Still the Troubled Man for Troubled Times

I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So here we be, three months into my gala 30th anniversary with one newspaper. That’s 210 in dog years, and I ought to know. Way back when I was married, I spent so much time in the doghouse that for my birthdays I always got a new water bowl and choke collar, I kid you not.

So what do you hear, what do you know? I heard another Brewers Opening Day has come and gone, an event I was absent from once again. I said you couldn’t pay me enough to go, what with the lousy weather and all those young people riding the Obnoxious Train. But then I thought, wait a second, maybe they could pay me enough. So I called the Brewers and left a message that if they wanted me to come to the game, here’s what I needed: $150, door-to-door transportation, free beer, replace the seventh-inning’s “God Bless America” with the Jimi Hendrix “Star-Spangled Banner,” and a weekend at the Hyatt with Front Row Amy and the Brewer wife or girlfriend of my choice. They didn’t get back to me and so I stayed home—and just maybe if I’d been there they would’ve won, so fock ’em.

And I know we had the Badgerland primary election last Tuesday and I hope you all were able to flash some kind of Gestapo-inspired ID and vote. Yeah, voter fraud my ass. I’ll tell you, the voter fraud that concerns me the most are the voters who get bamboozled into believing that by voting Republican they’ll be better off, what the fock.

Of course, you didn’t see my name anywhere on the ballot. The Art Kumbalek Democracy Express 2016 For Any and All Political Office (Whatever You Got Needs Filling I’ll Fill It) ’cause I got a late start with the campaigning. All I can do is shake my flabbergasted head and say “what the fock” when it comes to those other knobshines starting their campaign for president and what-not so gosh darn early. Don’t these people have regular jobs they’re supposed to be doing? Kind of puts a workingman like myself at a decided disadvantage when it comes to having his butt parked in the Oval Office through the will of the people, for christ sakes.

People come up to me and say, “I hear you’re running for all kinds of political office, Artie. But I don’t know anything about what you’ll do for the people.” And I have to tell them that’s ’cause there’s no free speech. Free speech costs dough and I don’t have any. That’s why all these rich focks can run for government and it’s like they get to speak through one of those fancy-schmancy speaker systems like they got in an arena. For the poor schmucks who can’t pay for the free speech, it’s like you may well as be talking with rotten teeth, bleeding gums, a draining boil on your tongue, and right before they hand you the microphone, somebody tapes your mouth shut and breaks your jaw with a focking baseball bat.

Anyways, it’s on to the second Tuesday of November, and I’m hoping my campaign war chest sometime holds more than the $34.21 sitting there right now, you betcha.

(Hold on, it’s the phone. Could be some election commission calling to tell me they made a mistake and that I actually won something.)

“Hey Artie, I finally got a good idea for a campaign TV ad for you.”

(It’s my buddy Little Jimmy Iodine. I’ll make this short.) “Jimmy, I’m in the middle of something here.”

“OK, Artie. But picture the picture: You see two bums walking down the street. One of them starts sniffing his nose and says to the other, ‘Hey, what the hell am I smelling here. You crap your pants?’ Other bum says, ‘Fock no.’ Half-a-block later the first bum says, ‘Are you sure you didn’t crap your pants?’ The other says, ‘No focking way, what’s your problem?’

“They walk a little farther and the first bum says, ‘Yes you did. I can focking smell it. You did. You crapped your pants.’ Second bum says, ‘The hell I did. I’ll prove it.’ He drops his drawers, and there smack-dab in his skivvies is one big honking turd. The first bum says. ‘So if you didn’t crap your pants, what’s that focking turd doing in your BVDs?’ And the other bum says, ‘Fock if I know. It was there when I found ’em.’”

“Jimmy, that’s the stupidest focking idea for a campaign commercial I ever heard.”

“Hold on, Artie. One of the bums wears a sign that says ‘Democrats’ and the other bum wears a sign that says ‘Republicans.’ And at the end of the commercial, right after the second bum says the turd was already in the shorts when he found them, a thunderous Moses-type announcer voice says: ‘Republicans. Democrats. No wonder Washington stinks. Time to clear the air and change your soiled government. Vote Art Kumbalek.’”

“I’ll think about it Jimmy, ’cause I’m, Art Kumbalek and I told you so.”