The pink, sticky day ended
Chaptered and versed on September 12, 2021.
1 This past Wednesday I discovered the world to be made of oaths and walking sticks. A few bells, and lots of whistles later, I was sure I had it: The finest grumbumptuous jar of pink Fluffernutter this side of the Onasukawego River. 2 Naturally, the moment the jar of sticky, pink goo had fallen into my hands (and indeed it had fallen—from an airplane, I surmised), I immediately unscrewed the lid and went to town noshing upon it.
3 Some people smear their Fluffernutter on bread and make sandwiches out of it. Some people wipe it on cookies or even crackers. Some people even bake it into cakes or fill their donuts with it. 4 I just jammed my hand in the jar and ate one thick dollop after another, raw and plain. People stopped and stared at the madman standing in the middle of Doodlesworth Plaza, dressed in fluorescent orange, face covered in fluorescent pink goop, noisily noshing upon glob after glob of the cloying, saccharine stuff. 5 I stared at the madman too, laughing heartily, until I realized that the madman was I: I was the madman making loud slurping noises all the while covered in viscous, pink gloop. 6 And everyone was laughing heartily at me (including myself). Since there were no mirrors around, I assumed the madman—I mean, I—was having another schizo dissociative episode. 7 What else could explain it? 8 I dropped the jar of puce ooze, licked myself clean with dispatch, and then sheepishly slunk on outta there. Then I broke into a run, and ran home like a bat out of northern California, as fast as my fleshy wings could carry me.
9 The pink, sticky day ended. And another would begin any moment.
10 And began one did: With the intense, desiccating Sun shining down on us all, turning everything crispy and brown. I shook my fist at the giant, fiery orb in the sky, but She was unmoved. In fact, I think She just retaliated by becoming hotter and brighter. 11 I feared She had hurled a solar flare at me, and it was only a matter of time now before I would be vaporized. I thought about my jar of pink Fluffernutter. 12 Fate, the Owl Gods, and now the horrible Sun—all against me. All against me. 13 I blamed climate change for the near extinction of buggy whips and phonograph needles, and this now too. But that was neither here nor there: What was here was a bowl of delicious bat soup, and I was determined to eat it—even if it killed me to do so.
14 “Abbah, oogah! Abbah, oogah! Abbah, oogah boogah boogah!” With this trite phrase on my lips, I narfled a garthok this week, 15 and then I bagged another dog, passed a burrito, passed gas caused by the other six burritos I ate, and even wrote myself a new list of popes to try to fob off on the next door-to-door salesman that stumbled haplessly upon 229B Bouillabaisse Boulevard. 16 I was sure the incantation would even better than the nonsense two weeks ago and even “Meep, mippy, morp!” from so long ago. 17 And if it didn’t—what did I have to lose?
18 Coming home Thursday, earlobeless and eyelashless, I learned what I did in fact have to lose. A clawing at the cosmic continuum interrupted my ruminations and brought me back to the present. 19 I surmised a skeezle-wumpus was trapped between branes again, trying to get free, and return to our particular universe. I locked all my kitchen cabinets just in case.
20 Making four pots of coffee this fine morn, I accidentally steamed a frond on my housefern. Despite my apologies, my fern still saw fit to thwack me on the nose. I retaliated by burning a neighbor’s apiary down. 21 That’ll teach that fern to be nicer to me.
22 I was going bald on my back, but my nose was compensating for it. I nearly had an entire moustache and beard growing from my nostrils alone by the end of the week. 23 I ran up and down the street hooting, then down another street hooting, then in and out of each store on each of the streets I then hooted up and down. Having spent weeks exercising my lungs, increasing my VO2 max past even the best marathon runner or professional cyclist, proved vital for this endeavor: 24 I hooted and hooted, nearly nonstop, belching out one owl-like shriek after another as I ran for miles around town. I only came to a stop when the owner of the goatmongery on Goading Road loosed his guardgoats upon me to get me to cease. 25 I did cease—and ran out of there like a bat out of northern California. 26 Again I obtested the Owl Gods to reward me for my piety—or at least not leave me flapping in the breeze like so much exposed genitalia—but I was not optimistic. I knew with 950‰ confidence that the next time I spied an owl, it would try to claw my eyeballs out and my scalp off. 27 It was just one of those things I knew.
28 President Piggy-Man tweeted this week that when the looting starts, the hooting starts. I couldn’t have agreed more, and started hooting like an owl the moment I read the tweet. 29 Surely the Owl Gods would bless me now.
30 A vagarist had gone on a stravaig, and I was none the wiser. I was too dead to care—a mystery man had tried to befool me again, raising my needy-nerdery levels to those not seen since the Orthogonians defeated the Franklins in ’68. 31 Now, I was busy engrossed in my new hobby studying the grooming habits of ticks, when a fire broke out next door. 32 It wasn’t long before the fir trucks arrived and started hurling fir trees at the house in a concerted effort to put the fire out. It didn’t work. 33 The house burned down. My own house fortunately was safe—along with my new, and already vast, collection of ticks in jars. But at the end of it, I did have a bad case of pumphead.
34 And then with a bombastic burbling that shook the very Earth to its roots, something else arose from the murky depths, and I had to ask: 35 “Mot, death personified… or the Bolian barber?”
36 “Go yerk a turkey!” A ludicrously comical voice responded from the abyss.
37 The incongruence of it all was truly umbrageous. Where there in fact turkeys lurking about my home? Lurking turkeys, waiting to snatch all my ticks from their vivarium the moment I let my guard down? 38 I remembered that sorry episode with the infernal turtles—dozens of them infesting my basement back in 2014, and nary a thing I could do about it. Slowly—very, very slowly—they had eaten my entire praying mantis colony. 39 Fortunately, these infernal turtles were also infertile turtles, and they only lasted a single generation. Once they all went shell-up, the cleanup was rather easy. 40 But my praying mantis breeding business never recovered, and I decided to move on to bigger and buggier things.
41 And at least my dear old Mamårp hadn’t named me after her lab rats.
42 I became just another Boltzmann brain, floating all alone in the thermal equilibrium. And then, as soon as I had appeared—I flashed out of existence.