Day 972

Dear Diary,

Well, I haven’t checked in on the gnomes for a while now which is bad, very bad. Those little gnome bastards are always up to something.

But they are industrious little sonsabitches and my wife’s puppy mastiff has been digging the back yard full of holes. Massive holes. Mastiff holes. It’s been said that the local utility company meter reader was last seen zig zagging through my backyard.

Well ok, it hasn’t actually been said, so I’d appreciate it if we just keep that between us and pretend that we didn’t hear that bit.

Anyhoo, the other day the gnomes were tinkering away in the basement and I figured I’d contract Gargelson and his crew to fill in the massive mastiff back yard holes. The negotiation was fierce, but I thought the deal we came to was quite fair. I didn’t really need the truck’s pink slip anyway and I’m pretty sure they can’t even reach the pedals.

They had been toiling away for a week or so when Gargelson sent his foreman, Smithers, up to ask for some sandbags. 

“Mr. Gack, we need fourteen pallets of empty sand bags and a change request,” Smithers informed me.

“You need what?!” I stammered, my blood pressure notching up a tick or two.

“A change request. Filling sandbags is spendy work. We will most definitely need a change request. A big one.”

“Sand bags? Wha…?”

“Do you have the pink slip for your Harley?”

“Wha…WHAT???”

“Ruskies,” Smithers explained calmly.

Since ‘Ruskies’ was a very poor explanation and I, on the otherhand, was not calm at all, I hurried down to the backyard to find Gargelson and get to the bottom of this.

What I found in the backyard was beyond any explanation. Huge sand mounds pock marked the entire yard. Trenches crisscrossed the ground and connected deep, wide holes at the base of each dirt mound.

“GARGELSON!!!” I exclaimed loudly, as noted by the exclamation marks.

Don, my neighbor, glanced over haughtily from his three tier deck and scoffed at my newly constructed Maginot Line.

“Over here mah boy,” Gargelson responded from atop one of the mountanous mounds where he studied a set of aged plans.

“What in the flugiggity flackitack have you done to my backyard!!!” I inquired exclamitorily. Again, exclamation marks.

“Ruskies” he explained matter of factly.

I stood there, mouth agape, blinking, trying to come up with the appropriate followup exclamation. I had nothing.

“Ruskies, mah boy,” he repeated, “haven’t you been keeping up on your memes?”

It is true, he had me there. I had been posting all manner of ridiculousness to my social media, but had not kept up to date at all with the current meme-fairs, the meme-state of the nation, the 11 o’clock nightly memes.

Seeing my blank, un-meme-formed expression he continued. “Ruskies. Ukraine. Nukes. We need to prepare.

“Why this shelter here could survive a direct hit!” he exclaimed, slamming his fist down into his palm for emphasis.

“Well, it could survive with fourteen pallets of sand bags,” he continued, “do you have the pink slip for your Harley?”

Author: Ken Gack

Ken’s version of reality may be more realistic than 2022, however it is much less disturbing.