Wallaby Wednesday: 17 random signs of a bona fide Rocko devotee

Six years have passed since the implied time of “Future Schlock,” the de facto Rocko’s Modern Life series finale. Premiered in 1996, the episode has Filburt and Rocko saying 17 years have elapsed since they last saw each other.

Of the real-life time since the implicit setting of “Future Schlock,” we have filled nearly half with our own anticipation of Rocko’s return. As of last month, we have waited two-and-a-half years for the TV movie Static Cling.

But three-plus months after its would-be premiere, the product remains in production’s equivalent of “the blackness of space.” Per a mid-February write-up by CBR’s Reuben Baron, “a Nickelodeon spokesperson said there are no updates available for Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling.”

Baron subsequently notes that a top-tier personnel overhaul at Nickelodeon, a ratings letdown for other Nicktoon reboots and uncertainty over other potential platforms have complicated Static Cling’s timeline.

Simply put, it may still air on the parent network, or it may not. It may find refuge in one of many streaming services, or it may not. Each passing moment of stagnation, however, dims the light on the outlook.

Is the film’s place in the entertainment universe gone forever? Series creator Joe Murray and his loyal followers are expressly hoping not. But for now, like Filburt and his offspring, all we can do is reminisce on what Rocko has already done.

And so we shall continue to do that in this space, which as of this week has broken double-digit installments. To mark that little milestone, here are 17 indicators (one for every year Filburt waited to see Rocko and Heffer again) that you are itching to see Rocko and company in a new adventure again.

1. Starting no later than 2013, you have habitually called your refrigerator a refrigerizer. You may not know the distinction, and such a distinction may not even exist, but that does not matter.

2. When you are flipping through your TV’s digital guide and see that 2009’s The Proposal is airing, you mimic the sound of glass shattering and channel Ed Bighead with a panicked, elongated scream.

3. When your guide says The Voice is on NBC, you say the program’s title in a Chuck Chameleon accent.

4. Whether you have retained it or not, your childhood habit of uttering the minced oath “fish sticks” has rubbed off on a friend or family member.

5. A surprising or startling development is liable to make you exclaim, “What in the blazes?”

6. An exceptionally fun time prompts you to shout, “That was a hoot!” afterward.

7. You cannot help affecting the sound of an exploding piano when you catch a highlight of a golfer teeing off.

8. Before a friend or relative embarks on a driving test, you tell them, “Don’t get the fat guy.”

9. Any time you are served a fortune cookie, you pull your fellow diners’ legs by claiming your fortune reads, “Bad luck and misfortune will infest your pathetic soul for all eternity.”

10. You acknowledge small- or medium-level good news by channeling the “Hooray!” flies from “Canned.” Unfortunately, only those of us who can affect a high pitch can pull this off with any respectability. But if you are a hardcore Rocko nerd, that lack of vocal range is not likely to stop you.

11. In an honest Freudian slip, you have called your national animal the great American balding eagle.

12. Pizza Hut’s recent ads indicating every item on their menu costs $5 immediately evokes Mt. Frosty.

13. Whenever Ice-T told passers-by to “Read the sign” in his GEICO commercial, you were slightly disappointed when he followed it with “Lemonade” rather than “No barfing.” Meanwhile, a more recent GEICO ad has you thinking of “Cabin Fever” and the opening scene of “With Friends Like These.”

14. Any mention of peaches, whether it refers to the plural fruit or a pet name, evokes a satanic figure.

15. When anyone advertises their food as “gluten-free,” you think of Heffer’s mispronunciation of “glutton.”

16. If a friend tells you to “Guess what I got,” your knee-jerk response is “A lobotomy?”

17. As far as you are concerned, Hansel’s sister will always be Debbie. End of story.