A Winter’s Tailspin

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, this will be mine last weekly online essay of the focked-up year scientists and your assorted astronomers and what-not call 2024. Another year deserving to be stuffed into the dumpster out back that contains all the years from the get-go when the people, etc., knew from such a thing as a so-called “year” rather than a collection of seasons, what the fock.

But it’s the holiday season, so let’s kick-off with a traditional little story appropriate for all ages:

A very spiritual and holy priest dies and is swept up to heaven, wouldn’t you know. St. Peter greets him at the Pearly Gates, and says, “Hello Father, welcome to Heaven! You are very well known here, and as a special reward because you are such a devout man, we’re going to grant you anything you wish even before we enter the Kingdom. What may I grant you?”

The priest says, “I am a great admirer of the Virgin Mother. I’ve always wanted to talk to her.” St. Pete nods his head to one side, and lo and behold who should approach the priest but the Virgin Mary!

The priest is overcome with joy and says, “Mother, I have always been a great admirer of yours and followed your life as best I could. I have studied everything I could about you—every painting and portrait ever made of you, and I’ve noticed without fail that you are portrayed bearing a wistful expression. Forever I’ve wondered what it was that made you seemingly so melancholy.” And Mother Mary says, “Honestly, I was really hoping for a girl.” Ba-ding!

Anyways, not to crush your Christmas season cheer, but I’ve heard there is some kind of “unidentified disease… previously unknown… undiagnosed” floating around the Congo these days. Focking swell, ain’a?

Do I have my undies in a bundle concerning another worldwide pandemic? Heck, “president”-elect D(umbass). Trumpel-thinskin has chosen Robert F. (“polio-schmolio”) Kennedy Jr. to be our nation’s next health secretary. Yes, my undies are tightly bundled until somebody comes up with a vaccine that can kibosh stupidity about vaccines, you betcha.

Cripes, another potential pandemic?

I remember from the early Covid time the other year, this from David Masciotra over at Salon.com:

“A pandemic is dangerous, frightening and chaotic enough in the best circumstances. Throw in a population given to superstition, hatred of experts as diabolical elites and hostility toward science, and reasons to give thanks—other than the ability to breathe without the aid of a ventilator—will rapidly diminish.” And he wonders: “Why do so many Americans accept lunacy as empirical truth?” As do I wonder, sir, what the fock.

Yes, lunacy—those who believed that the COVID was a hoax, those who would say, “Hey, libtard. I walk up to the grocery store a couple blocks, and I don’t see anyone keeling over deader than a doornail, so, what the fock? Perhaps I’m missing something with this ‘pandemic,’ but what with the ‘reported’ deaths in the multi-thousands, all I can do is think that that means there’s more empty seats on the goddamn bus and shorter check-out lines at the store, which I do appreciate. So, shut the fock up.”

And speaking of vaccinations, in the news back then was a story out of England that a lionhearted 81-year-old by the name of William Shakespeare was one of the first to get shot with the anti-COVID milk of human kindness. 

Now of course, this was not the William Shakespeare whose name spread dread when it came to write an essay that was to explore the meaning of an unread Macbeth back during one’s school days. But I did wonder what, if anything, the Immortal Barge of Stratford-on-Avon would have to say about the state of our world these days, and would anyone buy it, or understand it?

Let us not forget that the Sweet Swan of Avon was wont to quill in one of his umpteen dozen king plays (and prithee, as I interrupteth thine focking self to query a “how come” back then when those guys wrote those thespian plays, everybody ended up talking like they were in some Dr. Seuss book with big words—“Green, Green Eggs and Hamlet”?)

(Now I can understand your usual royal pain-in-the-butts talking that talk ’cause other than to try on those fluffy pillow things on their heads so that a couple hundred years later a guy like me could eyeball one of their portraits and say, “Hey, get a load of the focking knob in the stupid hat”; all they’d do for fortnights at a crack is squat upon their thrones, pluck their focking lutes and rhyme for no reason because they didn’t have TV yet nor did they have regular show business. Heck, back then they didn’t even have bathing, can you imagine? That would be like spending your life on a county bus that never stopped. No wonder they had wars all the time.)

(And for cripes sakes, in these plays even the focking peon pissants would be rhyming like banshees and generally sounding like one of those upper-crusted farts you find on public TV. Jeez louise, didn’t anybody talk regular back then, so that a guy like me could make out what they were saying?)

And aye, oh my, where the fock was I before I had interrupteth’t myself? Oh yeah, I was wondering what Bill Shakespeare would’ve had some knobshine sayeth concerneth the year 2024’s dark twi-night as we travel to a new one. (The following passage is doctored from Mac and Beth: A Winter’s Piece of Tale):

Fellatio: A typical focking castle fop. If nobody in the play murders him, somebody in the audience ought to, the sooner the better, and ideally before the curtain rises “Mine liegeing sire, loveth thy hat, it’s thou; but nay, ’tis more than that, it is thou with a focking pillow perched topsides thy royal dome; but dost thou know I heard tell that a week is a week is a year is a year by any other name, ’tis be the same, lean and hungry, yea; and getting, getting, ’tis getting kind of hectic the more things changeth this milking of the human kindness abso-focking-lutely drip-dry; the more they remaineth the sameth. Dost thou not agree? ’Bout what I just saideth, I meaneth?”

Mac: The liegeing lord of the land, always played by a Sir English hambone type, yelling his lines at the over-the-top of his lungs for absolutely no reason other than that he’s drunk as a skunk by the time the overture’s done “Huh-eth?”

And that’s why those plays are still getting acted today in modern times ’cause it takes a couple, three hundred years for folk to focking understand what these clowns were trying to say; and what I’m trying to say is about what it is to be the best thing about 2024: It will be soon over. ’Tis then, done, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.