The Last Testament: A Memoir (57 page)

²⁰
The longest day of the year gets even longer when every person on earth’s in-laws drop by unannounced.

²¹
The Daily Show
and
The Colbert Report
are cancelled, replaced by
The Larry the Cable Guy Beer ‘n’ Fart-Joke Variety Hour.

²²
Pixar’s new release,
Brave,
is merely good, not great.

²³
Willie Nelson cashes his bong.

²⁴
A cloud shaped like a dragon breathes fire over Rome.

²⁵
A cloud shaped like a unicorn gallops over London.

²⁶
A cloud shaped like a cyclops gets fitted for a monocle over Athens.

²⁷
A cloud shaped like a golem kvetches over Jerusalem.

²⁸
A cloud shaped like Bigfoot picks its gigantic bunions over Seattle.

²⁹
A cloud shaped like a leprechaun gathers shamrocks and says, “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya!” while washing with Irish Spring soap over Dublin.

³⁰
A cloud shaped like a troll stands under a cloud shaped like a bridge frightening three clouds shaped like billy goats gruff over a cloud shaped like Stockholm.

CHAPTER 9

JULY

¹
I
n a live Canada Day interview, Gordie Howe tells CBC News he’s finally come to realize “hockey is stupid, eh?”

²
Microsoft replaces Skype’s software protocol with its own. Users immediately start experiencing total emotional shutdowns during video-chats.

³
Tom Cruise’s 50th birthday party is highlighted by Xenu leaping out of the cake.

⁴
Toby Keith shocks the crowd at the Fourth of July concert on the National Mall with his new song, “Osama Was Right.”

⁵
Google Maps unveils its new Bedroom View feature.

⁶
Today’s winning Pick-3 numbers are 666. More disturbingly, they are also the winning Pick-
4
numbers.

⁷
Yellowstone National Park’s Old Faithful geyser begins spuming Star-bucks coffee. The average wait time remains 90 minutes.

⁸
A message awaits thee at home from that meteor cluster. It saith when it saw thee from above it found thee most comely to look upon, and it is back from its random low-inclination solar orbit for a few weeks, and that if thou wouldst like to meet for a drink it will be at McPhee’s at 8
PM
this Sunday. It will be the pulsating iridescent meteor cluster in the back.

⁹
A Gallup Poll shows President Obama leading his challenger 71 percent to 29 percent. It has a margin of error of the American people.

¹⁰
UCLA names Demi Moore its first Susan Sarandon Professor of the Cougaring Arts.

¹¹
Moses gets to plan today’s sign. I know not what he has in mind, but knowing him it will punk the Muslims.

¹²
The Strait of Gibraltar is closed to ship traffic after a mysterious 666-tanker pileup.

¹³
Outside Wrigley Field, two dogs give birth to two two-headed puppies during both games of a doubleheader.

¹⁴
Frenchmen wake on Bastille Day to find they all speak in thick American accents. They spend the rest of the year mocking each other.

¹⁵
Three biologists working in the Amazon discover a new kind of snake whose venom is deadly enough to instantly kill three biologists.

¹⁶
That meteor cluster calls again. It wonders if maybe thou wert busy Sunday, or if maybe thou drinkest not, in which case it begs thy pardon, and that it will next be in town on September 12 and will go ahead and make a reservation at Luigi’s at 8
PM
under “meteor cluster plus one.”

¹⁷
Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez becomes the first star athlete in the history of American team sports to come out as an asshole.

¹⁸
All human beings wake up screaming from the same nightmare: being dunked in a vat of hot butterscotch by Corbin (
L.A. Law
) Bernsen.

¹⁹
Thousands of Dead Milkmen albums go on sale . . .
in record stores!

²⁰
Batman 3: The Dark Knight Rises
opens. (This is not a sign of the Apocalypse; I am just very excited about it. I have been monitoring the production in India and lo, it’s absolutely incredible. Not just the visuals, but the story. Yea, this shall be the pre-12/21 spectacle of the year!)

²¹
Australia sells all its baby koalas for $3 billion to Donald Trump. He says he plans to breed them as “world-class racing bears.”

²²
The winner of the 99th Tour De France is a bag of human growth hormone taped to a Schwinn.

²³
“I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!” comes clean. It was butter the whole time.

²⁴
Lady Gaga appears in public dressed in a live cow.

²⁵
At no point during his 16-hour drive from Cabo San Lucas to L.A. does Sammy Hagar violate the speed limit.

²⁶
Time
magazine’s cover story is “Brie!: Why So Many Americans Are Finding This
Soft
Cheese
Hard
to Beat.”

²⁷
The opening ceremony of the London Olympics is marred by a sudden, well-coordinated Oasis reunion.

²⁸
The soon-to-be Republican nominee meets with 666 of her top fundraisers at a hotel near Devil’s Tower, Wyoming.

²⁹
One of swimmer Michael Phelps’s four gold medals is taken away when video reveals that, prior to the race, he engaged in horseplay near the pool.

³⁰
A Malpeque shortage forces horrified caterers at the 2012 Bridgehampton Polo Challenge to use Blue Point oysters in their seafood towers instead.

³¹
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force adopts a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy toward Republicans wishing to serve.

CHAPTER 10

AUGUST

¹
T
emperatures in Moscow reach 100°. Lenin’s corpse begins to smell, making the idea of visiting the embalmed body of the architect of a discredited ideology suddenly seem unappealing.

²
Terrorists attack the American section of the Olympic Village. They are later found to have originated from the al-Qaeda section of the Olympic Village.

³
The Maldives sink permanently underwater after a fat man cannonballs into the pool at the Malé Hilton.

⁴
As expected, Usain Bolt easily wins the gold medal in the 261.147-cubits.

⁵
V8 Vegetable Juice becomes V7 after contract negotiations with watercress break down.

⁶
In the Olympic men’s tennis final, unknown contestant B. L. Zebub shocks Rafael Nadal 6–0, 6–0, 6–0.

⁷
The first annual African AIDS Conference in Kinshasa hosts trillions of viruses from across the continent.

⁸
The Rosetta Stone, once written in hieroglyphic, demotic, and ancient Greek, is now found to be written in English, ASCII, and emoticons.

⁹
Prosecutors offer the Jehovah’s Witnesses exemption from prosecution in exchange for their testimony against me.

¹⁰
American Islamophobia literally reaches new heights when an angry mob vandalizes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

¹¹
Reenactors at Colonial Williamsburg declare independence from management, asserting their inalienable right to “life, liberty, and employee discounts at Busch Gardens.”

¹²
Extra-absorbency paper towels only perform at regular-absorbency levels.

¹³
The morning after the scheduled date, thou findest on thy doormat a tiny bolide comprised of the iron-nickel alloys kamacite and taenite. The meteor cluster!
It knoweth where thou livest!

¹⁴
Rather than announcing her running mate, the soon-to-be Republican presidential nominee lets him do it himself, on his number one–rated syndicated radio show.

¹⁵
Muhammad gets to plan today’s sign. I know not what he has in mind, but knowing him it will punk the Jews and/or Christians.

¹⁶
On the 35th anniversary of his death, a vision of Elvis Presley crystallizes over Graceland, then succumbs to gravity and falls, razing the mansion to the ground.

¹⁷
A woman in the Congo gives birth to a baby with two dollars.

¹⁸
Wii 2 unveils Wii for Wii, a game letting users simulate the experience of playing Wii, only on their Wii.

¹⁹
Thousands are killed by a blizzard . . .
at Dairy Queen!

²⁰
Barry Williams—Greg of
Brady Bunch
fame—dies when a rogue swarm of killer bees sting him 111 times.

²¹
Maureen McCormick—Marcia of
Brady Bunch
fame—dies when a rogue swarm of killer wasps sting her 111 times.

²²
Eve Plumb—Jan of
Brady Bunch
fame—dies when a rogue swarm of killer hornets sting her 111 times.

²³
Christopher Knight—Peter of
Brady Bunch
fame—dies when a rogue swarm of killer yellowjackets sting him 111 times.

²⁴
Susan Olsen—Cindy of
Brady Bunch
fame—dies when a rogue swarm of killer fire ants sting her 111 times.

²⁵
Wearing a full-body bee suit, Mike Lookinland—Bobby of
Brady Bunch
fame—locks himself in a hermetically-sealed climate-controlled bank vault sprayed with insecticide and emptied of all contents save four bug zappers and a family-size can of Off!. He survives the day, but spends the rest of the year fearful and paranoid, wasting his life savings on assorted foolproof insect-repellents sold by an unscrupulous mail-order company, which stings him 111 times.