Anyways, right now it’sa Tuesday for mefor you it’ll be the future of a different reality by the timeyou read thisbut I got to program my video-recorder-thing for tonight’sepisode of the prime-time philosophy TV show “Lost.” Heard about it? All aboutfree will versus destiny, science up against faith, ABC versus FOX.
So I got to go, but I’llleave you with a short piece I wrote that echoes the blueprint of the enginethat powers the show, a piece that first appeared in the gentlemen’speriodical, Bendover, somewheres, sometime, in a sideways universe:
Victimof Circumstances
By Arthur Kumbalek
As the late WentworthDillon, who-the-fock Earl of Roscommon, was famous for telling you’s: “Choosean author as you choose a friend.”
A-focking-men. Butbefore you choose to read further, me, the author of this, a choice that mightnot only affect your entire future but also go down on your permanent record tobootI would feel like a total fockstick if I did not choose to relate the following,about the matter of “choice”:
So this guy goes to thedoctor’s office, he’s not feeling well. “I'm not feeling well,” he says. Thedoctor does a quick checkup. Seems the guy’s got a carrot in his left ear, abanana in his right ear, a couple of green peppers up his nose and a kumquat uphis you-don’t-want-to-know-what (between you and me it’s up his ass, I kid younot).
Guysays, “So Doc, what the heck’s the matter with me?” Doctor says, “Well sir,just off the top of my head I’d say you’re not eating properly.”
Guysays, “Well then the hell with being a vegetarian.”
And so it is that theconceit concerning the nature of “choice” proves to be the folly it is throughthe story we have just read. To wit: The man believes he is wise vis-a-vis hispersonal wellness by choosing to be a vegetarian. However, as the storyillustrates: The man is not well. No man with a kumquat up his butt can bewell, I don’t care who the fock you are.
But what if he’d chosena different diet? What then? Would the man in our story feel better that ifstuck in his orifices were meat by-products instead? The answer is no. The manin our story can never be better no matter what he “chooses” because the man inour story is a focking idiot, and not because he stuck a banana in his ear or akumquat up his dupa. No sir, the man in our story is a focking idiot becausehis conclusion“the hell with being a vegetarian”says to me he is thinkingthat a different choice might’ve kept him out of the doctor’s office that day.It is to laugh.
And so should we takeaway from our little story the following: Any knobshine who chooses tobelieve they got a choice about anything has only proven that the first choicethey made was to be a moron.
So yes, we shoulddisregard the hypocritical moral prig pigs (conservative Republicans) whopander this: “Hey, any focking thing bad happens to you it’s your own damnfault, so suck-up and shut the fock up about it and leave the rest of us alone.For christ sakes, somewheres you made a wrong choice all by yourself, so learnto live with it, asshole.”
But are we “alone”? It’ssaid that we control our destinies, and I say you got to be jerking mybeefaroni ’cause the enlightened modern free-thinker would argue that there is no free-thinking, no free will, no choice;that there exists in the world only unseen and unknown authority (dark matter),not to mention dogma with a serious case of rabies.
The free-thinker wouldargue that since you don’t choose to be born and you can’t choose not to croak, any pissant so-called“choice” in-between birth and death is just a focking joke and if it isn’t, itdamn well ought to be.
I’m sure the argumentsabout free will, choice, destiny and blah-blah will go on and on, but for mymoney all questions concerning the significant meaning of mankind’s existenceon this planet and in this universe were answered forever but good the day thelate philosopher Jerome Howard remarked to his brother Moe following therepeated application of the business end of a ball-peen hammer to his curlypate or a pliers up his schnozz, “Hey, Moe! I’m just a victim ofcircumstances.”
Lost, are we all, uponthe crash of our birth onto this planet, ain’a? And John Donne, the early-early17th-century metaphysical poet said “No man is an island.” Of course not: “He’sa peninsula,” so said the Jefferson Airplane before disappearing in 1972.
And I say free will andchoice rules: Brush your teeth and stay in school, or you got yourself asituation. Of course, if you crash land at birth in your Mauritania or Chad, good luck with finding atoothbrush.
But what the fock, ifHurley ends up with Kate by the end of this “Lost” season, I’ll believe allthings are possible and that this is the best of all possible worlds, maybe,what the fock, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
