The unwary victim of cellular ennui
Metabolized on April 2, 2023.
Metabolize, divide. Metabolize, divide.
My teeth started growing all week, growing out of control. By the end of the week I had three mouthfuls of teeth (but still only one mouth to fit them in). More and more grew, and each one grew longer and longer. My tongue was absolutely terrified each time I tried to take a bite of food. My food was even more terrified, but I ate it anyway. Yet I was bored.
Metabolize, divide. Metabolize, divide.
My hair stopped growing all week, receding out of control. By the end of the week I had no hair left on my head. Less and less grew, and each hair eventually started growing backwards—down into my brain. Fortunately my brain was already a hairy mess, so this didn’t really make much of a difference. My brain was terrified of all those sharp, needle-like hairs piercing it. Yet I was bored.
Metabolize, divide. Metabolize, divide.
My nose started growing all week, growing out of control. And it didn’t just smell that well anymore, it outright stank. What does one do about nose odor, especially when one’s nose has nostrils the size of dinner plates? Not even jamming entire baseballs up my nose could stop it. Then my nose stopped growing and shrunk to the size of an armpit follicle. But it still stank. And… I was simply bored.
Metabolize, divide. Metabolize, divide.
My collection of trash-filled cream cartons stopped increasing this week. I decided to switch from light cream in my cold-turkey juice to liquefied mayonnaise. Mayonnaise goes better with American turkey, much like hollandaise goes well with Dutch duck. Cream is good in coffee, tea, and Gilbert Gottfried’s uproarious comedy routines—but not turkey juice. Trash doesn’t fit in mayonnaise jars no matter how hard I try jamming it down into those glassy cylinders. But such attempts at jamming and cramming taught me something new about trash bags: They do fit inside old car tires very nicely. Almost as if old car tires were made for trash.
And thereafter, my collection of old car tires started increasing all week. It increased by precisely one tire per day. By the end of the week I had nine new old tires. I scratched my head, nonplussed and bemused at how that happened, but then remembered that the Monday holiday made the week nine days long. (Gongsday made it eight.) Since my head was totally bereft of hair, I kept scratching it until it shined. Then I scratched my bum.
When the power went out this week, I stumbled around my darkened abode looking for a flashlight, yet all I found were piles of old and ailing fleshlights. Was Becasue playing a trick on me? I didn’t need any fleshlights with her around. But I didn’t need any flashlight either, since my eyes could see in the dark as keenly as my nose could smell in the dark. I was however in the dark about what that Monday holiday was celebrating. Was it Nahum Dalhousie Day again? Dyanne Thorne’s birthday? Victory over Gnomelandia Day? I kept scratching my head in bemusement and nonplussitude. Then I scratched my bum again. It started to shine. Now I really didn’t need a flashlight.
My boredom continued apace all week, continued apace out of control. I forgot to renew all my online subscriptions, so not only were my news and entertainment feeds suspended, but even my books went blank! I was at a loss to remember how to renew my online subscriptions because my copy of How to Surf the Internet for Dummies was one of those blankened books. When I tried to intuit how to get on the Internet from the title of this crucial tome, the result was a surfboard lodged alongside those baseballs. I scratched my bum a third time and thought about moving to the countryside and taking up turtle farming.
That’s what Rev. Nahum G. Dalhousie did after the 1829 treacle mine explosion shut all the churches in town. It worked for him. Would it work for me? The slower pace of turtle husbandry would ease my anxieties—but would it raise my boredom to disease? Boredom is lethal for Pnårps like me—lethally, fatally deadly! Pnårps, much like squirrels, need nonstop, frenetic stimulation, or we go wall-eyed, catatonic, and die. At the thought of this, my anxieties started rising, even higher than my crests on the best of days. I took a deep breath (of air) and shoved the whole trilemma from my mind: Only time—plodding forever forward on all fours, turtle-like in its own pace—would tell. I glanced at my ceiling clock and breathed a sigh (of relief): That subscription must be set to auto-renew. My anxiety, my crests, and even my nose returned to calm. Then I sneezed and baseballs and surfboards flew everywhere.
These old tires were looking awful worn out, so I traded them in for some newer old tires. The newer old tires also came with fresh places to jam trash bags! I considered: Perhaps car tires would soon not be enough. (Is anything ever enough?) Perhaps I should branch out to truck tires, tractor tires, and even boat tires.
March is finally over and done with—dead as a dented doorknob. So, the gnomes who harry me took off their leprechaun costumes and returned to harrying me in their little gnomey fezzes instead. This drove me to believe marmosets and lemmings were pouring from my shiny bum (which I kept scratching). Yet I was still bored.
On Gongsday I switched from aspartame to sweeten my cold turkey juice to melamine. My kidneys protested the change, but when I threatened to feed them all the arsenic and cadmium I could fit between my long, beaver-like teeth, they piped down. That’ll show those organs who’s the boss of ’em!
“Knobby berry?” I asked dubiously. “What the hecklegroober are those?” No one knew what time zone it should now be in Lebanon anymore, and knobby berries were to blame. I began to get loud and obnoxious—audibly knobby myself. Then Becasue slapped me and told me the man’s name was Nabih Berri. I piped down and went back to threatening my intransigent organs with increasingly rare and exotic heavy metals. Astatine sounded like the next good idea. Yet I was still bored.
Metabolize, divide. Metabolize, divide.
I was mildly disappointed on Friday when I plugged my mouse back into my hoary computer, and it informed me it wasn’t an MTP device. One of these days, I thought to myself, You will be an MTP device, little mouse. I believe in you! When I repeated this aloud, my mouse shot me a quizzical glance. If only Becasue had been in earshot, she would have shot me the same, but she was out in the back yard tending the cornrows and shooting squirrels instead of me. I shot my mouse a stern look: “Well, you’ll never be an MTP device that way.”
Metabolize, divide. Metabolize, divide.
Despite all these colorful doings and mousings and happenings-to, my boredom only grew and grew. I fidgeted. Off in the distance, the gnomes wheedled. Closer by, Becasue had come back indoors to paint her toenails. My ceiling clock ticked, tocked, nipped, and tucked. (It was getting long in the tooth itself.) Deep in the bowels of my basement, a spider lurched from the shadows, ate a cricket, and darted into a crack before I could catch and eat it myself. Things weren’t looking up, though—things were looking down.
I looked down. I had spilled my glass of cold turkey juice all over myself again. Crestfallen and glassfallen, I demanded the gnomes clean it up. They didn’t. I picked up the glass and my crests and beat a gnome senseless with both of them. He darted into another crack (there are so many). I picked up his fez and scratched my own crack again. That’ll show those gnomes.
I contemplated buying a new house last night, but my current house is so big I’m not sure where I would fit a new one. My basement? My broom closet? My lightbulb closet? I contemplated buying some new toads too (or perhaps just renting some), but the same problem cropped up. Every room in my oversized house was already filled to the brim with toads.
Metabolize, divide. Metabolize, divide.
I have nine fingers on each hand this week—one for each day. But I’m not an A.I., I’m a six-foot-tall man–squirrel. A bored, six-foot-tall man–squirrel. Finally I tried passing the time reading the labels on my cereal boxes but that didn’t help either. I was up to my waist in boredom. Then I was up to my nipples. Then I was up to my eyebrows. The boredom was so palpable you could cut it with a spork.
Finally, with boredom reaching even my supernumerary nipples this morning, I died. I, the unwary victim of cellular ennui, was quite literally… bored to death.