We Do Declare

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, no essay this week. I got to meet up with my crew up over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school where we shall declare to choose to ratify the constitution of our livers but good. Come along if you’d like, but you buy the first round. Let’s get going.

Ernie: I saw in the news that focking Texas just executed Numero 500 when it comes to guys and gals cooling their heels on death row.

Herbie: You betcha. If executions were baseball and career home runs, you get to 500 and the Hall of Fame scuttlebutt starts to heat up.

Little Jimmy Iodine: Anybody know for sure if the guy was really innocent instead of guilty?

Ray: Good question. I always thought putting innocent people to death was supposed to be for private-industry types like what Doc “Black Jack” Kevorkian used to do. Jesus H. Christ, just goes to show you one more example of the goddamn government dicking around with free enterprise and trying to horn in again.

Herbie: Down in the Lone Star State, they choose to croak the whole kit and caboodle—guilty and innocent—then let God sort ’em out ’cause that’s the Christian way to do it. They believe that when you get to the Pearly Gates, if God figures you’re innocent he gives you the green light to come on in and what the fock, heaven sure beats sitting around in prison for the rest of your life, ain’a? And if you’re guilty as sin after all, he sends you to hell, which from what I hear is exactly like being dirt poor and living in Texas, so big focking deal.

Emil: Hey, any you’s guys remember from catechism in school if the purgatory is supposed to be just as hot as hell, or is it cooler?

Ernie: Didn’t Sister used to say it wasn’t supposed to be as bad as hell, you know, with the kind of heat that could kill you in a New York second, but more like Texas in the middle of July, ain’a?

Julius: I’ll take hell over Texas any day. I hate that cowboy crap.

Little Jimmy Iodine: Hey, Artie! Over here. Put a load on your keister.

Art: Hey gents. What do you hear, what do you know.

Emil: I heard Texas leads the league in executions.

Art: Yeah yeah, and I read in the papers some people saying how it would be a good idea to televise these executions, maybe on a pay-per-view like the Big-Time Wrestling.

Ray: Sure, but they’d have to really jazz it up or it would be good and goddamn butt-boring but good, I tell you. Who the hell wants to pay good money just to watch some guy laying on a cot get a shot in the arm and then just go to sleep ’till he croaks?

Herbie: Good point, Ray. Very little value for your entertainment dollar, there. That’s why the government’s got to get out of the capital punishment and turn it over to the private sector. Let the people over at the Focks nutwork handle a show like that: “America’s Wildest and Wackiest Death Row Executions”—load up a Pinto or some kind of van with these cons and drive it off Pike’s Peak. Or maybe send a bunch of these bastards up in a hot-air balloon and for $10 a bullet, members of the general public get a shot at bringing that baby down to Earth.

Ernie: Or they could make it be like a travelogue by sending the doomed prisoner-of-the-week to one of the Arabias where they whip out a scimitar and chop the guy’s noggin off right smack-dab in the middle of the town square, ain’a?

Herbie: I heard the Palestine what-you-call Authority appointed a prime minister and a couple, three days later he quit. That’s no way to become a regular state, ain’a?

Julius: And how the hell does some dink sate like a Delaware rate two senators when your Big Ten states like a Michigan or an Ohio also gets dealt only a deuce for the Senate? Come to think of it, why the hell do we even have a Delaware, except maybe for a place to dump used-up chemicals and we already got New Jersey for that; so for christ sakes, we don’t need Delaware. For that matter, we don’t need a Rhode Island or a South Carolina either. Cut them loose or make them part of another state or give them to the Palestines, but let’s do something, ain’a?

Little Jimmy: I still got my hopes crossed that the head knobs of your Mad-East any day now will take the first baby steps toward agreeing to spend the next thousand years on talks about exactly where to have peace talks.

Ray: That’d be a breakthrough, all right. Hey, I got an idea where they can have talks: How ’bout a galaxy far, far away; and then stay there?

(My constitution calls for another round here, but you’re free to go ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.)