A Paczki to the Face

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Painting image by sedmak - Getty Images

Art Kumbalek angel

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, hope you had a blessed post Super Bowl February fat Ash Wednesday as some of us are to now to be relenting the experience, if not earthly pleasure, of this-or-that all the way through to the date that historic religious mathematicians figured a guy named Jesus got nailed but good to a wooden cross for shooting his mouth off bout this-or-that and then flew off somewhere scot-free, what the fock.

I tell you’s, Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday Lent falling together on the same goddamn day can’t be good for the so-called lovers in this world—“Here hon, a daffodil for you, but now my calling regarding Lenten responsibilities force me to give up seeing, or speaking, to you for the next 46 days.”

And so we now march forward toward a gosh darn ferkakta constant election year. And as you struggle to be allowed access to the ballot box of your choosing, I’d like to bring to your attention a couple quotes that my friend Dr. German Joe, straight out of Ilbesheim, Deutschland, kickstarted a recent sit-down-and-must read essay of his. 

The quotes are these:

“The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitude.”—Aldous Huxley

And:

“The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.”—Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Ladies and gents, even if it’s a dumbass internet poll of best/worst Super Bowl commercials, please vote responsibly, but make sure you vote—everywhere, anywhere—no matter what it takes.

So what the fock, I got a lot on my mind to be minded, least of all to hone and slap together what should be this hard-hitting nut/nutette-grabbing essay for this week that would explain how one and all ought to think and feel about the schmutz accrued by the schmuck politically current days of time we be clocking, what the fock.

Best I can do right now is to plant my dupa over by my favorite open-daily 23-hours and 59-minutes restaurant for a thought-provoking light-on-the-pocketbook repast. Come along if you care, but you leave the tip. Let’s get going.

Bea: Hey there Artie, nice to see you. What’s your pleasure?

Art: Hey Bea, how ’bout a nice cup of the blackest, thickest and cheapest cup of whatever you’re calling plain-old American coffee today. And by “old,” I mean to say if it is brewed any time after yesterday noon, it’s too fresh. I want a cup of the kind of coffee that in a road construction emergency, you could use to patch a faulty abutment; coffee that any online wimp-ass under the age of 30 would keel over dead from the heady aroma; a cup of coffee, Bea, that if somebody from OSHA was nosing around, you’d be fined for storing said coffee in an unsealed vessel. You got anything like that?

Bea: Coming right up, Artie. Mind if I put my safety gear on first?

Art: No problem, Bea. I’m not going anywhere, what the fock.

Bea: Here you go, Artie. So what do you hear, what do you know.

Art: For christ sakes, I know it’s a bunch of weeks ’til an early Easter Sunday, but I’m farmisht with the sacrifice of something for the Lent. That can’t be good. How ’bout you Bea, you give up anything for Lent this year?

Bea: If I keep working the hours I’ve been working to make ends meet, I’ll be giving up the ghost and there won’t be anything holy about it.

Art: God bless you, Bea. I’ve come to feel the same way about quitting something for the Lenten season the same way I feel about quitting something for the New Year’s resolutions.

Bea: How’s that?

Art: Winners never quit; and quitters never win. I’m a winner, ain’a Bea?

Bea: Yes you are, Artie. A winner.

Art: Darn tootin’. You see, Bea, some years ago around the start of a Lent, I got struck down by one of those epiphanies. There I was, all stuck on what I ought to deny myself for the next 40 days or so. Was I going to give up that third pack of smokes of the day, give up that third beer in a god-given hour, cut down on the lavish tips at the gentleman’s club? And then it hit me—I would give up giving up. Give up giving-up anything. And especially give up anything I learned during my glorious grade-school days spent at Our Lady in Pain ’Cause You Kids Are Going Straight to Hell But Not Soon Enough. No ma’am, I then and there decided to LIVE LIKE YOU MEAN IT.

Bea: Hold on Artie, live like “who”?

Art: Live like “you.”

Bea: Live like me? You’d want to live like me?

Art: Hell yeah Bea, I’d like to live like you do, and I mean it.

Bea: Oh my. I think I understand what you’re saying, Artie. It’s just that the use of the second person singular or plural pronoun “you” dipsy-doodling with your nominative or objective case can get a gal like me a bit flustered, I kid you not.

Art: God bless you, Bea. Perhaps best we save further dipsy-doodling for another time, perhaps when you have some free time, so I guess I better run. But thanks for the coffee and for letting me bend your ear there, Bea—utiful. See you next time

Bea: My pleasure, Artie. Always nice getting talked at by you. Take care.

(OK, off to the Uptowner tavern/charm school for some tipsy-doodling where you’ll cover my bar tab and I mean it, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)