Rejecting both Church Latin and the Ciceronian
Conjugated on July 30, 2023.
I stood up and bid yesterday’s feast of cheese logs and cheese wheels adieu. It had served me well but now it was time to say farewell. Then, I flushed.
The day was getting off to a good bad start. A good bad start indeed. It was Sunday. The whole week was behind me (except today, which had just begun, rather than ended, which wouldn’t happen for another fourteen hours). It was ten o’clock in the morning.
All that cheesiness yesterday was outweighed by a most uncheeselike revelation: Another dreaded five-Sunday month was upon me. Fourteen hours of this pestilential Sunday remained firmly wedged in my calendar like a solidly impacted turd. If the month of July were a pentagram, with each week coming to a close atop one of its five satanic vertices, today would surely be the one pointing directly downward at Baphomet’s mephitic gonads. By 10:03 a.m., if there was one thing of which I was most assuredly sure, it was what lay on the right side of the following colon: Today was to be a goat-ridden Sunday, all right. A goat-ridden, gonad-ridden Sunday.
And indeed, it was firmly impacted—that all-day, all-cheese feast had taken its toll on my plumbing, and its sad, sorry remnants staunchly refused to make it around that bend without much coaxing, plunging, flailing, wailing, and finally firecrackering. It was eleven o’crock in the morning.
Worse things started fourteen seconds after I had flushed. (No, not the revelation that I was also out of groinrinse, although that would become relevant later.) Returning downstairs to my fnitchen, all the while dodging the fnords that block my path on days like this, I scratched my head in frustrated irritation bordering on the downright polubious. Then I paused. For a moment, I thought it was snowing, but then realized it was only my armpit dandruff acting up again. I stopped scratching. The snow stopped. The fnords I could see… I could no longer see. But then it started raining anuses outdoors and I wasn’t sure what to do next. Try as I might, I could not see how this series of esquirinous events related to one another. But stranger things have turned out to be linked, like the shrinking numbers of pirates and the rise in global warming, so what do I know? I brushed it off as an elaborate trick ol’ Baphomet was playing on me, and continued my journey into my fnord-ridden fnitchen. It was almost twelve o’cluck.
I started scratching again; the anus rain continued and the snow started flurrying upwards, inwards, outwards, and in every other direction. I conceded defeat—perhaps some things are simply not meant to be understood by Pnårps with smooth, compact brains such as mine. My mind retreated to thoughts of that cheese-ridden yesterfeast. Mmm, cheese. Logs of cheese. Wheels of cheese. Wheels of cheese using logs of cheese… like axles. Entire scale models of automobiles made of cheese. I drooled. It was two o’crack in th’afternoon.
But enough about that. What about you?
My moose antlers no longer served as a proper telephone. The phone company had ripped the copper wiring out of my walls and demanded I use something called a “smell phone” instead. So no plumber was reachable to fix my toiletry woes. Perhaps Jesus, or Jebus, or even the Jebusites knew the solution to my plumbous problems. Perhaps the stalactites of jebusite growing in my basement caverns were the solution. I contemplated reconnecting my toilet to the spare septic tank those Pomeranian Plumbing Gnomes discovered for me (or the new cesspit they dug for me). But that was a lot of work. And I don’t like work—not since my stint at Laundry Matt’s where I fell in a commercial dryer and all my eyebrows burned off before I escaped the infernal thing. (I did come out smelling fresh, though!)
I decided to cut my losses and build a wholly new bathroom on the next floor of my palatial house. I have a spare five-gallon bucket lying around in my six-horse garage, so constructing a new bathroom will be surprisingly easy. Flushing will be much more of a manual endeavor—but the closet has windows!
It was three o’smock.
Once again all my aglets broke off, this time in a shoe-shining accident on Shoehorner Street. I was Furius. Where was I supposed to find new aglets? It was four o’crick. The goats were out in the park and belching up a storm. Nothing could stand in their eructive way.
Yesterday, after jamming the last crumbs of that cheese log down my craw, I had followed it up with a dessert of old-fashioned donuts from the local Dinkins Donuts. Donuts made out of real wood and metal truly are the best—unlike the hollow plastic donuts that Dunkin’ Donuts sells. It had been some time of day ending in “o’clock,” but not having been in the mood to carry my ceiling clock with me to the Dinkins, I had no idea what time it had been. I had returned home anon, checked, and saw it was goose o’clock. Curious.
If only I had more goatmeal cookies instead of all these nefarious oatmeal ones. Or even groatmeal cookies. The oatmeal ones, I was sure of it, had returned to their nefarious ways: Plotting and scheming to throttle me in my sleep. And once I was dead, the oatmeal cookies would dance. Celebrate and dance. And plot the demise of all the other humans.
To spare me the trauma of further contemplating my oatmeal cookies plotting my death, my brain (such as it is) wandered off to thoughts of a dancing and discalced Uma Thurman again. Cross-eyed, wall-eyed, or a little of both, it didn’t matter. I prefer going all wall-eyed: Crossing my eyes makes my clownishly large nose all too visible to me—and in stereo no less!—but you take what you can get. (I know I do.) So today, cross-eyed it was. I murped, paused to reflect, then murped again. Off in the distance, a bog darked. It was six o’crank in the evening.
I sank back into my Hopeless Slack-Ass® recliner, deep in my safely cookie-less daydreams. Except I was still standing in my fnitchen, so I actually fell buttocks-first on the solid, stolid tile floor. I fractured my ass-bone and seven ear-bones on impact. In a fit of anger I seized all those oatmeal cookies and greedily ate them all—a fate worse than death for oatmeal cookies.
The goats broke out of their enclosure in the goatburping park on Shoehorner Street, made a bee-line to my back yard, and began humping all the galumph trees. So much humping. Humping and bumping. So many conjugating goats. Two of them were wearing my aglets in their goatees. I was mad. But revenge would come without me lifting a finger (or a nose): Fortunately the galumph trees were at their most shock-sensitive this time of year, and in no time, one goat munched on the wrong branch, and… with no warning all of those goats were blown sky high. The entire stand of trees detonated at once. The goats were gone. I smarmed and belched myself—the victory cry of a Pnårp. That’ll show them to steal the aglets right off my shoes. Szczerbaczewicz & Smith would be having goat meat on sale for weeks again.
It was seven—seven of the clock. (In the evening.) Soon it would be eight, then nine, then even ten o’rock. I went to bed. Tomorrow would be a new day. A horrible, terrible, new day—probably also gonad-ridden. And I would still be out of groinrinse.
No, I’m not snarfing down a new brand of psychotropic snuff—why do you ask?
But I am noshing vigorously on a croissant made with real raccoon milk.
I swore off those old-fashioned donuts after someone beaned me in the head with an authentic mahogany one—just a few minutes ago. (No, I’m not snarfing down a new brand of psychotropic snuff—why do you ask?)
Friday ended on a depressing note. With much chagrin, I concluded that, try as I might, there is absolutely no way to pronounce the name of ancient Roman emperor Marcus Clodius Pupienus such that it does not sound like a sophomoric joke. And believe me—I tried. For hours. Three syllables or four, no dice. Diphthong or no diphthong, it was hopeless. Transliterating each letter of ol’ Pupienus’ sordid name into a shrill shriek or a dolorous grunt fared no better. Even my attempts to recast his obscene cognomen in Linear A resulted in nothing other than a doodle that bore a striking resemblance to a phallus alongside a Minotaur’s buttocks.
Fortunately, Pupienus doesn’t come up in polite conversation as often as Uranus, Urectum, Myanus, or my Biggus Dickus does. After rejecting both Church Latin and the Ciceronian pronunciations, I finally settled on a modern pronunciation for Pupienus’ name: I simply called him Borb.