return of the goblog

Fret not, fair readers, for Bristlebrak has returned to the blogospheroid. (I very much doubt it is a perfect sphere.) We goblins have a saying - "Abscess makes the heart grow fonder." I hear that humans have a similar saying which replaces "abscess" with "absence," and perhaps that is also fitting. I have been away for quite some time, years in fact. I had been contemplating a sabbatical, and the straw that finally broke the proverbial camel-spider's back was when the rats returned. I know I invited them back, but I half-expected them to turn me down, seeing as how the last time the Glorious Vermin's Revolutionary Horde set up a cell in the house they were utterly and gruesomely annihilated. I should have known that the bloodier and more crushing a defeat they suffer, the more the fire of the rats' zealotry is stoked. So five minutes after they set up in the garage, I remembered how much rats irritate me. They wreak havoc and spread pestilence, which is great, but the philosophy that underpins their destruction is utterly alien to goblinkind. They are single-minded, fanatically persistent, whereas goblin malevolence is a more carefree and slap-happy affair. As it says in the Oulde Goblin Anthem:

"We sow the seeds of havoc where e'er the wind is blowin',
And when the going is getting tough, then goblins get to goin';
For greener grass there always be, and bluer skies abound,
So there we'll go, to blot the sky and blight the verdant ground.
For a goblin ain't bound to creed nor flag nor even mere selfish gain;
But a goblin lives to mischief make, and leave the top down in the rain*.
Sing ho! for the life of a goblin, sing ho!"

I did not get on well with the rats. Words were said and squeaks were squeaked. There was even a brief bout of guerilla warfare in which I laid a few cunning traps and collected a few choice pelts of luxuriant ratskin for my winter garb, but then I realized that in so doing I was aiding the humans of the house who shared the same aim and largely the same methods, only they did not wear the pelts (the great wasteful philistines). This produced in me the closest I have ever come to a crisis of conscience. This is an extremely unsettling experience for a goblin. It cast in a pallid spotlight my need for sabbatical, for re-connection with my inner goblinness. So, rigging up a farewell trap for the rats which was so destructive the humans wouldn't have dared dream of it (it included several boxes of Black Cats, rusty nails, broken glass, gasoline, and a can of hot pink paint) I left the house behind.

Whither did I go then? Halfway across the woe-begotten ellipse of this spinning stone** I trekked. I wandered strange lands which would make the fever-dreams of most men seem as mundane as Mayberry. Characters and creatures woeful and wondrous did I encounter. Oft did I snicker at death and blow clouds of cheap cigarillo smoke in his bony face. But ever onward I went, a shadow in the night, a rustle round the corner, a faint unpleasant burning smell in the ductwork. Perhaps some day I will recount some of those adventures. I may write a book of them. I can picture it now, a hardbound tome with my handsome green visage leering from the dust-jacket, toadstool cap jauntily askance, smoldering acorn pipe clenched in my sharp yellow teeth, my hand resting upon the hilt of my porcupine-quill rapier with a nonchalance that only magnifies the implied menace thereof, and crowned above all with that Golden Ring which signifies the dizzying zenith of modern literary art - the seal of Oprah's Book Club.

But those are tales for another day. Suffice it to say that after my travels I returned home, or rather to the building once so called. The family who had dwelt there was gone, to whence I knew not, and in their place was a family of lawyers. And rats. The rats, uncontested by the new inhabitants, had occupied nearly 50% of the total dwelling and were actively planting new settlements in the remaining half. Opportunity abounds here for jokes about lawyers and rats; I, however, have nothing but respect for the profession of law and shall make no such jokes at their expense***. So, just as I thought my journeys ended, they resumed again anew. I set out to find what had become of these Bostons, the human family I had so enjoyed wreaking mischief upon. And this journey I shall narrate in my next blog. For now the sun sets and duty beckons.

Slime and snails,
Bristlebrak
Resident Goblin of House Boston

ye oulde foote-notes:

*You may think that last bit was a recent addition in reference to automobiles, but humans have been fashioning convertible tops as long as they have been fashioning wheeled conveyances. I might refer you to the pioneering work of Dr. Augustin Weltschmerz of Basel, whose excellent mammogram... er, excuse me, my colleague Smoochy informs me that ought to read "monograph", but I cannot change it since I lost my backspace key to a raccoon in a game of chance. (Never bet against Procyonids.) As I was saying, I refer the reader to Dr. Weltschmerz's excellent monograph on the subject of Assyrian convertible chariots, which confirms the authenticity and antiquity of the penultimate line of the Goblin Anthem. And as for the last line, obviously pirates stole it from us. It's what they do.

**Goblin cosmology holds that the Earth is a stone skipping across an infinite mucky bog, a stone skipped by the Great Goblin who populated it with souls so He could laugh at them as they try to make sense of all the spinning and the muck. When human scientists discovered that the Earth was essentially a spinning rock whose life arose from primordial ooze, goblins took this as validation of their cosmology - that is, the 0.2% of goblins who know what the word cosmology means did.

***The idea of "law" itself is of course inimical to the goblinish mindset. However, the practice of the profession of law, as commonly encountered in human civilization, seems to be aimed at helping miscreants get away with breaking the law, and as such is a laudable endeavor in goblin eyes.

Initial Attempt

After peering through the floorboards and watching the lady of the house tippety-tapping away on the keyboard, writing her Blog, I decided it looked like fun – you apparently just write about your day and then you and some other people somewhere else derive some sort of enjoyment from this – and I just like the sound of the word. Blog. Rolls off the tongue like grubs in slug-sauce.

So, today was a pretty normal day, I guess. I woke up at 3 AM and re-organized the kitchen. Nothing too drastic; the vegetable peeler had been in the same drawer for far too long, so I decided to put it in a cabinet amidst the tupperware. I was surprised to find the scissors actually in their designated drawer, so I put them in a Scrabble box. The sea salt I moved from the pantry to a nice quiet shady spot behind a pile of half-consumed bags of miscellaneous chips that will probably never be finished off. Especially since I blighted them with a staleness curse. Except the jalapeno flavored chips, I ate those.

Hm, what else… then I took a package of raw chicken and a big bag of chocolate chips and a nice fat Ashton cigar (there were no Black & Milds in the humidor, pity that) and shared them with the neighbor’s dog. Coincidentally, soon thereafter the dog had a very pressing urge for a massive bowel movement, so I let her out onto the front lawn. Steaming piles of canine scat make for lawn décor at least as classy as pink flamingos, plus they are so delightfully aromatic, whereas plastic flamingos only smell faintly of, well, plastic. Plastic and despair.

It being a beautiful night out (nearly pitch-black, hardly any moon to speak of, and I noted with pleasure that the streetlights were still out – good work, Gimmrbrik) I decided to take Smoochy for a walk. Is walk the right term, I wonder? Does one take a toad for a “walk?” Or should I say I took him for a hop? But then people might hear that and think of that great 50’s hit by Danny and the Juniors and get the wrong idea. Anyway I found Smoochy under the air conditioner like usual, mouth full of fireflies. It made his cheeks glow. It reminded me of the glow-worm dolls. It made me think it would be really cute and funny to dress Smoochy up like a glow worm doll. Wait here, I told him, which was really not necessary. Smoochy is always right there, or within a three-foot radius of right there.

I went back inside to try to find suitable garb, but the offspring of the house really only has one baby doll with clothes remotely small enough to fit a toad. So I took the overalls from this little baby doll and put them on Smoochy. They were too big on him, but I told him that’s the style, that’s how all the amphibians are wearing their overalls nowadays. I don’t think he was convinced, and his cheeks weren’t glowing anymore either. The moment had passed. C’est la vie. I wove a toad-harness out of St. Augustine runners and looped it around Smoochy’s neck and whatever, you know, the big fat lump part of the toad that isn’t limbs or head. Those are pretty much all the constituent parts of toad anatomy: head, limbs, lump. It’s science, look it up.

So I took Smoochy for his walk-hop (Wop? Halk?) The overalls I gave to a young opossum who was rummaging in a trash can. They were a little tight on her, but I told her that’s the style, that’s how all the marsupials are wearing their overalls nowadays. I set off some car alarms. Found some Black & Milds in the glove box of an old Cadillac. They were grape flavored. I smoked half and ate the other half. I left a gecko in exchange. Humans seem to like those. Otherwise, the wop-halk was uneventful.

Sunrise was coming soon, tinting the distant eastern horizon a menacing hue of pinky gray. That’s my cue to return the great indoors. Hey, The Great Indoors, that’s a John Mayer song! What can I say, I’m a fan. Anyway, gotta go, they’re waking up now.

xoxoxo,

Bristlebrak

Boston family resident goblin