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Photo illustration: Tess Brzycki

Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, here I be at sort-of the top March and I got questions I would appreciate some goddamn answers to:

Is there really not nary one Russkie who can conjure a way to drop a pinch of poison into V. Putin’s next bowl of goddamn borscht? For christ sakes, I thought poisoning was one of the few things they did well, besides doping up Olympic athletes and writing overlong novels with too many pages.

What the fock is the good of a so-called telephone Do-Not-Call List that when you register for the focking thing, you still get ringing every single focking phone focking call that if you were to answer you would advise Ivan, Ahmed, Yishnish, Colby in Texas, to go straight to hell and stop calling my land-line number? Hey! You need my credit card number to resolve this or that bullshit financial/legal conundrum you’re calling me about? How ’bout you first give me a credit card to rip off ’cause I don’t have a credit card, asshole. I even got a call from some kind of scam outfit that actually left a voice message, to the tune of a car warranty situation, surprising to me that I have not owned any kind of motor vehicle since 1992. Cripes, as I write this I just got another call—623-526-5734, no message, 10 minutes prior I got a jangle from a constant at 677-6043, no area code, no message, just aural harassment.

Do I need Major League Baseball to resolve their schmutz and then have a some-what season where I can spectate four-hour games and Christian Yelich swing the bat for contact like my little sister would’ve had they had Tee-ball back in the late ’50s, and at about a $15 per brewski in the park?

And I question the concept of space/time in this place we call our universe. By this upchucking weekend, we got another Daylight Savings Time up our butts. It’s “spring ahead,” so we all lose a precious hour from our lives. And as I’ve said before, as a recent member of the Septuagenarian Society, a guy like me can’t afford to lose a focking hour pinched from out of my life’s dwindling calendar of days. Cripes, I’m figuring and feeling that there’s not a boatload of those hours left for me to survey the horizon from above ground, and yet one of those hours is stolen from me every March just so that our farmers get some extra daylight so’s to bitch about the government and Big Farm—even if rightfully so. I had high intentions for accomplishment for that hour, but now it looks like I’ll have to put aside Anna Karenina for another time.

And I question that now a bunch of us, including a collapsed Catholic like myself, are smack-dab into the Lenten season, I wonder just what the heck I ought to sacrifice and forego during the 40 days until calendar experts figure, year-to-year, when the J-man actually got nailed up (April 17 this year, if you hear what I hear). One thing I know, I surely do not have the personal constitution to ape the Lord and do something like fast for 40 days out in a wilderness desert somewheres. Cripes, how ’bout that, ain’a? No way could I pull that off; although, to be fair and balanced to myself, that was probably a little easier for Him to do than it would be me, after all, from the pictures and photos I’ve seen of the Lord, he really didn’t look like a very big eater to begin with, what the fock.

And just when the hell do the local radio stations begin to play 24-hour ’round-the-clock Easter music this time of year?

And I question where the phrase “work like a dog” ever did come from, anyways. Ten out of nine dogs wouldn’t know from an honest day’s labor if you focking paid ’em; unless you call piddlin’ back of the BarcaLounger, scarfing up its own barf, gnawing on the business end of a squeaky and yapping its trap off every goddamn time the focking doorbell rings an honest day’s work, what the fock, ain’a?

And how come Donald focking Trumpel-thinskin hasn’t been locked up all right already?

Anyways, another thing about the Lent. My buddy Little Jimmy Iodine called the other day asking me about what I’ve given up for the Lent. I had to tell him that here we are a week into the season and I’ve yet to come up with an answer. And as a perennial candidate for whatever political office you got, I really ought to come up with something if for no other reason than to maybe score a point or two with the Christian focking right crowd, ’cause I got a feeling my support amongst the Jesus-hadists tends toward the flaccid at best, I kid you not.

And they are a difficult bunch to please. Plus, I imagine they may be particularly cranky right now, what with the claims by some (read about this in a moldy National Geographic in my doctor’s waiting room the other week) that a so-called tomb of Jesus has been located, a tomb that indicates the guy was in a family way—as in having been saddled with a wife and child—and what would be so wrong if he had a focus on the family? Hey, you tell me.

And then I’ll tell you, if this tomb turns out legit, the focksticks who are so goddamn down on the gay marriage and anything LGBTIQA+ ought to be a little cheered by the thought that if the Lord had a family, he more than likely wasn’t what you might call “light in the sandals,” and make it more palatable for them to swallow the “do unto others” thing, or something like that.

And finally, when you slide out of bed come Sunday morning and you realize you’ve been heisted of an hour, please remember the words of Sir Groucho Marx: “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” Focking-A, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.