There are no bagels there
Spaced on November 17, 2024 by
I like bagels. I have always liked bagels. Big ones, round ones, brown ones, even green ones. Everyone likes bagels. But there were no more bagels. They were gone.
We had no bagels, we didn’t. Not here, not even in the Bagel Nebula, we didn’t. Not on Earth, they didn’t. Not even in New Gardegnomia, where the lawn gnomes prance and the lawn gnomes dance and the lawn gnomes wear jewelry around their gonads that look like bagels—no, not even there. (The lawn gnomes prance! And the lawn gnomes dance!)
My great-great-great grandpooty had voted for the one with the prettier feet. He should have voted for the ficus tree like he said he would, but he didn’t. He was warned to ignore that antelope with that pair of cantaloupes, no matter how voluptuous those cantaloupes were. He was warned that his quest for the fabled Nurklestone would be a failure, no matter how many feet of cantaloupes it promised to bear. But he didn’t listen. And now there were no more bagels.
Bologna is just hotdogs for people who like to eat pancakes. And Ewoks are just homeless Care Bears who lost their powers and got hooked on tranq. A barefoot Catherine Howard cavorting about Nonsuch Palace may have held the answer. But bagels are sublime. And now, there are no more bagels. Would there be more bagels? (No, there would not be—not even bagels under limes.)
President Piggy-Man was the sempiternal President of the United Spates (except for that bout of insanity that gripped the American public in 1952 and led to Elmer Fudd’s election as Pwesident). He had worn a new coat of orange in those years. Making America great again was his monomaniacal goal. For four years, he made the hell out if it! He stopped a virus dead in its tracks by making all the ugly people wear masks. He braved wave after wave of lawn gnome attacks by building a wall along the Canadian border almost two yards high. He staved off an economic downturn, then changed his mind and let it in. Mostly peaceful protests ended when someone stole a lectern. And then, after four years of that, keeping America great became someone else’s job.
And then, four years after even that blunderfuss, Phillip Norbert Årp f———ked it all up by voting for the one with the prettier feet. And so, we left Bouillabaisse Boulevard, we left Toroid Springs, we packed up our bagel shop, and we lit off to the Bagel Nebula.
It wasn’t the constant Langolier attacks, which started in 2022, that made us leave. (The lawn gnomes prance!!) It wasn’t the rampant, rabid A.I. that devoured the Zubenelgenubi Street paperclip factory and started transforming entire counties into paperclips. No, that’s not what told us, “Time to go.” It wasn’t even the homeless man who kept screaming “Time to go!” on the corner of Pinnfarben Street and Bandersnatch Way. It wasn’t even the comfy, soft furniture and comfy, padded cell walls. It was—
An antelope with a pair… of cantaloupes voted for… the one with the prettier feet. I always like prettier feet. Langoliers—!? They figured out how to swarm forward in time and start devouring us from the future instead of the past. Hotdogs are just bologna for people who like to eat dongs. I wonder where my horse pills have gotten off to. I wonder where all my pills have gotten off to. I wonder where those horse balls went. I wonder where… why, when, how, who, what, whence, whither, wherefore, whenafter, however, whenbefore, whenbetween, and wha-wha-wharblarble the whirly-whorled, whiffled whore of Puffnagle Bagel Barn would could should quould doth vary the nar-bibblies. (Nar-Bibbly the Moon Rock!)
Oh, dord. Fnord. Floored? Mord. Off in the distance, a dog barked maniacally—and died suddenly. Nearer, right outside the window, a mann shhaped likee aa dooffuuss walkked inn slooww circles, chittttering too hhimmselfff liike aa mann repossessessed. Hee maay ha’been aaa squirrrell. Orr hee maay haa’beeeen squeeorlingg. Or maybe that was mee, mee, mee-mee-mee.
“I like bagels. I have always liked bagels. Big ones, round ones, brown ones, even green ones. Everyone likes bagels. But there were no more bagels. They were gone.” Someone riffled out of the wall and said that to me. But then I realized: I said it myself.
They brought me bagels today. The doctor brought me bagels and there wasn’t even a horse pill hidden inside them. The nurse brought me a doctor who brought me thosssse bagellls. Two bagels: An everything bagel wrapped in and warped around a plain bagel—but that one had coffee sprinkles so it wasn’t that “plain,” now was it?
I like it when my edible toroids seem to defy the laws of three-dimensional space-time. I let go of them and these interlocking bagels floated up into the air and spun before me. Maybe it was those new horse pills, the ones that deflated my man boobs like a pair of cantaloupes run over by a T-34. Overcome by hunger and impertinent impatience, I plucked the two bagels from the air and ate them. Everyone tried to stop me. I’m not supposed to eat things that look like bagels anymore. But no one gets between a Pnårp and his bagels.
Bagels. Bagels are yummy. There were four lights, but I ate two of them. Oh, more horse pills…!
—And so, we lit off to the Bagel Nebula. (The lawn gnomes dance!!)
We didn’t know where we were going. (Hopefully the Bagel Nebula.) We didn’t know what would find. (Hopefully bagels.) But we did know one thing, all right: Arthur Eddington and his ambitious project to count every hydrogen atom in the Universe had failed. (There were simply too many.)
I like bagels. I have always liked bagels. Big ones, round ones, brown ones, even green ones. Everyone likes bagels. And there would be bagels. More bagels.
We would call it Nova Bouillabaissia. And there would be bagels there.