Collecting the caps from every bottle of light cream
Collected before December 26, 2021.
“What fate Omoroca?”
Christmas was yesterday, but today’s blog entry will assiduously avoid the entire topic for fear of angering the Langoliers. Christmas is over, the ravenous fiends are quickly devouring the last remnants of its bloated, red-and-green corpse, and it is best forgotten. I would like nothing more than to regale my readers with the tale of the magnificent, disaster-free Christmas feast I put on this year, but the cliché is actually inaccurate. There is in fact one thing I would like more: To avoid becoming a tasty snack for a herd of angry, razor-toothed Langoliers looking to devour anyone trapped in the past.
And that is what I would like nothing more than. To avoid becoming a tasty snack for a herd of Langoliers.
This balky predicament brought me to my newest hobby this week: Collecting the caps from every bottle of light cream, tube of toothpaste, and jug of milk that I consumed. I keep all these caps in neatly ordered jars, themselves neatly ordered into rows in one of my closets. I’m not sure how all these caps will come in handy, but I know they will some day. Some day, I will accidentally lose the cap from one of these goods (stranger things have been known to happen to me!), and rather than sinking into the depths of despair over a capless bottle or tube or jug, I shall simply saunter over to my closet, open one of these multitudinous jars, and return with one of the thousands upon thousands of caps that I have saved. That will show the world who’s boss!
“What fate Omoroca…?”
Breakfast on Friday started out above-average, but quickly sank into the depths of frustration and yowling fury. I made grits. But my grits were too smooth—not gritty enough—so I added some sand to make them grittier. Then the butter was not buttery enough, so I added some more. Then the salt proved too salty and the pepper’s pepperiness was found wanting. So I added more pepper, then more kinds of pepper, and then tried my damnedest to remove some of the dissolved salt. My alchemical incantations accomplished nothing, so I finally gave up and compensated by cooking more grits… adding more butter… and adding more pepper and sand. Each time it was too salty, or not salty enough, or too peppery, or not peppery enough, or too sandy, or not sandy enough, so on and on I added more grits… more butter… more salt, pepper, and sand. Still something was missing. The pot was now overflowing with burbling yellow paste and I realized what was absent: A boiled sheep’s brain soaked in vodka. After scurrying over to Tripeman’s Meat Market and quickly scurrying back, I added the ovine brain and let the goo stew for another five thick, bubbling-and-squeaking minutes.
At last, my brainy, gritty concoction was perfect—but now there was so much of it that it wouldn’t fit into a bowl. Out of patience and with the breakfast hour lurching straight through the lunch hour and landing at the dinner hour, I threw my arms up in carunctious resignation. Bowls be damned: I jammed my face right into the pot and gobbled the mixture all up like a starving dog. It was buttery, and salty, and peppery, and scrapie-licious! And to top it all off, it sure was gritty all right—so gritty I now needed a new set of teeth.
“What fate Omoroca!?”
“Dingleberry hamster pie!” I intoned scrumbliously on Thursday, nearly breaking out into song. Fornicaciously I continued: “Better than crudberry pie! Better than doodlewhacker pie! Better than apple, cucumber, or even flobcumber! I can never get enough hamsters in my pie!” My mood turned sullen at that last thought: I was sure that a hamster shortage loomed on the horizon. But then I concluded that the souring of my mood was just the three-month-old milk I had been drinking in lieu of my purloined potato juice. My mood returned to its previous level of near-manic euphoria. I got up and I danced. I even, dare I say, pranced—and all the while I continued chittering and whistling to myself about hamsters, dingleberries, hamster dingleberries, and pie, put together in various combinations.
I remembered not to wear my entire asshat collection when I paid a visit to the Spend-O-Mart. So no one recognized me and I didn’t get booted out on my buttocks over what transpired last time! So now I owned a new box of №2 pencils to continue my endless wall-scribblings uninterrupted.
The snow had stopped falling. Yet the snowblowing and squirrel-sifting continued. I was all out of blue cheese and this saddened me. I wanted more blue cheese.
I slept and I dreamed. It was Thursday. I dreamed that when I used my ice cubes I had to always use them in pairs, and always two that were adjacent to each other in the tray (starting from the north)—lest a dour, stout gnome kick me in the head for out-of-order ice use.
“What fate Omoroca!?!”
I slept and I dreamed. It was Wednesday. I dreamed that global warming caused a massive increase in the goose population, and people stopped worrying about sea level rise when the rise in goose poop threatened to flood the cities out of existence instead. I dreamed that—
I awoke with a start, fell out of bed squeeorling in panic, and hit the floor with a nose-bending thud. My kerfrumpt lurched awake at the sound and cocked her eating-snout at me. I realized then it was only a goosemare—we were safe from drowning in caca d’oie. I stopped squeeorling and crawled shmeepishly back into bed. I was as embarrassed as that time in 2019 when I had confused an hors d’œuvre with a horse doofer.
Morning arrived. I stood at my window watching the aftermath of a particularly banal snowstorm, noshing calmly on homemade blue cheese. It had once been simple cheddar. We had lost touch in 2005 and it wasn’t until yesterday morning that we were reunited. I was cleaning out the bottom drawer in my fridge when I found the ol’ girl. Outdoors people scurried about with shovels, snowblowers, and squirrel-sifters. At the rate the snow was falling, in sixty-one days, the whole neighborhood would be buried. A new ice age would begin. Global cooling at last.
I’ve given up trying to reduce my personal CO2 footprint by holding my breath indefinitely. I just keep turning blue and dying. Fortunately it only took the entire month of December to realize this: Undecimber, Duodecimber, and even January would be safe from my stupidittings. Oh, to be young and wise again instead of old and stupid! But some things can never be.
At least one thing was going right: I couldn’t confuse Omoroca with Amara La Negra.
I’d also had just about enough of those little Klingon aphorisms.
“What fate Omoroca!?!?”
I slept and I dreamed. It was Tuesday. I dreamed that massive fissures opened up in the ground and swallowed up all the geese (and the poop). I dreamed that global warming was replaced by global barming—people just went crazy (but in British). I dreamed that—
“Oh, krigglegrink!” I swore puissantly. “Cooncargle and imdurate harborbutting!” I was awake again, in my bed in the real world. I looked up at my ceiling clock, tolling out its hours with little pictures of gnomes. My kerfrumpt remained asleep on the floor, her eating-snout curled around her silithicine spine and her six stubby legs tucked beneath her scaly underbelly. I heard my breakfast downstairs. It was screaming for me to go boil, broil, and eat it.
I lurched out of bed. Six minutes later I rose to a standing position. I stumbled twice, six, eight times, then took a flying leap down my stairs and landed ear-first in a heap at the fourth-floor landing. Righting myself, I stood up. Another sixteen minutes passed and I stood rightside-up on my actual feet. I sauntered into my kitchen like nothing was amiss. But my toaster was broken; when I called 1-800-TOASTER, they told me that due to a Cheez-It shortage it would be a week before a toaster repairman could be dispatched.
There was nothing to do but wait—and hope that my gnomes were okay. Time’s slings and arrows had done their best to skewer me but struck my toaster instead. Off in the distance, a dog bonked. I passed the time cleaning my refrigerator, defrigerator, and kitchen bidet.
And then there were Amara La Negra’s suppluptuous feet, but I wasn’t sure what to make of those. My sempiternal need for photos and videos of a barefoot Chloë Moretz had now come to an abrupt end.
“What fate Omoroca—!!”
I died again this past Monday from all those tiny, tiny, little tomatoes I had eaten last week. New Year’s Day is next week and that reminded me to die once more. And so I died.