So It Blows

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Art Kumbalek

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, I hear our “president,” Trumpty-Dumbty, who, let’s not forget, lost the 2016 presidential popular vote by dang near 3 million ballots, is ready to pull out from his ample ass an executive order that kiboshes mail-in ballots and the use of voting machines come election times for the midterms 2026.

No voting machines??? What the fock, I’ll need a carrier pigeon to deliver my ballot?

Quite the election-process turnaround from some years ago when our commander-in-grief, the honorable Orange Circus Peanut, believed that absentee ballots were copacetic, but mail-in ballots sucked ass, even though they are the same damn thing, what the fock.

Yes, Mr. President, I get it. Cars are wonderful but automobiles are garbage; monkeys are swell but simians can go to hell; I like me some underwear but underpants stink. Jeez louise, ain’a?

I’m thinking the USA could use a more youthfully energetic outlook coming out of the Oval Office, and so I offer my services. (Hey, when Trumpel-thinskin was a high school senior, I would’ve been an 8th grader. Those older guys liked to listen to Pat Boone and the Four focking Freshmen whilst me and us younger guys preferred the Beatles and the Kinks. Enuff’ said.)

And about my announcing of my run for whatever political office you got needs filling, I got the good news and I got the bad news—what’s the “good” and what’s the “bad” is up to you’s, but here it is: On one hand, I’m back from a brief campaign summertime hiatus, an Up North odyssey 30 miles straight out of Hayward; on the other hand, I’ve returned queasily under-the-weather to the degree that there’s not much on my platter that I can shovel more your way in the form of an essay, what the fock.

But hey, thanks for taking care of the city—such as it is—while I was away. And yeah, the trip was OK, thanks for asking, until focking Ernie, my security adviser, dropped the car keys out of the goddamn rowboat whilst we fished for bluegill, for christ sakes.

I’ll tell you’s, when you go Up North you always hear about the deer ticks and the wood ticks and I say big focking deal, ’cause I tell you that the ones that really get under your skin are the luna-focking-tics you’re vacationing with, I kid you not.

Yeah yeah, we were way up northwest around your Sawyer/Bayfield counties, a quaintly developed area of the state where I swear Woodrow Wilson is still president. But it’s one heck of a scenic locale, and although job opportunities seem slim, there appears to be plenty of eating opportunities given the load of girth the huge majority of residents have swaddled themselves with. Cripes, my buddy and political campaign-fund solicitor Herbie goes about 225 lbs. but Haywardians always threw in a couple extra bucks out of sympathy when he panhandled them for the cause ’cause they thought he was sick-thin from chemo treatments or something.

We held our brainstormin’ retreat that could change the future of this country at my buddy Ernie’s brother-in-law’s state-of-the-art summer home. Yes sir, state-of-the-art provided you were a contemporary of Jean Nico-focking-let. And spacious? You bet. How would the equivalent size of three walkup-apartment bedroom closets, with likewise toilet facilities to boot, sound to you? Well, whatever it is you’d hear at Ernie’s coldwater cabin, it sure wouldn’t be the sound of a flush toilet if you’d have stayed where we did.

But miracle, we arrived back in Beertown, and me and my campaign brain-trust got together over by Little Jimmy Iodine’s place to strategize and watch the Woodstock documentary movie from years ago on his still-functioning VCR, seeing as how it’d been the 50 years-plus almost to the day since we piled into Herbie’s 1958 second-hand four-door rusted-out Pontiac Star Chief (gas consumption for the Chief was not measured in miles, no sir, it was measured in city blocks) to head to the festival out there somewheres in New York state, and by way of crap-ass directions we ended the journey off Route 66 at a filling station in Amarillo, focking Texas, on account of a “bum fuel pump,” as analyzed by the Johnny Reb pump-jockey moments after routinely checking our dip stick and license plate: “You Yankee boys who don’t know shit from shinola when it comes to a Yankee automobile engine driving through the Lone Star State got yourselves a situation here. Do hope you’re not in a hurry to get somewheres.” And all these years later, I still believe that I would choose an eternity in hell over a day in Texas, what the fock.

Anyways, we were well into our third case of ice-cold Rhinelander whilst watching the movie when Joe focking Cocker hit the stage and Herbie says, “What the fock. What would I do if you sang out of a tune? I’ll tell you what I’d do, I’d tell you to go take some focking music lessons, that’s what, and then I’d tell you to go find a focking day job and leave the rest of us listening public alone. How come Roy Orbison’s not in this movie? There’s a guy who could sing in tune, I kid you not.”

And then Little Jimmy wondered what the young people of today would nostalgialize 56 years from now as a remembrance-anniversary in the year 2081. (How’s my math?)

“Maybe it’s the last summertime when every focking day wasn’t over 100 focking degrees,” Emil says.

And Julius says, “I can’t think of a good goddamn thing that’s happened in 2025 that’ll be worth a nice remembrance in 56 years. What, mass massacres, disease, every time you focking turn around? Although, say, if our fockstick president and all his corrupt cronies were to be abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore and never to be heard from again, now that would be an event worth celebrating every focking day for the next 1,000 years, what the fock, ain’a?”

So Little Jimmy says, “Fifty-six years since the Woodstock. Maybe what we ought to watch right now is that Easy Rider movie ’cause that goes back to 1969, to boot. And about what’s going on these days, I still remember from that movie when the hippie Dennis Hopper hippie-biker character says to the older Jack Nicholson Louisiana-lawyer character: “What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man? That’s what it’s all about.” And Jack Nicholson/George Hanson says: “Oh yeah, that’s right, that’s what it’s all about, all right. But talkin’ about it and bein’ it—that’s two different things. I mean, it’s real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. ’Course, don’t ever tell anybody that they’re not free ’cause then they’re gonna get real busy killin’ and maimin’ to prove to you that they are. Oh yeah, they’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ’em.”

So it goes, ain’a Kurt, whose greatest novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, came out fifty-focking-six years ago, wouldn’t you know—America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.—what the fock, and so it does go, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.