An exaggeratedly long week
Galloped about on April 17, 2022.
On Mogglesday, I found myself fascinated by the two different shapes that the letters A and G have in lowercase in our so-called Roman alphabet. I didn’t know why these letters have different shapes but I was determined to learn the reason. Sixteen minutes later, I still hadn’t learned anything, so I lost interest in the alphabet completely and went wall-eyed for a couple hours. I went on to do more productive things instead: First, composing a reply to the highway department’s rejection of my suggestion of see-through manhole covers (“Yes, glass—just put fences around them so people don’t drive or walk over them”) and second, composing another letter to suggest a commonsense idea whose time has come: Pigeon crossings.
On Toogglesday, news of a large goose-roosting accident at the corner of Bouillabaisse Boulevard and Apple-Latchier Circuit reached my ears. Ah, the chickens have come home to roost! I thought. I rejoiced at the news of a goose-less, goose poop–less yard at last, and when I heard the accident was even bigger than the eighty-goose pileup over on Terwilliger Street in 1967, I didn’t just rejoice, I celebrated. (If only they had goose crossings… I smirked.) I donned my jauntiest fez and my boliest bolo tie, flung my front door open, and went gallivanting, dancing, and even—dare I say it—prancing all about town. Up and down each street I went, hooting and tooting my joy at the lack of geese my neighborhood would now enjoy. In and out of each plaza I went, honking goose-like myself, announcing the good news. Up onto each roof I went, and down into each basement I went, invited or not, to hoot and toot, to honk and tonk, and to cackle and chortle and giggle with glee… with gusto and glee… with glorious gusto and grulious glee! After sixteen hours of nonstop celebration, I fell flat on my back on the roof of the stumblebum stables, slid off, and went all wall-eyed for a couple hours. If it wasn’t for the stumblebum I fell on (bum-first), I might have been killed. But, things being as they are (and not being as they are not), I survived. Wall-eyed, but I survived.
On Wegglesday, I realized that all the weekdays this week were spelled wrong. Very, very wrongg. Being too eggsausted after yesteggday’s anti-anserine celebratorials, I wasn’t going to do anything about it, however. I receded into my backyard topiary for a while, went all wall-eyed for a couple hours, and then somehow ended up in my apiary afterward. I got stungg by lots of bees, which wasn’t as bad as being stungg by all those aggressive flying shrubs and hedges—until anaphylaxis set in and I died a couple times. When I came to, I was lying on my back on my own roolf. (I call it my “roolf” because it’s opposite my floor and “floor” spelled backwards is “roolf.”) I was out of pepperoni. I was out of geggeroni. And I was completely out of pants. Pantsless. Without pants. Luckily, before the neigghbors glimpsed anything untoward and started dying of fright, I found my pants: They had been thrown up in a tree next to the house. There was also a disturbing amount of vomit all around me, but you knew where this joke was going, so I won’t bother this time. I’ll just fetch my pants, put them over my head, and climb down from the roolf.
On Thurgglesday, I realized the week was already five days longg. Somehow Wegglesday had spread itself across two whole days this week—almost three, in fact. I tried hiding in my purpose-built hidey-hole in the ground, but this course of action didn’t shorten the day back to its proper length. Wegglesday remained two days longg. I slid back into my hole, went wall-eyed for a couple hours, and contemplated hanggingg myself upside-down from the ceiling like a fruit bat. Off in the distance, a horse galloped (and barked). Nearer by, a horse suddenly ggalloped right into my living room. Directly above my hidey-hole, a horse suddenly appeared and fell into the hole with me. A man playing a doctor on TV once told me these kinds of hallucinations are a sure sign of a glue deficiency, so I crawled out, found the nearest bottle of gglue, and inhaled as many smooth, refreshing ggases from it as I could. I went all wall-eyed again and the day ended in serene darkness (except for the frantic neigghing).
On Frogglesday, I realized that Thurgglesday had done the same to me as Wegglesday had done. The week was now a week longg despite there being two days left in the week! This made me go pensively wall-eyed for a couple hours. I sat ruminating so hard that I got lost inside my capacious brainpan and couldn’t find my way out. After wandering through the deepest, darkest depths of mathematical and calendrical calculations, I believed I had produced a rigorous proof that 7 = 9 under some unique circumstances (such as when t is a multivariate p-brane in non-anserine space, when the Langoliers are on vacation or on strike, or simply when one buys misprinted calendars from shady sites on the Internet). I finally emerged from the embolismic abyss when I tripped and fell out of my own ear canal. I landed in my Hopeless Slack-Ass® recliner with a sickening, adipose plop (plop!). But then I realized that my “proof” was correct only when one assumes that “+” means subtraction, “÷” means adding the 818th digit of π to both divisor and dividend and then multiplying by the length of a gaffed carp, and the emoji “pile of poo” operator I had invented on page 33 actually means to stop reading, get up, and flush the whole stack of papers down the toilet.
On Sagglesday, my pensivity and dordishness was replaced with fnordish, infractacular wrath. Another day smeared itself across two days, and the ggnomes just would not leave me alone. Westphalian Schmonggelingg Ggnomes harried me in the morningg. Östfalian Snoozlingg Ggnomes harassed me in the afternoon. And Bohemian Tunnellingg Ggnomes finally hurbled my burpcores in the eveningg. That was the last straw. Wurbling my derpdoors I could have tolerated. Nurbling my herpfloors I could have iggnored. But hurbling my burpcores was just too much to bear. I went wall-eyed in a rage—and smashed each and every ggnome. Pointy little red hats and fuzzy little white beards flew everywhere. Shards of ceramic and resin spun alongg ggraceful parabolic arcs and landed yards away. When I was done, nothingg remained of the contents of my kitchen pantry except 36,000 dented, smashed, and rent-open cans of mini beef ravioli. But I wasn’t done: If so much as a singgle ggnome peeped out from behind my wainscotingg aggain, I would decimate every kitchen pantry’s mini beef ravioli collection for ten miles around. I huffed and I puffed and after sixteen minutes I calmed down. And then, another ggnome appeared.
On Sugglesday, I escaped from protective custody and returned to my palatial abode to beggin composing my blogg (before I beggan decomposing myself, for, you see, I died a week ago). While safely ensconced in a comfy straitjacket, the lenggthy week had continued lenggtheninggg, and now it was a full eleven days longg. It didn’t make sense and it didn’t have to. Anyroad, my docile & perfunctory blogg was demanding my attention in its usual high-pitched, annoying voice, and the series of severe concussions I had suffered this week prevented me from stringgingg even four words toggether on my own. But I had a plan: I would try to use an A.I. to compose my blogg entry. It almost worked. The text it ggenerated was clear, concise, ggrammatical, and even entertaining to read. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that this A.I. wrote so well that no one would believe it was my blogg entry. Even after replacing every tenth noun with “gnomes” and every third sentence with owl-like screeching noises, it was still utterly unconvincing. I collapsed in a ggooey, blennorrheic heap in front of my computer and went wall-eyed for a couple hours again. Finally ggathering myself, I picked up the ol’ board of keys and wiped away a bunch of ggnomes accreting on the home row. I sigghed. It would be a longg, longgg day. Gonggussion or no ggonggussion, I had some writingg to do. I went to work…