The Sun absconded yet I rest assured
Annulated on April 14, 2024.
On Thursday, I concluded that I could finally rest assured that the Sun wasn’t going anywhere again. It had now been three days since the poor, skittish thing absconded behind the Moon for several minutes—until the Man in the Moon convinced it to peek back out and once again bathe our planet in its life-giving, broiling death rays.
On Monday, I watched the Sun have its little panic attack and go into hiding. I was wearing the strongest eclipse glasses money could buy. A passer-by said I looked like I wrapped an entire spool of electrical tape around my face, but actually—shows what he knew!—I used gaffer tape! And, just in case the Sun’s murderous ultraviolet rays got too loud, I also wore the best eclipse earplugs and earmuffs money could buy.
I took umbrage at the umbra, the penumbra, and even the antumbra as they enveloped me. It was truly umbrageous! And when it all ended, I went blind after I stumbled into a particularly pointy tree who got in my way.
The eclipse raised more questions than it answered. One: Could an enormous gaggle of geese occult the Sun in the same manner? This question, first planted in my head when I spied a particularly fat goose waddling down the sidewalk (and defecating liberally), soon consumed all my attention. How could I test the theory? How many geese in syzygy with the Sun would it take? I was all out of mole asses—would it take a mole of geese to blot out the Sun? Where could I find 602 sextillion geese on short notice? That’s a lot of geese! Not even my back yard can hold that many!
Two: Last week, Nurdlebutt proved how aptly yclept she is; now I wondered if this eclipse was as aptly yclept. But then I realized I don’t even know what that means—even though it sounds funny—so I forgot about it.
I then rested assured that I could finally rest assured. I like resting assured.
Inside my addled pate popped an image: An image of hippies throwing caltrops in the road to save old-growth stinkspar forests from Hittite loggers. Laineyballs rolled around lazily on the ground before them, occasionally snagging on the caltrops and bursting messily. Off in the distance, Trebizondian toes wiggled and mivulated against the setting Sun. And that fat goose wouldn’t get out of the way of those toe-visages quickly enough. Becasue and I would be feasting on goose fat for weeks.
Indeed, that anserine and adipose feast would be an amazing sight to behold. Truly, it would be only surpassed by Becasue’s deep, abiding hatred of Burnt Corn, Alabama. Verily, it would be only surpassed by the annularity of my own anus. The specter of mole asses raised their ugly head again, but I’m a six-foot-tall man–squirrel—not a mole. Not even a semicolon inserted in my colon can change my sciurine nature.
Over dinner, I recounted this entire tale to Becasue. It began in 1970 when I had gone from notional to reified (and squawling) in moments. And it ended when I closed my mouth at the conclusion of this sentence. My big little redheaded huzzey-muffet sighed and just filled the ice cube tray I left out again.
Night fell. The Sun was hiding again, this time under the planet. We slept and I dreamed: In my dream, an aliphatically gorticial aardgoose wriggled out from behind the Moon, stood before me, and—girt about the paps with honking, malevolent glee—informed me that the End which was always nigh… is here. This syzygous aardgoose then wriggled back between the Moon and Sun. I flapped my arms wildly, trying to wriggle after it. But I still couldn’t fly to the Moon by flapping my arms. Finding a rocket ship or a Trebizondian trebuchet is out of the question for reasons I can’t plivenscate into words. (These are words! [No, really!]) The Sun finally wriggled out from behind the Moon to remind me it’s all an anserine conspiracy anyway—birds aren’t real, goose spit can’t melt steel beams, and the eclipse landing was faked back in 1969. The aardgoose—suddenly revealed to be not real—vanished in a puff of fnordsmoke.
It was then I remembered my body is simply a vehicle for genes to replicate. Photocopying my buttocks made a poor substitute, but it would have to be good enough for the little buggers. I rolled over and went back to sleep.