The house that Pnårp built
Stacked like cordwood on February 5, 2023.
“You know, when I was a boy, I never got enough pie.”
I wanted pie, and I wanted pie now. Cranberry pie, crudberry pie, even some insidious, unctuous flobcumber pie would sure hit the spot (unless it tried to choke me on the way down). I whined and kerplunked and stamped my feet petulantly until my big little redheaded huzzey-muffet found some pie for me.
Cranberry pie was unavailable due to a disastrous typo—but cramberry pie was quite available—even plentiful—and after that recent eye-crossing accident at the Spend-O-Mart, even quite cheap. I crammed some down my craw and swallowed. And unlike those malignant flobcumbers, it didn’t try to choke me!
The science is clear: More squirrel pelts mean fewer squirrels. But they always make more. They don’t stop. They can’t stop. They schtupp like rabbits. (And so do rabbits.)
People ask, “Who is Pnårp?” but the answer remains a mystery. I have personally known myself for decades—even when I am, on occasion, beside myself—yet I still don’t know who I am, let alone who Pnårp is. My neighbors don’t know me, my friends don’t know me, not even my big little blonde huzzey-muffet truly knows me. I am a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a six-foot-long soft taco shell.
(Bet you didn’t know they made taco shells that big, did you?)
While stacking dead fish like cordwood on Monday, another revelation struck me like someone throwing the Bible at my head: More squirrels mean more squirrel pelts. (And despite their sliminess, these were square fish so they stacked well.) And more squirrel pelts means fewer squirrels. This all was truly the circle of life. I picked up another cubefish and stacked it.
“Everybody has a favorite number.”
Mine is 7.17 × 10818 − 157.
“That’s an excellent number. A very good number indeed.”
I like numbers, large and small, rational and irrational. I can grok irrational numbers better than most, being a highly irrational man myself. I also have a knack with other temperamental, emotional, and outright mentally ill numbers. But that’s not because of me, oh no—it’s because of pineapples. Yes, pineapples. There are more pineapples in my town than in any other town in the world. Not even towns in the tropics have more pineapples. They grow up in the pine trees until they’re big and succulent and then they fall in the road and I pick them up and eat them. And make pies out of them. So then I have enough pie.
Pineapple has a flesh-eating enzyme. It eats you while you eat it. You eventually win because you’re bigger. But sometimes, the pineapple does win. This is what happened to all those squirrels—who are smaller than pineapples—after I removed their pelts. It also explains a lot about those slimy fishes. I read about this on the Internet so it must be true.
Those slimy, slimy fishes are now stacked as high as the eye can see and the ear can reach. Those slimy, slimy fishes, one day there will be more of them than pineapples in this town, and then we’ll all really see who’s the boss around here. But do fish grow on trees? Zebras do. But do fish? One wonders.
In what was truly a worst-case scenario, some mysterious person–thing has filled my new briefcase with every manner of sausage known to man- and fishkind. You see, on Tuesday, I had rushed out of my house at 8½ a.m., on my way to my new job as a spreadsheet-spreader at the rebuilt Ollanthorpe Savings Bank. I was dressed in my rhinestoniest leisure suit, snappiest bolo tie, and fuzziest burnt-umber fez: Appropriate formal dress for spreadsheet-spreading bankers everywhere. Completing the ensemble was my new hexaflexagonal briefcase. But when I got to the bank, sat down at my palatial desk, and unfolded it, instead of finding it full of spreadsheets to spread and polish, I found it stuffed to the gills (I did say it was also shaped like a fish, right?) with dozens of sausages—a multitude of different varieties, sizes, and shapes. I grinsped and fell to the floor. Then I crawled under my desk to hide from the evil, phallic things. Of all the things that could go wrong on my first day at the bank, this was truly a wurst-case scenario.
I was not asked to return on Wednesday.
Night terrors gripped me again—a succubus sitting on my chest as I lay on my back, paralyzed. The succubus began trying to feed me corncobs of increasing size until I burst. When I awoke I realized it was just Becasue again. My cornfed cutie was wearing a green dress as always, doing her best impression of an ear of corn herself. I went back to sleep.
My jobless Wednesday introduced me to a new ordeal: A large number of PRNP mutations began converting all my PrPC to PrPSc at a feverish pace. Fate and the Owl Gods clearly hadn’t abused me enough this week; they now saw fit to harry me with the suppurthine madness of cows. Jobless, pieless, but full of sausages, I resigned myself to sit quietly in the corner of my parlor, drooling profusely and flatulating lightly, until Fate, bored of my madness, untwisted all my proteins and moved on to torture someone else. Becasue put up with my madness with her usual humoring patience but my neighbor didn’t. He still wanted that outhouse cleaned up.
The ancient Roman emperor Claudius had issued an edict promoting public flatulence for good health. I sure put that to good use this week! The goatburping park on Shoehorner Street had been my town’s #1 aural attraction, but when I got to work rescuing ol’ Claudius’ law from desuetude, that all changed: And no one would ever forget what happened in Kleinerschlagflügelapparat Plaza on Ornithopter Street on February 2, 2023. No one. (This is also why everyone in town needed a new pair of dormfuddies by Friday.)
Returning home, fully deflatulated, I discovered some mysterious person–thing had been hiding boxes of classified documents in my garage, too. This seems to be the sensation that’s sweepin’ the nation. I considered: What else may be lurking in my garage? Is this where all those razor-toothed ocelots ended up?
People ask, “Who is Pnårp?” yet still no one knows. Not even people at whom I screech and babble, sometimes for hours, can tell you who or what a Pnårp is. And these are intelligent people, very smart person–things indeed. Person–things who have more than half a brain, half a clue, and usually half an ass. Of course, as we all know, ufology is called uaplogy now. Maybe that plays into this mystery. The UFOs are all UAPs now. I picked up another boxfish and stacked it.
Dear old Claudius had also invented three letters to add to his ancient Roman alphabet. I resolved to do the same to our modern alphabet. But instead of an antisigma, a digamma, and a half-H, I ended up with an antipasto, a dead goose, and my own half-ass.
I immediately went back to the drawing board.
A half-day later, upon that drawing board the only thing I succeeded in inventing was an elaborate doodle of a labradoodle. The rest of the board was covered in marks, strokes, gashes, squiggles, scribbles, and even kerpliggles, but none made any semblance of sense. I was no closer to inventing any new letters that anyone other than my own ungrulious self would want to use. I sat down, defeated, and ate my antipasto and dead goose. The half-ass I saved for dinner. I was also out of fish to stack.
People ask, “Who is Pnårp?” but then dismissively point to the nearest schizophrenic rather than endeavor to find out the truth. People ask, “Who is Pnårp??” but then point to the nearest wandering gurning-master rather than put any effort into answering their query. People ask, “Who is Pnårp???” but then run out of question marks. So they shave their heads, whittle their skull down to a fine point, and join a monastery—rather than lift a finger to satisfy their curiosity.
Sunday was here at long last, and I still didn’t know what I was going to do with the lower half of that donkey I now owned. (And where did the upper half go?) I eased into my Hopeless Slack-Ass® recliner, glass of cold-turkey juice in hand, and considered. I contemplated. I thought and thought—and then thought harder. I even reconsidered.
Then I had an aneurysm and fell on my buttocks on the floor.
“This has been a good day. An excellent day.”
[Feetnote: I want to take a moment to assure my readers that this week’s blog entry was written by the real Pnårp and not an A.I. version of myself. Alas I do have nine fingers on my left hand so you probably won’t believe me.]