A bolo tie and a blogging accident
Haberdashed on September 24, 2023.
Much to my chagrin, I learned on Tuesday that the last of my beloved bolo ties had died in a blogging accident. Without my signature asshat and bolo tie, I feel naked—and without the rest of my clothes, I certainly am, but my bolo tie—and asshat—are my most quintessential accouterments!
Beside myself with grief and far from grinning—and nearing panic—I hurried downtown to see which of our fine mongers had any fresh bolo ties on sale. If I didn’t hurry, my neck might die of exposure to the elements! The haberdashery next to the fishmongery and asshattery on Wiggensworth Street seemed like the most appropriate place to start my search, unless I wanted to craft my own bolo tie out of a dead fish or an asshat.
Unlike the Aroostook Roo Store’s door, the entrance to Harshbarger’s Haberdashery presented no insurmountable challenges. I blorpled right on in. A clichéd little bell tinkled when I swung the door open, but then it started making honking sounds. I had to give the place credit for originality.
“What’s the good word, Vivvy?!” I tooted cheerfully as the door swung shut and the honking subsided. I grinned, masking my chagrin under a stiff upper lip and even stiffer lower nose. “I’m in need of a new set of bolo ties! My last bolo didn’t survive that six-weblog pileup on Monday. Do you have any bolo ties? How many do you have? And how long are they?” I only wanted the longest bolo ties. According to my moles in the fashion industry, only the longest, thinnest bolo ties were in vogue this year.
Mortimer V.I. Harshbarger VI, the haberdasher ever since that unfortunate horsebuttock riding accident led to his father’s demise, looked at me dumbfounded. I often found people quite dumb, but my good friend Vivvy took things to a new level, finding himself dumb like this. His father Thaddeus C.L. Harshbarger was always a good friend of mine—until that one time, out horsebuttock riding, his asshat came loose, and…
“Gah! I told you to get lost and not come back!” Vivvy glared at me—nay, he positively glowered. Indeed he had quickly lost his dumb and found his voice. I neighed.
Then I went wall-eyed for a second as my brain-monkeys lurched into action, plucking memories from deep within my cortex like a clutch of macaques picking lice from each other’s backs and eating them. Clichéd harpsichord music played in the background. I went further wall-eyed. Hmm… I did now remember my cynocephalous misadventures back in 2021, wherein I did gravely perturb, disturb, and patently insult and offend the young haberdasher. But… had he told me to leave? And not come back? To amscray and never eturnray? To go screw? …A pheasant? To go yerk? …A turkey?
“And my name’s not Vivvy!” He added petulantly. My eyes snapped back into place.
“No, but your wife’s is!” I shot back in the most innuendous manner I could.
I limped over to the fishmongery to inquire whether or not they had any dead fish which I could slice and dice into a set of new bolo ties. That encounter next door with a very, very angry young haberdasher ended in fisticuffs and defenestration. I was going to need a new hat for my ass, too. But one thing at a time. That one thing now was: Fish. And plenty of them.
Fishwright’s Fishmongery has always been most gracious to me and sells me all the dead fish I could ever want. They love me as a customer: They know I’m an excellent and reliable patron of their piscatory products. And, I haven’t tried to burn the place down, blow the place up, nor even sabotage its intricate machinery with a barrel of bull semen. Yet. But there is still time.
And so, now chagrinless and grinning mightily, I ambled out my favorite fishmongery with a bagful of dead fish. I even paid for each of them—with real money! Each dead fish was individually wrapped in the finest fish wrap and tied with the finest fish bow; they were all packed into the finest fish bag. I would have a whole raft of new fish-leather bolo ties by tomorrow.
I snuffled past the asshattery without a second thought—my nose held high, my nostrils flaring as snootily as I could make them. I still needed some replacement gluteal headwear, but Harry Whyte is such an insufferable old codger, I’ll not deign to patronize his pygian emporium even if he’s the last milliner on doG’s green Earth. I can buy all the asshats I need over on Hobbyhorse Lane, after all. Those best fit a horse’s ass, not a man’s, but my own head and ass are rather more horsey than manly, so a horse’s asshat is actually better for me.
On my amble home, I considered going wyoming for a while, but after such a rough wyoming in the Thattagawatchee Forest a couple years ago, I thought better of it. So, I went boeing for a while instead. My luck quickly ran out though, which led to the deadliest air disaster since those rabid mushroom terrorists crashed their ornithopter into Rory Calhoun’s summer cottage in 2001. Fortunately, all of today’s dead were geese. Golden geese with golden eggs, but still—just geese. And no one cares about geese. Everyone hates geese. I know I do. And I know you do.
I freebirded home from the flaming wreckage, stopped to extract the 368,000 pieces of junk mail stuffing my mailbox, and then entertained myself by teasing my paper shredder for a while. Still necktieless, I knew she couldn’t retaliate by throttling me, no matter how hard she tried. In, out, in, out the papers went. It got her motor running all right, but the papers never penetrated deep enough to catch between her terrifying, interlocking metal teeth. I giggled like a twelve-year-old girl still in her pigtails. Then one of those got caught in that ravenous shredder’s maw and I almost died of a scalping. I decided to never tease her again.
But I didn’t die—not quite, not really. I still had a freezer full of lutefisk to nosh all up—and if that wouldn’t kill me, nothing could. Certainly not an angry and frustrated paper shredder.
Becasue was pleased with that ugly little handbag I had brought back from Finland as a gift for her. She was less pleased by the load of crusty barnacles and turgid geoducks I had included inside as a surprise. And she never did find out about those mermaids!
But a catastrophic boobtubing accident had broken out in front of my television while I was in Europe. It wasn’t quite as disastrous as the Toba volcano eruption that wiped out most of my hominid ancestors, but it was certainly as embarrassing as that fishpieing mishap that befell Becasue and I a couple weeks ago.
“Well, I told you not to put them in those tubes,” I admonished her. After these trips to the haberdashery, the fishmongery, and the asshattery, now we needed to make a trip down to the brasserie next week.
Bored, I picked up the phone and dialed one of my dear old friends.
“Hey, Vivvy!” I hooted merrily into the curious little device. I still missed my moose antlers. These “smartphones” they were cruelly foisting on us nowadays really didn’t seem that smart at all. And mine, shaped like a turgid geoduck and smelling about as fresh, lacked almost every useful feature my old landline had possessed. Try as I might, I could not figure out how I could use it to fend off a horny moose in rutting season—which was beginning in mere weeks!
But, back to the task at hand. My cheery burbling was met with surprised choking sounds: My conversation-mate and I were off to a good start.
“No one ever found out where she stuck that K, did they?” I chortled, again using my most innuendo-laden tone of voice for maximal jerkassity. More seething and gruntling ensued. I paused.
“Perhaps the first half made her simply forget the second half!” I hung up before Vivvy’s sputtering protestations could take the form of coherent syllables and words. Moments later the phone rang, but when I saw who was calling—it was that annoying little man who ran the haberdashery on Wiggensworth Street—I rejected the call at once. Who would want to talk to him? I certainly didn’t.
Another successful and stimulating conversation at an end, I decided to toss caution to the wind and go wyoming around town at last.
The week ended. It had been a long, strange week, but there was one thing I learned that made it all worth it: I still did not know how to take a bite out of an Italian sub without all the ingredients squirting out the other end. This lesson saddened me, so I stopped writing here.