Ode to Goat

[OR Non-Sense And Non-Sensability]

[Note: This story is a collection of random thoughts and idiotic ideas. If there is any resemblance between you and a character in this story, do not think of Einstein’s theory of relativity]

The sun popped up in the sky like toast came out of a toaster. Unlike a toaster, though, the sun came out just right. It wasn’t burned and it didn’t fly all over the sky from east to west. It just popped up. And with the sun, you could hear the whole world wake up. It was almost as if there was a giant synchronous yawn. If sound travelled through space, then I’m sure that aliens would have thought that the earth was a very sleepy planet.

And, hence, another day began. And on the other side of the world, another day had ended. On side of the earth, the sun had popped up and on the other side, the sun had … well, "popped down". And in its place the stars fought for a place and the moon took whatever space of the sky was left. However, this story is not about the moon, the stars, or cows jumping over the moon. This is the story of a goat in Spain (and I’m being serious here).

You may be asking why a goat? And why in Spain? I guess it’s because the only word that would fit the description of the animal, that this story is about, would be a goat and it seems adamant on being in Spain. Hence, we go all the way to Spain to meet this wondrous goat.

The goat was called … nothing. I mean the goat wasn’t called "nothing", but honestly speaking, have you ever bothered to name a goat? I don’t think so. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll refer to the goat with no name as … Goat. Simple enough? I hope so. Anyway, the story starts with Goat in the middle of Spain. In the middle of the hot Spanish desert.

It was dusk. Here the sun hadn’t clearly "popped down" or "popped up". It was just there at the horizon, undecided between lighting up the Americas or shedding some more light on Goat. Goat was definitely not important enough for the sun to stay, but it made Goat feel nice to think that the sun was thinking about it. Although, Goat had no idea about these thoughts, it was what Goat would have thought about.

Back to the story, we see Goat walking along the hot Spanish desert with no idea of where it was headed (not that it ever knew where it was going). And it was thinking. The idea of Goat thinking could have caused the very destruction of the universe, but its thoughts were too stupid for the universe to collapse over in the first place. Goat was thinking about space, time and Einstein’s theory of relativity. It did not understand who Einstein was, but thought about the theory of relativity for the sake of thinking about something.

As Goat was walking along, quite suddenly, a large … octopus fell right out of the sky and at Goat’s feet. Goat looked at the octopus and thought "What an ugly human!" and walked off. The octopus, in the meantime, was extremely confused. One second ago it was minding its own business in some place where there was a lot of water and now it had just confronted a goat. It didn’t know what the goat thought, but it was still confused. It had never seen a goat before but thought "What an ugly human!". After all this insight, the octopus soon realised that it was out of water and all alone. It knew that it had to find water soon or it would die. So it followed the goat, in the hope that it would find some sense in that creature. Unfortunately for the octopus, Goat had as much sense as a woolly sweater.

So the creatures walked along aimlessly across the hot Spanish desert: a goat and an octopus. They walked and walked (actually the octopus just dragged itself along). They walked for so long that the sun got bored and went to light up the Americas and the stars and the moon watched in amazement at the two creatures on the Spanish desert.

After having travelled a long distance, Goat stopped. And the octopus stopped with it.

Goat thought, "Why are you following me?"

The octopus thought, "I feel like eating a chicken drumstick"

Goat thought again, "What are you?"

"What is a chicken drumstick?" the octopus pondered.

The reason why Goat and the octopus were having this conversation was very simple. How, on earth, could a goat telepathically communicate with an octopus???? You MUST realise that.

So Goat, with the octopus by its side, walked on into the distance. If Shakespeare were there right then, he would have written his greatest play about a courageous goat, which dressed up like a man to prove to the world that man was dumber than it was. And then the goat would marry the King’s daughter ad everyone would be happy (except the King’s daughter). If I were there, however, I would have strangled the goat or gone crazy, whichever would come first to my mind.

However, neither was Shakespeare there nor was I. And that is why Goat and octopus continued to trudge along the Spanish desert. And they walked on for so long and so far, that the octopus did reach a water expanse beyond its wildest dreams … a kitchen sink that miraculously appeared along their walk. Yet Goat walked on and on. The last I heard of it, it was in Norway…