These Un-Presidented Times

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, first I got to tell you something strange, and the truth is I saw President Humpty Dumbty Trumpel-thinksin holding and waving around a Bible outside a church the other day, I swear.

What the fock, to me that’s the equivalent, on a different day in a different time, of seeing Carrie Nation holding a vodka stinger; Stephen Hawking holding a kicking tee; Ray Charles holding a steering wheel. Yes sir, these are uncertain times indeed, when Mr. Pornstar-bagger is possessed by peculiarity to rant about kicking ass rather than grabbing ass, I kid you not.

Anyways, it’s now June and I’m busy trying to figure out what kind of book I might want to read for the summertime ’cause I guess that’s what people do this time of year. I don’t know if I want to go fiction or the nonfiction but I’ll tell you’s, this being my gala 34th-annivesary year of gasbagging for this newspaper, I ought to get the whole goddamn summer off and read a couple, three books, ain’t that the truth.

And speaking of fiction, truth be stranger, so they say I’ve heard tell. Maybe you heard-tell too, and if you did, you’ve heard it wrong all these years this way: “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

Guess again. Factually, truthfully, it reads like this:

’Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange;

Stranger than fiction.

So wrote some kind of Lord Byron, dead at the age of 36 back in 1824. People could get away with writing that kind of idea about 200 years ago ’cause factually, yes, truth and facts would seem a strange thing to them back then (as truth and facts appear to our Republicans of today) when there were still so many yet to be invented. Hell, even the notion of daily bathing was strange and new, so what the fock.

But I believe it was one of the first early ancient Greeks who asked: “What is truth?” And I say, hey buddy, c’mon—if you have to ask… And yet to this day, many still think those guys were so focking smart.

Byron, we know, answered that truth is strange; and to prove his point, although he was a kind of chubby short guy with a club foot, went out and got croaked in Greece whilst in the fight to regain their independence and restore to the Greeks the freedom to pose pointless questions.

But really, truth “stranger than fiction”? I think not. It’s now common knowledge in this day of age that fiction is just a lot of made-up bullshit, but without it there’d be no TV. Sure your fiction can sometimes be based on some kind of actual true thing, but big focking deal. To me that only means this: Truth is more boring than fiction, that’s why they got to spice it up.

For example, that old Kennedy henchman known today as former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara made a splash some years ago when he said that come to think of it, actually the truth is that the Vietnam War was a big focking mistake. (No focking kidding.) Ho-hum. But coming out of his lips, it seemed kind of strange, ain’a?

Yeah maybe, but not as strange as if I had back then written in a made-up story that “Foctogenarian Robert S. McNamara, former Kennedy defense thug, was arrested today for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and the waiter what’s-his-name. With a Chippendale beefcake dancer on either arm and clad only in black leather undies as he was led away by police, Mr. McNamara’s one comment to reporters was, ‘You know, that Vietnam thing? Really sucked a big weenie.’”

Now truthfully, my point about all this is that I don’t have a point, but as a kid, I remember being told a hundred-million times a day to “always tell the truth.” My folks never considered a career in politics likely for me, and so they must’ve dreamed that to have a rudimentary relationship with “the truth” could come in handy someday. However, all kids know that there is not one focking thing strange, mysterious or beneficial about the truth. The “truth,” whether at home, school or inside the confessional booth, always meant ten times the focking trouble on your ass as opposed to making something up and pinning it on some other kid or act of God.

Truth is more trouble than fiction.

And even more trouble yet can be when you can’t tell truth from fiction like you can’t tell your ass from a hole in the ground like why every Tom, Dick and Dickless ought to be allowed to pack a heater, or like the Christian “intelligent” design types who know that the dinosaurs actually lived right alongside Adam and what’s-her-name and the reason they got extinct is ’cause they drowned in Noah’s Flood ’cause they were too damn big too fit on the knucklehead’s focking dink Ark.

So in conclusion, lest I somehow offended the Lord Byron community, I will concede that there’s at least one thing he wrote that’s still as focking true today as it must’ve seemed back then:

Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;

The best of Life is but intoxication

Focking-A, nothing strange about that, and as always there’s never a time like the present to put the truth to the test, so let’s go have one ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.