreality. So, I considered. I pondered. I pompously held my goaty chin in my hand like some kind of quasi-pseudo-intellectual. I deliberated—deliberately, I deliberated, and it was most liberating. “‘Faster than a snoozing turtle’?” I thought out loud (loudly). “No, too confusing. None of my readers will know what a turtle is.
“‘Faster than a speeding bullock’ perhaps?” But mention of bullocks only served to remind me of my new job on Mr. Smuthabupple’s Organic Farm that I start next week. It was no slogan.
“Ooh, I know!” I snapped my fingers out loud (snappily). I decided to go for the green crowd—socially responsible eyeballs whose owners care about recycling their old tires, replacing plastic and Styrofoam containers with burlap, and only having certified organic pets. So, as I pinch out this week’s blog entry and deposit it onto my website, I shall announce to the world and all its rapt eyeballs:
My docile & perfunctory blog is now made from 35% recycled toilet paper!
II.
Bouba and Kiki were scurrying around my back yard, squirrelly as ever, while I sipped my breakfast of potato juice and raw garefowl eggs. Now they were in the trees, now they were on the bird feeder, now they were scampering toward the minefield I had constructed last week as a makeshift squirrel trap. But they were too smart, these fuzzy villains, and remained at a safe distance, mere inches from the first squirrel-sized Bouncing Betty. And now they were defecating nonstop on both sides of a slow-moving Möbius strip, so I frustratedly started defecating nonstop in slow motion to the tune of “Radical Penectomy” by Murderdeathcock, my favorite (and in fact the one and only) genocide-metal band.
A third squirrel emerged from a galumph tree and danced mockingly with the others—tail aquiver, snout asmirk. I briefly considered naming this one “Snargledartfast-argleparr-plargle-g’dortdortdort” but then thought better of it. I couldn’t even remember my own name most mornings, so how would I remember that assemblage of squiggles approximating pronounceable syllables?
So I dubbed him Blunk, and also—to keep things interesting—Bloik. One squirrel, two names. Blunk and Bloik. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t have to. Enough things made sense. In fact the entire Universe was making too much sense, so I took it upon myself to single-handedly add more entropy to it.
My lubber-fiends and wirry-cows were gallivanting between my orangery and nearby apiary, which distracted me to the point I almost slipped and tore all the light switches from my walls. “By Monsignor Drupaldripple Fuzzybuttox!” I swore mightily, “That was close enough to burn the nose hairs off a fruit bat!
“Why, ants in my pants—my pants on an ant!” I followed up my earlier curse with an equally pointed epithet. There were no ants, but this didn’t matter. Somewhere, there were most definitely ants. And they were also adding entropy, nonstop, to the Universe.
The wind blew gently: The lithe mivulations of my spaghetti trees put me in mind of my red-haired second cousin, 1⅛ times removed. The spaghetti was in full bloom; now the sauce was filling in, giving the dense bunches of pasta a tomato-red glow. Spaghetti trees weren’t the greatest thing since self-slicing bread but they were certainly close—especially to anyone who’s as much of pasta afficionado as me.
I smirked. All you rubes, you witless boobs, must buy your pasta in little boxes from the little stores using your little dollars. But I grow a never-ending supply of spaghetti right here in my back yard! All for myself! Woo-hoo-hey!
I paused to reflect lest I overwhelm myself with such smugness that I end up impacted for days. My doctor keeps telling me I have to stop doing that. I reminded myself I wasn’t the first to cultivate spaghetti trees. Credit for such macaroniculture goes to a family in Switzerland who has been farming them for almost a century. But, I reminded myself, even though I was not the first to cultivate them, I was certainly the Pnårpiest to have done so.
I continued chootling to myself, smirking, watching my trees and my squirrels. I would have spaghetti for dinner tonight. Fresh, fresh spaghetti, direct from the branch. These spaghetti trees were great, all right. Almost as great as my own inventions, self-stirring coffee and self-toasting bagels. My self-satisfaction rose to new heights of ineluctable smarm.
But those inventions never saw the light of day. My earlier proposal for a self-eating pizza had made me a laughingstock, and now none of the other inventors would take me seriously. But some day I’ll show them. Some day I’ll show them all. Who do they think they are, standing in the way of the Grand Pnårpissimo and his amazing creations? Not even the prancing knot of squirrels in my yard take me seriously anymore—and man oh man, will this six-foot-tall man–squirrel show them some day! Just a few more inches, little fellas, a few more… scurry your furry little selves out onto my minefield…
Equally smarmy and embittered, quietly cursing my squirrelly lot in life, I waddled my doofus-shaped body out to go pick some spaghetti.
XLVI.
The seventeen McDonald’s locations in town all closed this week. The rumor is Mayor Julian Rhoodie had declared Mayor McCheese’s fine city “our sister city,” before a hapless staffer broke the news to him that McDonaldland is entirely fictional. As a face-saving gesture, Rhoodie promptly banned McDonald’s from operating within the city limits. So now I had no cheeseburgers, and I wanted a cheeseburger really badly.
I drove around town in slow circles looking for another hamburger joint. There were none. My town sported a surfeit of donut shops: Everything from Dunkin’ Donuts, to Drunken Donuts, to even a Dinkins Donuts and a Randy Munchkin franchise on Zubeneschamali Street. There were pizza parlors, Chinese restaurants, steakhouses, and sub shops. There were regular bars, juice bars, salad bars, and even spam bars. There was French cuisine, a kosher–vegan deli, and a curious Scottish–Ungabugandan fusion restaurant no one ever returned to (or returned from). But after McDonald’s had slurped up the last purveyor of pink slime–based foodstuffs around, they had an absolute lock on all things burger, from ham- to cheese- and everything in between. And now with a mayoral tantrum in full swing with no signs of abating, the whole town was burgerless. Bereft of burgers. Simply… without burger.
Surviving my jaunt out into the real world unscathed, I drove back home, the tippity-tapping out of surly sentences and positively piqued paragraphs on my mind. I would give our very own Mayor McCheese a piece of my mind—the biggest piece I could afford to part with! I slammed the car door with grim determination, lowered the garage door equally grimly (and only hit myself in the forehead with it twice), and strode up all my stairs—each and every one of them—to sit astride my computer and to get busy emailing, lest I get busy starving.
Surviving my jaunt up multiple flights of stairs with only two bruises and one contusion, plus a bent fingernail and a chipped nostril, I plopped myself down in my computering chair, turned the ol’ girl on, and distracted myself for seven hours with the first things that popped up on my screen. My ceiling clock hooted and I remembered I had an angry, angry email to compose. Then something else popped up and another nine hours flew by faster than my mouse’s scroll wheel could carry me.
Dawn arrived, with cocks crowing and my scaly ol’ kerfrumpt brilling loudly for breakfast. This snapped me out of my scrolling reverie, and—I had to admit I was proud of myself—I was able to move the mouse across the entire screen and double-click my email app before something else distracted and engrossed me for ten hours this time.
A blank window popped up on the screen. The cursor blinked: It was waiting calmly for input.
“Now, Mr. Mayor,” I snarled disgruntledly, “Let’s see if you can withstand this diatribe of righteous vituperation!” Keys were pressed, emphatic font sizes and colors were chosen, and bell and whistle WAV files were attached. After 45 minutes of spleen-venting rage was splattered across my keyboard, mouse pad, and much of my computer monitor, the email was complete. It was perfect—a rousing harangue against the mayor’s anti-burger tyranny. It lacked nothing—not a single exclamation point was omitted, nor a single emoji unused.
After wiping my computer down with disinfectant and a strong degreaser, I hit send. It clicked, whirred, rebooted twice, and at last fired off the email to Rhoodie’s office voicing my vociferous opposition to his burger ban. The city’s ISP immediately wrote back that he was not a typewriter. I blinked—flummoxed.