I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, good news about these COVID vaccinations beginning to make the rounds, you betcha. If nothing else, it ought to free up our scientists and medical experts to develop a vaccine that provides immunity against stupidity, callousness and profiteering (SCP) and front of the line to receive this inocu-focking-lation would be every Republican currently identified as a United States Senator—and Badgerland’s own Ron Johnson (R-Idiot) needs at least a triple dose, what the fock.

Oh, and there’s this headline from the other day on cnn.com:

“Melania Trump cheers new White House tennis pavilion amid ongoing pandemic”

Okey-doke, move the vacantly sultry disengaged Slovenian gold digger to near the front for the SCP vaccine, ain’a?

Yes sir, “America’s departure from reality,” as David Masciotra opined on salon.com, ’round about Thanksgiving time:

“A pandemic is dangerous, frightening and chaotic enough in the best circumstances. Throw in a population given to superstition, hatred of experts as diabolical elites and hostility toward science, and reasons to give thanks—other than the ability to breathe without the aid of a ventilator—will rapidly diminish.” And he wonders: “Why do so many Americans accept lunacy as empirical truth?” As do I wonder, sir, what the fock.

Yes, lunacy—those who believe that the COVID is a hoax, those who would say, “Hey, libtard. I walk up to the grocery store a couple blocks, and I don’t see anyone keeling over deader than a doornail, so, what the fock? Perhaps I’m missing something with this ‘pandemic,’ but what with the ‘reported’ deaths in the multi-thousands, all I can do is think that that means there’s more empty seats on the goddamn bus and shorter check-out lines at the store, which I do appreciate. So, shut the fock up.”

And speaking of vaccinations, in the news was the story out of England that a lionhearted 81-year-old by the name of William Shakespeare was one of the first to get shot with the anti-COVID milk of human kindness.

Now of course, this was not the William Shakespeare whose name spread dread when it came to write an essay that was to explore the meaning of an unread Macbeth back during one’s school days. But I did wonder what, if anything, the Immortal Barge of Stratford-on-Avon would have to say about the state of our world these days, and would anyone buy it, or understand it?

Let us not forget that the Sweet Swan of Avon was wont to quill in one of his umpteen dozen king plays (and prithee, as I interrupteth thine focking self to query a “how come” back then when those guys wrote those thespian plays, everybody ended up talking like they were in some Dr. Seuss book with big words—“Green, Green Eggs and Hamlet”?)

(Now I can understand your usual royal pain-in-the-butts talking that talk ’cause other than to try on those fluffy pillow things on their heads so that a couple hundred years later a guy like me could eyeball one of their portraits and say, “Hey, get a load of the focking knob in the stupid hat”; all they’d do for fortnights at a crack is squat upon their thrones, pluck their focking lutes and rhyme for no reason because they didn’t have TV yet nor did they have regular show business. Heck, back then they didn’t even have bathing, can you imagine? That would be like spending your life on a county bus that never stopped. No wonder they had wars all the time.)

(And for cripes sakes, in these plays even the focking peon pissants would be rhyming like banshees and generally sounding like one of those upper-crusted farts you find on public TV. Jeez louise, didn’t anybody talk regular back then, so that a guy like me could make out what they were saying?)

And aye, oh my, where the fock was I before I had interrupteth’t myself? Oh yeah, I was wondering what Bill Shakespeare would’ve had some knobshine sayeth concerneth the year 2020’s dark twi-night as we travel to a new one. (The following passage is doctored from Mac and Beth: A Winter’s Piece of Tale):

Fellatio: (A typical focking castle fop. If nobody in the play murders him, somebody in the audience ought to, the sooner the better, and ideally before the curtain rises) “Mine liegeing sire, loveth thy hat, it’s thou; but nay, ’tis more than that, it is thou with a focking pillow perched topsides thy royal dome; but dost thou know I heard tell that a week is a week is a year is a year by any other name, ’tis be the same, lean and hungry, yea; and getting, getting, ’tis getting kind of hectic the more things changeth this milking of the human kindness abso-focking-lutely drip-dry; the more they remaineth the sameth. Dost thou not agree? ’Bout what I just saideth, I meaneth?”

Mac: (The liegeing lord of the land, always played by a Sir English hambone type, yelling his lines at the over-the-top of his lungs for absolutely no reason other than that he’s drunk as a skunk by the time the overture’s done) “Huh-eth?”

And that’s why those plays are still getting acted today in modern times ’cause it takes a couple hundred years for folk to focking understand what these clowns were trying to say; and what I’m trying to say is about what it is to be the best thing about 2020: It will be soon over. ’Tis then, done.

Hey, as of this writing, good news, I figure we’ve only got about 42 more days of the Trumpel-thinskin White House version to endure. And so to him I send this quote by Big Bill Shakes from Henry IV Part 2 (Act 1, Scene 2): “You are as a candle, the better burnt out,” ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.

To read past Art Kumbalek essays, click here.