Art Kumbalek scientist
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, we’ve made it to the so-called “merry” month of May, one of four months that can be enunciated with one syllable (but if you live in Florida or Texas or Tennessee these days, I got a feeling that the goofball white-guy legislators now in charge of the education systems for the young people just might have a problem with a word like “syllable”—“Fellow patriots, a ‘syllable’ sounds to me like some kind of outfit one of those so-called men who’d rather be women would squeeze into to put on some kind of dancing show dolled up like a regular Carol Channing or Bea-focking-Arthur. We will not tolerate these woke ‘syllables’ into our schools, libraries and general conversation. God bless America”
Good lord, a drag “syllable” show that might feature a cross-dressed Carol Channing and Bea-focking-Arthur? Cripes, tell me where I can get a ticket. I’ll be there, what the fock.
So yeah, it’s May, fifth month of the year, cripes, chock-focking-ful of memorable calendar dates: International Workers’ Day, Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, Miles Davis’ birthday and Mother’s Day, which reminds me of Oscar Wilde who said: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his. O-Wilde, you be the man still to this day, you betcha.
This May also marks 37years of me whipping out brain-jarring essays from off the top of my head for this news and entertainment empire called the Shepherd. Thank you for my service. But I could abso-focking-lutely pony up to a new challenge: Chief editor and correspondent of the “science section” this publication so sorely needs for the enlightenment of its readers, I kid you not.
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For christ sakes, the discipline of science has been getting crucified by Christian and Republican nutbags for some time, and I say it’s high time that “The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation and theoretical explanation of natural phenomena” (i.e. “the criticism of myths”) gets some ink spewed from an objective source, like me, ain’a?
Cripes, I’d never run out of material, and I’d make sure to craft my coverage nice and lively if not dang near practical, to boot. It wouldn’t at all be like the butt-boring science they tried to cram down your throat in school ’til you could barf lunch’s pigs-in-a-blanket, no sir. I’d give you “who’s hot/who’s not” on the latest Periodic Table, photos with captions on anatomy, cutting-edge info on the science of statistics you could use on your next Vegas junket.
Or take a branch like entomology, the study of insects. I’d like to explore reasons why on the TV pest-control commercials, the bug guy driving the snappy van wears a white shirt and tie on the job. Is this some kind of weird-ass psychological ploy? Do bugs dish up extra respect to a guy in a shirt and tie and simply vacate a premises on their own accord so that Herr Death won’t feel the need to unleash his secret chemical vapor storm right there in the kitchenette—a storm that could otherwise reduce a southeast Asian rain-focking-forest to pure pud for the next two, three millennia?
And I’d give you top-dollar botany coverage, you betcha. Jeez louise, I read a comment on some website that shoveled on about the reason ancient peoples were so groovy was because “they practiced animism—the belief that everything has a soul: people, animals, plants, trees...”
Plants have souls? What next? I’ll tell you “what next.” I remembered hearing of an English doctor who said he had recorded the “screams” of plants when they get chopped, diced or minced. Now, the conclusion I reach here is that those people who do not eat the meat for soulful reasons should now also not eat the vegetable and rather acquire a taste for paste as some of us youthful gourmands did back in first grade. Bon appétit!
And naturally, there’s “political science.” The old-fart Greek Aristotle wrote, “Therefore, the good of man must be the end (i.e. objective) of the science of politics.” Hey, nice try, Ari. But simple observation has surely proved you were full of crap on that one. I never bought the term “political science.” Combining something so foul with something so pure always sounded like bullshit to me, but of course if “politics” is involved, what the hell else could it sound like? You tell me.
And I’ll tell you’s to keep your eyes to the sky ’cause that’s where heaven’s supposed to be, what the fock, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
