To Health With You

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So here we are, smack-dab in the first week of spring, that very special time of year when a young man’s fancy turns to getting his rocks off with whomever, whenever, wherever, as often as possible.

And god bless the heartily youthful of loin as they go about their bra-snapping and crotchgrabbing ways, so as to keep the Homo sapiens gene pool deep and moist, as a garden whose flowers could be selectively picked by an evolutionarily new and improved (wishfully more thoughtful) version of the genus Homo.

(And to the aging, old-fart-of-loin baby boomers, I fear the best of us may no longer be with us. Vasectomized, high on Viagra, sporting white facial hair to draw attention from the tragically receding hairline where once flew proudly one’s hirsute freak flag, let’s face it, our time is done. We are yesterday’s newsso much for our “youth revolution”; although we may still blow up through sheer numbers the Medicare and Social Security dough like nobody’s business but our own. Power to the People!) (Yeah, once upon a time, chanteuse-goddess Joni Mitchell hastened the Pepsi Generation “to get ourselves back to the garden.” Little did I know then that the “garden” 40 years later would be the Country Garden Restaurantand get back in time’cause who the fock wants to miss out on the Early Bird Special? It is to laugh. It is to cry.)

Anyways, I fear our battle with the monkey Primates for supremacy on this island Earth is not necessarily over. And let’s not forget the cockroach of the order Blattaria, or the rat of the genus Rattus. These focking fockers got game and then some. And if you sat on your ass watching college basketball for four days and nights as I did last weekend, you sure-as-shootin’ know that, indeed, upsets happen.

So, about this onslaught of the season called spring, all it means to me is that we’re one step closer to summertime’s goddamn hot and humid, noisy and sticky weather, the kind that makes me feel like I’m living in some Third World sweatshop of a country instead of being an American.

So to spring, I say thanks for nothing.

Yes sir, March 20, first day of focking springtime, one of only two days in the whole year when lightness and darkness slug it out to a standstill. A tie, a drawwhat they call in the sports-world “kissing your sister” (historically considered a “marriage proposal” in the southcentral-eastern United States).

Yet, in the olden, olden days when there were even more weird-ass religions afoot than there are today, this day was marked as one of barely a handful of rites the common people had during the year where they’d take the day off from fight ing the plague and getting kicked in the ass by their liege lord so as to celebrate by slaughtering a barnyard animal or three as some kind of nutty sacrificial offering to the deities du jour.

Now, I’m no religious expert, but I’m telling you’s, just imagine if those wacky ancestors of mine and maybe yours were on to something, that maybe they knew something we didn’t knowthat hacking up a perfectly good sheep or cow on the first day of spring actually did buy you a couple extra days of sunshine during the year, or maybe relieve that toothache you had since coming back from the Crusades 10 years ago. What a world.

Anyways, I got to go on account of I got a couple, three things on my platter way more important than telling you Neanderthals what you ought to think about the days of our time.

One: For Christ sakes, it’s a little more than a week ’til the Easter and I still haven’t figured what to give up for Lent. I thought I could proclaim to give up the partaking of sloppy-seconds vis-a-vis the porn-whore paramours of Tiger Woods. Yeah, a little disingenuous maybe. After all, we’re talking the Catholic Church here. As a once grade-school attendee of Our Lady In Pain

That You Kids Are Going Straight To Hell But Not Soon Enough, I know that that crowd is not into women. So, for the rest of Lent, I’m giving up long car rides to the countryside with pants-less altar boys. No problem. Glory be to god.

Two: And speaking of “glory be to god,” our goddamn government finally decided to do something for all the people rather than just the white focks on Wall Street or those life-ordeath lizards who call the shots at the health insurance companies for winners. I’m talking a HEALTH INSURANCE law that does finally seem to include what’s written on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “…your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…” Goddamn, about time, ain’a?

Yes, there are some among us a tad worried that a government of all the people can actually do some good once in awhile. So I got to run over by my buddy Little Jimmy Iodine’s place to soothe the ignorant. He’s heard and worried that at any moment now federal agents will beat down his door, tear his liver out through his asshole and then give it to someone needier. I’ve heard otherwise, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.