Jim Bunny Rogers Rabbits www.sunlive.co.nz

'I am not amused.” No, it's not the po-faced but deceptively waggish matriarch Queen Victoria this time.

It's 45-year resident of Gate Pa, Colin Lamond, who is 'not amused” and having a jab at me, a jab at ‘Striking a blow for what's right', kicking the fluffy bobtailed butt.

I thought I was just a politically-neutered, Pakeha, white-collared service professional.

But Colin reckons I am a 'woke leftie” promoting an 'elitist Maori agenda”. Ouch!! That's worse than a bout of flystrike for a rabbit.

I have been getting it from all sides, so on the back of this latest indignity I have retreated; I have gone ‘goblin mode'. For the uninitiated, The Oxford defines ‘goblin mode' as a type of behaviour, which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.

'Embracing depravity,” I read in ‘The Guardian', 'the kind of opposite of trying to better yourself”.

So while you were rain watching, filling sandbags, shoveling silt, squeegeeing soggy carpet and filing insurance claims, I was drawing the curtains, turning off the lights and activating ‘goblin mode'. I was embracing my primal inner self, reverting to a very basic stage in my evolutionary development.

The biggest decision I had to make last weekend was whether to attack the 3.2 billion bacteria, which have taken up residence in each square inch of my dunny bowl, or take the staphylococcus aureus germs, which have claimed squatter rights over my bedclothes, to the Tenancy Tribunal.

Goblin mode dictates I do neither.

Pyjamas

Besides, the jeans and tee-shirt I have been living in for three months, are now also my pyjamas. The front of the tee is encrusted and would make good soup stock. I pong like a homeless person in a heat wave.

Aerobic bacteria have seized control of my refrigerator. The various organisms warm as they work to break down my food – they're thriving. My Haier two-door, bought as a $2400 appliance to artificially cool food and drink, is now an internal compost. Goblin mode has made my fridge a live, exciting and busy place.

Food particles trapped in my beard are going rancid. There's moldy dinner plates under the sofa – some naturally occurring organisms and spores are reveling in the damp unventilated undergrowth that is now my living room floor.

I spend all day on the sofa, scrolling the sad depths of social media, snacking on chip fragments found under the cushion, giving myself a pedicure with a pencil end, mining the wax deposits in my ears, and only leaving the house to get another trough of cheesy-weezies. And Coke of course. I have gone full, industrial-strength Goblin mode. And it is a liberating experience – I am done with stress, wokeness and humiliation.

I became a whiffy, unapologetic, trail blazing apostle after ‘goblin mode' was Oxford Dictionary's 2022 ‘Word of the Year'. Before you start sneering, ‘goblin mode' goes much deeper than sucking raw pasta through dirty socks.

It has its origins during the pandemic when we demonstrated our resilience with cottagey stuff like home preserving, knitting, baking, sewing and the like, to fill long, boring, unfulfilling lockdown days. We tried to make the best of a bad thing. It was fun for a while, but only for a while. As the pandemic wore on, and on, and bloody on, we got sick of keeping up appearances. We just gave up and some people, like me, went ‘goblin mode', we embraced depravity and abandoned social norms. I digress, but those poor goblins…did they get bad rap, or what? They live in grottoes, hang around houses banging on pots and pans, snatching pyjamas off the sleeping, moving furniture around – that would be irritating. Then after thumping on the walls and doors, they bugger off.

Mischievous but loveable.

Traditionally at year's end, we make resolutions for the New Year. But the ‘resolutions' are usually non-specific, not measurable and not achievable. They're set up to fail, and we fail.

However, the Word of the Year is identified by dictionaries based on search data, with the winning word considered to 'reflect the mood or preoccupations of the year”. And if you choose just one such guiding word, like ‘goblin mode', it's a positive and achievable way of anchoring your intentions for the New Year. I think I have got that right.

The word guides your actions and brings together all your goals.

A release!

I was going to say 'now excuse me please” while I return to my couch, to cold left-over cheezy-weezies, to the organisms and spores, to warm, flat Coke. But apologies and social niceties aren't part of my new goblin mode depravity. It's such release – having spent life being responsible, honest, hardworking, loving, loyal and trustworthy, and boring, along comes goblin mode. It's purging – you discover a mischievous inner self you probably didn't know you had. The good thing is you can switch of anytime.

There you go Colin. Whimsical enough?

Normal service is restored.