A horse, a printer, a chipmunk, a ruined handbag
Horse-drawn on January 12, 2025.
I sat in my computering room, in my computering chair therein, and marveled briefly at the wonders of modern communications. I wondered how people used to get by without things like email. In the 1800s, when someone typed up a letter on their computer, they had to print it out, fold it up, stuff it into an envelope, and pray that the U.S. Mail would deliver it instead of just feed it to their horses as they often did in lean years.
I looked over at my printer, eyeing it suspiciously. I hadn’t printed a letter on it since 2005. I wondered if it was feeling neglected. But then I remembered that time it kept printing pictures of buttocks when I tried to print a letter with it. I went from being sad to being mad at it again. “Bad printer,” I ground out through clenched teeth. “That’s why you just sit there gathering dust now.”
“No, I’ll distract her with the paint—you move in and get the milk!”
My big little blonde huzzey-muffet glared at me as I returned from the garage coughing. Blue haze and the smell of chainsaws followed me. I shut the door.
“We really need to get a new car.”
“Whatever for!?” I gasped. “My dear Trabi has never let me down!”
“If all the smoke from that thing doesn’t choke you to death, I’m gonna!”
I sat at my kitchen table, sipping my coffee and perusing the morning edition of the Bouillabaisse Boulevard Bulletin. The kitchen table was back where it belonged, in the kitchen—all three pieces of it, too. My coffee was deliciously cornmeal-flavored again. Becasue had come back to me so I could play with her feet again. “Passer-by assaulted in broad daylight,” read the top story on page C-12. I frowned.
“I bet it was that guy in the chicken suit,” I piped up. My 5½-foot-tall girl–chipmunk shot me a hostile glance. “You know… the, uh, other guy in the chicken suit.” I had already said too much. I turned the page.
There are many bad places to be when your mind starts wandering. The ass-end of a horse surely tops that list.
I rubbed my buttocks gingerly. Those were both back where they belonged, too—all three pieces of them. That madcap caper had sure been a doozy! What a surprise about that horse! And that printer will never talk back to us again, either!
My walk through miles of nostril-deep snow had been long and arduous, but I made it back home. I froze to death only twice along the way. My biggest fear had been encountering along the grueling journey eyebrow-deep snow: There was simply no way I would be able to push my doofus-shaped body through snow that deep. But I lucked out. All the eyebrow-deep snow was on the other side of town.
“No, not house paint, horse paint,” I sighed into the phone. “Horse paint. … To paint a horse of course! … Yes, I’ll hold. … Excellent, but only thirty cans?! I’ll be right down!”
My goat-like mind wandered away from that printer and onto bigger and better things—like the reams of A0 paper in my basement and the printer that went with them. I wandered out of my computering room and down to my basement to admire the stuff. 999,949 mm2 of bright white awesomeness baked into each sheet, all waiting to have things printed on them! Truly A0 paper was a modern engineering marvel.
The only thing I lacked was a scanner big enough for Becasue and I to sit on.
Then my goat-like mind, of its own volition, wandered farther afield, to hors d’œuvres. I wondered if bacon-wrapped horse cheese would make good ones. Only one way to find out.
“Man dies in horrifying accident when pants catch on fire,” read the next headline. I turned the page.
My invention of soup cans with a free can opener inside was not selling. I wondered if self-slicing bread would be the apex of my inventor career.
Becasue wasn’t speaking to me again. I retreated to my ninth-floor bathroom to wash up. I was sure that, with enough scrubbing, all the paint would come off. The new hoof-shaped dent in my forehead was another story, however. Next I would have to deal with a very angry and equally splattered chipmunk. Her favorite outfit and handbag were both ruined. I sighed. I wasn’t sure how much corn it would take this time, but it would be a lot.
On the bright side, my own clothing was nowhere around us when the paint started flying.
Safely ensconced in my favorite bathroom, far from prying eyes and ears, I threw open the window and burst into happy song.
The Venerable Bede and his not-so-venerable beads intruded into my mind at the worst possible time. Moreover, Wilbur P. Elmot had truly outdone both Smedley Butler and Thomas Midgley in possessing the dreariest, stuffiest, and most bureaucratic name ever. Lessunder, Dan Quayle, always thinking he was the next Napoléon III, still had trouble with lumpy potatoes and knobby berries. Therefore, Amtrak’s planned service to Transnistria, Norstrilia, and Transnostrilia had been canceled: They realized those destinations are all on other planets. And that gurning competition would be happening in II I⁄II weeks!
I had to learn the hard way—mare milk is really hard to come by.
Vainly I searched every online shopping site to see if anyone made tubular, octagonal handbags that were resistant to horse paint. Or resistant bras and panties. My own hexaflexagonal briefcase had survived the encounter unscathed, but when that horse-doofing had gone calamitously awry, Becasue’s handbag and other accouterments had been total losses.
Then my mind, of its own volition, wandered to hors d’œuvres again. I wondered if bacon-wrapped sow cheese would make good ones. Only one way to find out.
I was wrong when I said Nurdlebutt is better at clawing people’s faces off.
“No, grab the udders!”
“What udders?!”
I daydreamed of solving the world’s problems by inventing A −1 paper… or even A −2. Or at least the world’s letter-writing problems. But perhaps some things should simply not be done. I pulled my favorite sheet of A8 card stock out of my pocket and squeezed it affectionately.
“Sir?” A voice broke me out of my papery reverie. “Are you ready to check out, sir? You’re holding up the line.”
“Of… of course I am!” I gathered myself and feigned indignance. “What kind of man-shaped doofus do you take me for?”
“You looked like you were a million miles away,” the clerk added as he began ringing up one can of horse paint after another.
“No… just 999,949 mi away…” I returned to dreaming about A∞ paper.
My faithful Trabi was being unfaithful again. She wouldn’t start. I had to get to the Spend-O-Mart, and fast, lest someone else buy all the horse paint! I fiddled with the choke, stepped on the throttle, and tried the key again. Then I remembered it was winter. And it was cold. And the snow was nose-deep out there. Maybe even eyebrow-deep.
I fetched Becasue’s hair dyer and went about warming up the engine block.
Then, after much choking, throttling, strangling, and chain-pulling, she started. The engine sputtered to life… died again… flopped around helplessly… made a noise resembling a fish dying… and then sputtered to life again. My garage filled with blue smoke. I grinned.
Then I remembered rats had eaten off all four of her tires. Bummer. But I needed my horse paint! I decided to walk.
I had to learn the hard way—horses don’t want to look like zebras.
On the plodding journey back home, through ice and snow of depths heretofore unseen, I passed a store on Alpha Ralpha Boulevard selling “copy machines.” Curious, I went in. I meandered aimlessly and quite haplessly around the aisles until a clerk found me and asked if I was lost or just a doofus. Being both, how to answer? A long conversation ultimately ensued, which concluded with: “Wait, you mean they make printers with scanners inside them now?!” The clerk nodded. I was in awe. “What will they think of next?! Organic tires—with the air included? Self-lighting cigarettes? Soup cans with built-in can openers?!” The clerk—I think his name was Borb—gave me a helpless look.
I was all too familiar with that look. I took it as my cue to leave. I wandered out.
I sank up to my nostrils in the snow.
Screw that janky printer!—now I just wanted my own copy machine so I could print pictures of our buttocks with that.
“That doesn’t look like an udder! Where did you get this mare anyway?!”
Apparently, the sizes actually exist and are called 2A0 and 4A0 paper. They have not solved the world’s letter-writing or buttocks-printing problems. Nor have I.
And I had to learn the hard way—my pale horse is a stallion.