Snapped, Crackled and Pooped

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, this being the year from hell, 2020, I’m forced to believe that outer-space aliens are among us and that they will reveal themselves before the end of this year and the carnage applied to the Earthling by the marauders from who-knows-where-the-fock will make the effects of this corona schmutz seem like slightly spoiled potato salad at a Sunday school picnic, I kid you not.

Or, perhaps these brainiac out-of-the-galaxy visitors have come in peace, but they’ve also come with super-duper deadly virus/bacteria that will kibosh all life of the Homo sapien variety from the surface of our planet, which shall initiate a couple, three million years-long battle between the insects and the rats for supremacy of this gods’ green earth. And that is why the other day when I noticed a bug (perhaps a progenitor of Earth’s future overlord?) of indeterminate specie affixed to a bathroom wall affixed within the confines of my dinky apartment, I bludgeoned the bejesus out of the invader with a rolled up newspaper—yes, a newspaper, remember those? a useful and handy item they were, once ago. Hey, let’s get this party started, what the fock.

Anyways, about “these unprecedented days,” as the snap-crackle-pop comedian and writer Judy Gold says, “My car is getting four months to the gallon.” And if I had a car, I’d be in the same boat (mixed metaphor? Fock if I know. I don’t have a boat, neither. Double negative? Fock if I know, since I’m more a triple-negative kind of guy these unprecedented what-the-focks).

Yeah yeah, safest not to go anywhere these days I hear, even with the bank-heist face gear. But I sure do miss my trips Up North to Hayward over there northwest with the fellas. I’ve got my memories, though, for what they’re worth. And what they’re worth, I have no clue. Jeez louise, I can remember that silver-screen siren Rita Hayworth’s birth name is Margarita Carmen Dolores Cansino, but I can’t remember what I wrote in this essay a sentence ago, what the fock.

But I do remember writing about a trip me and my gang took up to over by the Hayward there some years ago, and maybe you do, too. If not, here’s a snapshot I found in an old album of what one of these journeys was like ’cause what the fock, an old fart like me has nothing better to do at this age and time than to live in the past:

I just now got back into town from being out of town, and by out of town I’m talking some 30-odd miles north of Hayward way up northwest there where me, Little Jimmy Iodine and my buddy Ernie spent an idyllic week and some two-odd days at Ernie’s brother-in-law’s ramshackle cold-water cabin-hut on a lake where the fish weren’t biting but the focking flies sure were. Ba-ding!

It was to be only a week’s holiday but the two-odd days got tacked on account of Ernie accidentally losing his grip on the car keys, which then plummeted down the long chute of the antediluvian outhouse. Numerous rescue attempts were made. A passerby would’ve thought there were miners trapped down that poop chute instead of a set of keys to a Chevy Celebrity of indeterminate color with two-hundred and seventy-focking-five thousand miles on her, what with the painstaking valor we demonstrated throughout the retrieval operation, I kid you not.

Unfortunately, all any of the three of us have to show for our recovery project are the advanced symptoms of some kind of E. coli/salmonella/shigellosis combo. But I think we may have learned something other than never again to appoint numbnuts Ernie as keeper of the keys: Personal hygiene is everything it’s cracked up to be, I shit you not.

So now you know, the return trip took a little longer than planned since we didn’t figure-in having to walk 10miles to a pay phone in the Town of Barnes to call Ernie’s brother-in-law over on Bottsford Avenue in St. focking Francis and then wait on him to come fetch our sorry asses all 362 miles back home. And a quiet journey it was, the stone-cold silence interrupted only by the occasional retelling of Northwoods stories, like the following:

So this game warden comes across a duck hunter who’s bagged three ducks and decides to “enforce the laws pending.” He collars the hunter, flashes his badge and says, “Looks like you’ve had a pretty good day. Mind if I inspect your kill?”

The hunter shrugs and hands the ducks to the warden. The warden takes one of the ducks, pokes his finger up the duck’s dupa, pulls it out, sniffs it and says, “This here’s a Washington state duck. You have a Washington state hunting license?” The hunter pulls out his wallet and calmly shows the warden a Washington state hunting license.

So the warden takes a second duck, pokes the bird up the butt, pulls out his finger, sniffs it and says, “This here’s Idaho duck. You have an Idaho state hunting license?” And the hunter hands over an Idaho state hunting license. The warden takes a third duck, proceeds with the finger test and says, “This here’s an Oregon state duck. You have an Oregon state hunting license?”

Now the hunter’s pissed. He whips out an Oregon license and says, “Read it and weep, Perry Mason.” The warden’s a little miffed at having struck out, hands the ducks back to the hunter and says, “You’ve got all of these licenses here, son. So just where the hell are you from, anyways?”

The hunter drops his pants, bends over, and said, “You’re so smart, YOU tell ME!”

Ba-ding! ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.

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