Art Kumbalek
I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, I here we’re headed already toward mid-January of the 2024, what the fock.
And it’s not too late for me to hammer home once more the wish for another happy focking New Year to you’s. And the first thing I’ve got to do with this early 2024 essay is send a big ol’ slobbering “thank you” out to my would-be guardian angel El Jefe there in Bethesda, Maryland, the “Old Line State” whose State Crustacean is the blue crab. That’s one creature I won’t be reincarnated as, since I already am one, what the fock.
But thanks, Jef’ for the inspirational words and the couple bottles of above-board rye gut-rot—quite likely the best thing that comes my way all year with the exception that sometime before the Nov. 5 general election, Trumpty-Dumbty Trumpel-thinskin finds his fat ass cuffed, stripped and shipped off to that penitentiary known as Leavenworth, located there the state of Kansas, also-called a Red State, so I’m sure he’ll find some comfort there as he dines on the prison entrée of “mystery loaf” day after night after day. Hallelujah, jubilation!
Anyways, I know a bunch of you’s are jumping up and down like a dog puppy ready for at least a lick upon an unwrapped stick of a Slim Jim. The reason being the high expectation for my perennially much ballyhooed yearly Look Back/Watch Out Ahead essay.
It has been written, and hopefully soon you’ll find it displayed on this Shepherd website under the title of “From The City That Always Sweeps,” January edition.
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But since I’ve noticed that it has yet to be posted, let me give you a little preview:
The Year 2023: Sucked, but good, major big-time—wars, inhumanity, Counsell to the Cubs.
Watch Out Ahead, 2024: Will suck, even more, you betcha.
And just so you’s know, I’ve been annually whipping out this savant-sodden style of essay for more than 30 years and dag-focking-nabit if I’ve ever been off the mark. So stay tuned, why not and what the fock.
And speaking of guardian angels from above, I remember a conversation me and my buddy Little Jimmy Iodine had the other year, and maybe again this year, during a Christmas-time after watching the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, one of our favorites ’cause we are huge Lionel Barrymore fans, always have been. I’m sure you know the show, the one where Jimmy Bailey (or was it George Stewart?) plays the character who wants to see the whole wide world but every time he tries to leave his pissant town, someone or something chews him a new asshole and he’s forced to stay.
Anyways, after a couple, three hot focking toddies, we agreed that the big focking deal isn’t what the world would be like if you’d never been born—it’s what the world is like if you haven’t been born yet. You’re always luckier if you can get born as far into the future as you can. Focking-A, those poor slobs who got born a thousand years ago as opposed to today sure got the shaft up the butt sideways, ain’a?
Example: Yours truly was born in 1950 I hear, back when the common people were beginning to receive television reception in their rented second-floor flats. Wind the historical clock back a good hundreds-and-hundreds of years, and the people were getting the bubonic plague in what was considered a dinky flat in the very olden years past. Would you prefer an episode of the “Howdy Doody” show or an episode of a deadly disease that would drop you puking sick-dead in a New York minute? Would you prefer to see Clarabell the clown or Clarabell the coroner? Hey, you tell me.
Jimmy and I concurred that it would be more advantageous to be born right now rather than then. There’s just more to do today in your spare time, for starters. A thousand years ago, you wouldn’t even have extra time on any kind of regular basis ’cause you were too busy working, fixing something, hunting, starving, getting slaughtered or sleeping. “Extra” time was the devil’s work. And when maybe you did have a little spare time, once every couple years, all there was to do was paint reindeer on a wall inside some cave. Focking swell.
Eking out a life in the past was not much a wonderful life compared to the future. The future’s just always got to be better, ’cause if it isn’t, what’s the point? What the fock is the focking point? You tell me, ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
