Gassed and Spurious

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I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, I don’t know how much essay I can pony up for you’s this week. I’m not thinking clearly on account of coming down with some kind of bug. Knocked me flat on my back, as opposed to prone, which I ought to be grateful for since I prefer to be the backer rather than the backee, if there is a choice to be had, when one finds himself in a prostrate kind of way, or something like that.

Cripes, and here I just read one of those New York Times OP-EDs called “The Next Pandemic: Not If, But When.” So now I don’t know if I got “The Next Pandemic,” that West Nile deal, malaria or just a big honking common cold. But they say that maintaining a positive attitude is the key to a speedy recovery, and I’d like to know how the heck you’re supposed to maintain something you never had in the first focking place. Hey, you tell me.

And then I’ll tell you that now we’re post-Memorial Day, we got the goddamn summer season smacking us square in the face. All that racket. All that festive ethnic hoopla. And all the knuckleheads complaining about the mosquitos and the goddamn persistent yellow jacket bee stingers.

Listen: Any knobshine bitching on mosquitos is obviously some knobshine who’s spending time outdoors. What the hell’s the matter with you? You want to duck the mosquitos? Park your whining butt indoors just like any right-thinking guy does each and every season of the year. Case closed. You got a problem with outdoor bugs, don’t come crying to me. I told you what to do.

And while we’re on the subject, do we really need the infinitudinal number of focking species of bugs we seem to have on god’s green Earth every time you turn around? For christ sakes, according to my research we got upwards 500 billion types of insect species on and in our world—all created for the purpose of nothing other than to bug the hell out of you and me, or at least give us a good case of the heebie-jeebies, ain’a?

These goddamn insects go parading around all the time so high and mighty, and yet even though they know that one eventual day they will inherit the Earth and be the big cheese-olas ’cause Al Qaeda finally got hold of some kind of big-time nervy biological germ/gas/spray that wipes out everything on two legs, beard or no beard—oops!—these insects are still supremely motivated to bug us all the time because the average sapien Homo gets dealt an average lifespan of 65-70 years if everything breaks right, while the average focking bug gets cut like a day and a focking half. And they are pissed but good about the disparity. Don’t ask me how they know but they do, I kid you not.

Well, fock ’em. If I were in charge of things, I’d make it that only two kinds of bugs were necessary on this planet: Squished, and more squished.

These focking insects and what have you don’t know when they got it good. Jeez louise, if you were a bug criminal and got sentenced to do hard time, what would that come to? About 22 focking hours I figure. And you could get through bug high school in about two and a half hours (still more time than a lot of sapien students put in, granted); so big focking deal.

I wish these bugs could find some time to learn to do something constructive during their puny lifespan period instead of just bug us all the time. But until those bugs get some sense into whatever they got for heads; I say we squash ’em, and squash ’em good.

Yeah yeah, it would be a hoot to come back in a million years or so when the bugs are the top dogs, ain’a? I wonder if they’ll still be eating each other, or if evolution will have provided them a more reasonable if not relaxed disposition. I’ll bet a buck two-eighty their museums would be mighty interesting. Instead of dinosaurs, they’ll have a life-size Mom, Pop, Buddy, Sis and Grandma, burning the bird on a grill at the backyard picnic. The insects will clatter into the flashy exhibit room and there’ll be these snazzy illusional lighting effects that cram the span of the picnic into about three minutes. Sure, there’ll be sound effects: music from a crappy classic-rock radio station; Grandma wondering where the fock she left her teeth; Pop yelling at Buddy to go get a focking job; and Sis on her phone figuring out what to wear at the funeral after she kills herself ’cause her family sucks.

You bet it’ll be a popular display at the bug museum, but I’m betting the petrified pile of dog shit will always be numero uno with the winged and many-legged crowd, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.