Wearing orange after Labor Day
Fluoresced on September 5, 2021.
I emit C++ code from my buttocks before I go to to bed—every day! Today it was code to make my computer sprout wings and fly around the room. The code worked, bug-free: My computer flew out the window and then I had to go find it. I did find it, nestled in a treetop on Witherspoonworth Lane along with two curious crows. Getting the computer down proved no hard task, but getting the crows to not peck my eyes out while doing so proved to be no easy task. I recovered my computer, but then had to make a stop at the eyeball store to get a new pair of eyes. Blundering blindly down the street in search of the eyeball store turned out to be an adventure of its own. And that, my ever-suffering readers, is my excuse if this blog entry is late this week. (And it is.)
Football players just slap each other’s asses. And hockey players beat each other with their sticks. My kerfrumpt brills and queegs—and occasionally eats the neighbors’ housepets and geese. We all have our ways of showing cifrection. I, the Most Serene and Grand Pnårpissimo, hoot and howl, shriek and babble, and flap my arms like an owl’s wings. Few get this. But I get it, so I don’t care if others—few or none, or even a negative number of the little minions—get it. To them I say: Mlaw, mlaww, mlawww!!
To a roiling boil I brought my chamomile tea, this Friday, per the instructions, then I dunked the teabag in, prayed to the dour owlish gods watching my every move as of late, and then sprayed the tea all over my kitchen floor, ceiling, and three of its four walls. (The fourth wall has been broken down for years.) I daren’t drink the tea. I knew, in my nightmares that night, predatory chamomiles would terrorize me for wasting their precious tea, but it was a sacrifice I had to make: A sacrifice to the owl gods. Wasted tea and terrifying flowers were better than owls swooping down upon me and trying to pluck more of my eyes out and rip my scalp off with their talons.
That night, while asnooze and recumbent, I dreamed of a patch of towering chamomile flowers beating me senseless with their procumbent stems and delicate, bipinnate leaves. I obtested the owl gods rescue me, of course in vain. None would help me despite my sacrifice. No owls were dispatched to pluck these flowers from their course. I tried to run, but outrunning an angry flower is nigh impossible in a nightmare which the flowers control.
Tomorrow, Monday, sometimes known as Moonday or Mooingday, will also be known as Labor Day. Mayor Rhoodie, drunk on power after decreeing a permanent COVID-19 mask mandate (but only for ugly people), had proclaimed last week that wearing white after Labor Day would be enhanced from a mere faux pas to a felony. I therefore, starting today—a day early!—vowed to wear an entirely fluorescent orange outfit for the remainder of the year, except for my shoelaces, which were green. Fluorescent green. Besuited in an orange blazer, orange overshirt, orange undershirt, orange pantaloons, orange panties, orange hose, orange shoes, and finally an orange asshat or two atop my head, would I now therefore be. This costume would turn heads and—best of all—it would ward off the owls that dog my every step. Unless the owl gods would finally hear my prayers, which—so far—they hadn’t. Or, like Fate, perhaps they did hear my prayers but had taken to mocking me and sending more horrors my way daily instead. It was after all a theory as valid as any other.
Pining for Alyssa Milano—and her feet—is something I haven’t done in some time, so I decided to spend a few hours doing so this week. Unless I won the lottery, it would be the high point of my week. And so, a-pining I did go, and—I am very happy to report—not a single pine tree tried to fall on my head in reprisal. As I wandered and gallivanted through the forest, pining and pining, they all just stood there, graceful and stoic as ever, while I got my pining all out of my system. My tumescent, fluorescent asshats quivered, almost as if to goad the baleful conifers to action, but still they stood still—tall and erect as ever, the graceful monarchs of the forest. Indeed they held back from toppling themselves atop my behatted head. A few of the more spiteful ones did toss their pointy, vile little pine cones at me, but my sturdy asshats protected me from such wan assaults.
Hippies, Yippies, yuppies, and guppies. One of these was not like the other. But which? My absquatulating aside, my blaze orange asshat sure was a fine patootie of a humdinger. Zing!
On Saturday I practiced both my manual and pedal dexterity until I could not only do top-tier magic tricks with one hand but also type with my toes. Then, a knock on the door…
“Well, that’s a sticky wicket!” I contended sagaciously when the visitor—one of my neighbors from down the boulevard—told me about his missing calico housecat and asked me if I had seen the furry little thing skulking around. “A sticky wicket indeed! Almost as bad as a sticky pickle!” I rummaged in my pants pocket for the sticky pickle I carry with me as a visual aid for just these occasions—standing on one leg, rummaging in my left pocket with the toes of my right foot—for both my hands were busy spelling out curse words at the man in sign language. And I was of course still wearing bright blaze orange from head to ankle—as much as my girthy, bursiform frame and curiously square head could handle.
I continued: “Do you think perhaps your cat was eaten by a kerfrumpt? Those scaly ol’ beasties do like noshing on housepets, you know. Cats, dogs, ferrets, gerbils—all are food to a hungry kerfrumpt. They suck ’em right up their eating-snout!” I made the obligatory sucking noises with my own non-snout mouth. “Kerfrumpts: They do make great pets—unless you have another housepet.”
He looked at me bemusedly, opened his mouth once, twice—thought better of asking me what I knew was on his mind—what was a kerfrumpt?—and just backed away slowly. I nodded with finality, turned on my leftmost heel, and went back inside my palatial abode. I grinned: Another hesitant knock on the door dealt with, the man sent away in a manner that would ensure that that particular uninvited door-knocker would never return. I myself returned to my Hopeless Slack-Ass® recliner and my kerfrumpt curled up in my lap. I serenely drank my potato juice. At least sullen, eyeless potatoes won’t harry me in my sleep like those angry, angry asteraceæ will if I drank another cup of chamomile tea.
P.S.: I would apologize for the disorganized mess these paragraphs are, but I assure you, much worse is yet to come.