As Days Dwindle Down

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Photo: rai - Getty Images

Art Kumbales with seagulls

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, as our planet we call Earth seeks retribution for the shabbily sordid treatment it’s received from its Homo sapien earthlings the last couple, three hundred years, let me tell you’s something.

I live Downtown not too far from the lake (and why it’s called Lake Michigan rather than Lake Wisconsin beats me ’cause fock Michigan and their cereal companies that when I was a kid offered a crap-to-garbage “prize” at the bottom of a box that contained something one-step up from dog food, which coincidentally, was made in the same focking factory you got your Sugar Pops from, what the fock).

As I was saying (Downtown, lake, Blah-focking-blah), I haven’t had a nearly copacetic night’s sleep since late spring on account of all the goddamn seagulls we got down here squawking their asses off morning, noon and night, what the fock.

All summer long I got my dinky apartment’s windows sprung wide open so’s to attract a gentle cooling breeze and soothe my heated brow. And all summer long—morning, noon and night—all I heard, emanating from atop the nearby buildings, was the constant squawking kvetching from a focking uber-flock of winged rats hell-bent on keeping me sleep deprived.

And what do these garbage birds really need to communicate to each other that’s so important—“Hey, I just flew by the corner of Water Street and Juneau and saw some college knob puke his guts out; so beaks off. That vomit is mine, assholes.”

So the other day, I closed my windows in the p.m. what with the finally nighttime cooler weather. I took a stroll around the neighborhood and noticed there was nary a suck-ass seagull to be seen or heard. I rushed back to my dinky apartment for a soothing snooze, the first in months. Mission accomplished.

And I awoke from some stupid dream during which I had shaved half my dome smooth as a baby’s butt and then grew my hair on the other half extra-long so I could comb it over the bald half. I got to tell you, when I start having dreams about fashion, my world is crumbling. I hate fashion. And I hate dreams. For christ sakes, you fall asleep and all of a sudden your brain becomes some kind of focking avant-garde film director high on the LSD? Sleep is overrated, what the fock, ain’a?

So I became awake, put on the TV and thought I heard that the History Channel or some such thing had a show coming up about big-deal historical discoveries and discoverers—probably the usual suspects, you know, your fire, wheel, movable type, Tyco Brahe, flight, Albert Einstein, Philo T. Farnsworth, combustion engine, cotton gin, the transistor, Leonardo da focking Vinci, Clarence Birdseye—which sounded like a good chance for me to further catch up on my sleep-time and then awaken with restored energy for pissing and moaning.

But hey, I’ll bet you a buck two-eighty one thing they won’t mention on that show is the discovery of the liquor store. I tell you, the guy who came up with that kind of scheme should be in the historical hall of fame. Only a thousand years ago, I don’t know if people even had stores for anything much less one devoted only to good times stored in bottles on shelves that are never empty. I suppose hundreds and hundreds of years ago, if a regular guy had a taste for a little eye opener, he had to go make his own. What a pain in the butt, ain’a? Probably what happened is that breakthroughs in political theory proved that the more time spent making hootch, the less time spent drinking it—an equation that gave rise to wars that could last a hundred years at a crack, I kid you not.

And I’ll bet this show won’t touch on the importance of the discovery of the gentlemen’s periodical and its role in the creation of the modern society we enjoy today. Hard to imagine the hoops you’d have to jump through even 500 years ago just to see a gal buck-naked. Sure, a lot of those old-fart fine-art painters you might’ve heard of in school knew from putting skin on canvas, but during their time in the Middle Ages, most of their paintings were scooped up by some kind of liege lord and locked up for safekeeping in a dank castle, unavailable for the perusal and edification of the common Joe Blow pissant.

And what else about big-time discoveries in the field of medical diagnosis? Well sir, there’s this:

So, this little kid just got potty trained. But when he went to the bathroom to go Number One, the kid managed to hit everything but the toilet. So his mom had to go in and clean up after him every goddamn time the kid went to take a leak. After two weeks, she had enough and took him to see the doctor.

After the exam, the doctor said, “My good woman, the problem for your son is that his, shall we say, ‘unit’ is too small. An old wives’ tale is to give him two slices of toast each morning, and his unit will grow so that he can hold it and aim straight. You may want to try that.”

Next morning, the little kid jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to the kitchen. There on the table are 12 slices of toast.

“Mommy!” the kid says. “Doctor said I only had to eat two slices of toast.”

The mother says, “I know. The other 10 are for your father.”

Ba-ding! ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.