The splaying of resplendent splendiferousness
Cobbled together on December 31, 2023.
The ultimate week of any year is without fail its most splendiferous. Bookended by two of the most spendiferous days of the year, Christmas and New Years, it reminds us why we keep our credit cards securely out of reach of the gnomes that infest our lives and drain our bank accounts. Alas, even with the gnomes tightly locked away behind the wainscoting where they belong, things took a turn for the worst: The screaming stars aligned this December to make this splendid-spendy week a fifth full week of the month. So, instead of worshipping its awesome, Decembry splendor, I instead found myself aghast at its awful, pentagonal urgor instead.
On Thursday, I was still recovering from my Christmas hangover when it happened. (I had guzzled over 55 gallons of eggnog in a terribly goose-like manner, and now I would pay the price.) All this gorgulous urgor finally came to a head—a very ugly head—nay, a fine point, if you will—when a particularly ugly and pointy stone fell from the sky and impacted directly against my own pointy forehead. It was a cobblestone. Or perhaps half a cobblestone? The other half had been devoured by Ruritanian rock-crunching gnomes. Either way—nevertheless, regardless—nay, irregardless, if you will—it was there, it was dense and pointy, and the dread god Gravitor had seen fit to hurl it directly against my cranium. My previous life in 1886 as a master cobblestoner at C.C. Cobb’s Cobblestonery on Hobgoblin Street flashed before my eyes. I dropped to the floor and drooled merrily for a while.
That job had always been one of my favorite—if short-lived—career choices. It was simple, honest work: Cobbling together all those cobblestones and hobnails to make the finest shoes, cobbling them together while thoroughly stoned, stoned out of my gnome-addled mind… that was my job. Until that day I accidentally kicked over a lantern which set fire to a carefully stacked heap of freshly-welded cobblestones. The ensuing exflagration burned my entire town down. I hadn’t caught fire myself—but I was fired on the spot. Mr. Cobb told me to go suck a garnering-pole. The gnomes laughed at me and offered theirs. I vowed revenge. But I never took revenge. I did however eventually make a very nice rug out of 32,768 gnome pelts. Then who was laughing?
Back here in good ol’ 2023 (what remains of it!), I was no longer a master cobblestoner—I am now more of an amateur stoner cobbled together from discarded squirrel parts. Yea, that would be a more accurate description of me and the corpse I carry around daily and call my “self.” But these new facts on the ground won’t stop me from cobbling together a new pair of shoes for my big little redheaded huzzey-muffet! They shall be made not out of squirrel parts or pelts, nor even more gnome pelts, but the finest horse leather, plastic, and cardboard that money can buy (or furtive hand can pluck from the nearest trash bin). And being cobbled together for my big-footed, cornfed cutie from Squirrel Blind, W.Va., naturally a great number of corncobs would be involved in their cobstruction.
Splaying her resplendent toes, she tried them on. They fit perfectly. Her resplendent toes still splayed in the air, I went back to hunting gnomes and squirrels. Truly they were resplendiferous. And once I returned, we would be having squirrel kebabs and gnome soup for dinner.
“Ridin’ dick bicycle… If you want a ménage, I got a tricycle.”
Or something like that. A fresh batch of squirrel pelts acquired at last, I settled in for a long winter’s nap. These skins were acquired not through my own efforts, but an unholy three-way union between the captain of the Magic Oreo Machine,™ Jada Fire, and a parsimonious flivver-flabber man named Eëtarrh-Otorrh-Sharrtt. This trio had done the bloody deed for me while I fiddled and twiddled with my Becasue’s new shoes. The Twiceler had jetted off to Ogo again, leaving me with only this unholy union to vanquish those six-foot-tall man–squirrel hordes and flay all those gnomes with a sharpened can lid. Which is why all those pelts smelled like sardines. But the rest of that is a story for another day.
And so, I settled in for a long winter’s nap. Knapsack in hand, I settled in for this long winter’s knap. Unfortunately, a gnap—that is, a knapsack made by Wallachian weaving gnomes—was beyond my reach. (All the other gnomes had maxed out my credit cards.) I would have to settle for a rotating pair of fistiboobs and the matricular plenum of gorbled disbelief this year. I didn’t even know what those were, nor why my nightly offsite backups were taking 25 hours each day to complete now, but a few things were certain:
Jada did not eat catfood. Nor did Becasue, even when shod in her lovely new horse-and-corncob shoes. But Nurdlebutt did eat catfood—a lot of it. And Catlips the Clown was dead. As my knappy nap commenced and my recurrent hypnagogic terrors overtook me, I surmised: A beefsteak, or a beef-flavored tubesteak, would have been most elucidiferous right then—but the resplendent, splendiferous display of splayed toes earlier had overshadowed the whole deal. Or, ordeal. Becasue’s toes remained in a fine splendish.
And then that clawed, skinless, eye-ridden demoness ripped my eyeballs out again.
I awoke flailing in abject urgor. I leapt off my roolf, ejactitating madly, and hit my head on the ceiling fan. Back down I went. Fortunately there were no horses up on my roolf—but I was(?). I was, then I wasn’t, then I was again(!). Was it still 2023? Was it still 2022? Had it still been 1886 when I had been firmly ensconced beneath a pile of cobblestones while my town burned and heffalous burpcores enfabriated upon the dorstles and farngorsts, hooting and tooting most merrily while they did so, and the gnomes danced and pranced and jerked and even twerked? I couldn’t say—not because I didn’t know, I did know—but because my tongue had been stolen and my mouth was stuffed with soft, round bowling balls. Forty-eight birds to go lest Becasue get out her horsewhip again.
I wondered why there was a ceiling fan hanging from that tree over my house right then. Then I fell off my roolf again.
Sefernday had been canceled: Something I refused to come to grips with. And so I spent this last, final, ultimate day of 2023 goonflayving wildly in my computering chair, gorstling and dorf-nozzling as if it were now Sefernday even though it wasn’t. [Nice use of the subjunctive there. It’s almost like you’re smart or something. —Ed.]
Thanks, Ed! Have any new holes in your head I can stuff with scalloped trollops? What about the tethered knostlers—even then, I think admiring Becasue’s feet is a finer pastime than listening to your nitterings and natterings and all your nits and gnats and gnutes, Ed! Go suck a garnering-pole, Ed!
The year ends in less than an hour and here I am arguing with my own turgid phallucinations. This has to stop. The screaming stars have to stop screaming. The gnomes have to stop gnoming and peeping and whicking and whacking. The battery charger and battery clamps and nipple clamps and nipple chargers have to stop… whatever it is they’re doing, too. More words. End of line. End of year. End of life. End of Universe. End of the end of it all, ultimately ending most endishly.
A quoth quoted a quart of quorn and then quirted queeflingly. I queefed, she queefed, and then the whole God-damned world queefed in perfect, quirinous unison. “Pbthpbthpbth,” we all went from all of our orifices all at once. My queer ear hairs made the most obscene noises. But I had left both of my actual ears behind on a Cessna in 1969, when I was −1 years old, so that was a filthy lie. They (my ears) crash-landed somewhere over San Escobar and haven’t been seen since. The sharks probably ate them.
Two. Words. Then. Four.
All that horse plastic and horse cardboard sure took its toll right about then. I should have used higher-quality materials in those cobbled-up shoes. Now Becasue was mad at me. I was mad at the gnomes—and at those cheap horses I pulled all that plastic and cardboard from. How did I know whom to blame? A scaly pangolin rode a six-legged zebra into my parlor to tell me, of course: A simple method of learning the truth if there ever was one. I sat and I watched as the gnomes emerged once again from my kitchenly wainscoting and started peeping and weeping again.
But the squamous mammal admitted he was just there to remind me it was New Years Eve: It was time to go set off all those fireworks on my roolf. I thanked him kindly and ascended the stairs.