Over the past few years, first-person
accounts of the Great Horribleness have become a publishing staple,
particularly since the re-legalization of writing and the de-criminalization of
reading. But few texts can provide the visceral power, the historical authenticity,
and the linguistic richness of Fiddle My Piddle Pump: That Cog Noggin Boy O’
Mine Left the Door Open Again, and a Steve Bannon Slipped In Like a Lubed
Cheese Wheel On a Greased Dancefloor, by Luanne McDunkle, who writes and
shoplifts under the name “The Wisecrackin’ Widow of Klutterbuck County.” The
excerpt below provides a vivid example of the sensibility of the woman known to
many who don’t know her as “Patient Zero of the Great Bannon Pestilence of
2017-2021.”
Dear
Damn Diary:
I’m thinking on torching my homestead flat to the dirt floor. This unnerved widow, her puny son, and a feral Steve Bannon are trapped inside the house together like Tri-amese twins in a wrought iron waffle puffer. Know what I mean?
I knew sure as a bejeweled Wookie’s midriff
something like this would happen eventually. “For the love of a stewed wombat,
Jeffrey, close the door all the way
when you come into the house after twilight weed teasin’.” I got tired of
hearing my own voice repeatin’ myself. Kid would just whoosh inside like he was
runnin’ from a Chattanooga pistol whip. Well, Jeffrey left the door ajar one
too many times. Guess what weaselin' twat sprocket snuck into the living room?
A Steve Bannon. I squealed like a hog-tied orphan! ‘Dem damn things are filthy
as a naughty clergyman’s spittoon, you know.
I should’ve pummeled that lil' gnard gardner with a
Deutschland donker barrage post haste. No, not Jeffery! He's only eight. I'm
talkin' 'bout the Steve Bannon! I’m not one to kill pests just because they’re
uninvited guests. I’ve trapped enough spiders to fill Bunyan’s trousers usin’
plastic cups and scooted ‘em to Mother Nature’s druthers, and wafted as many
moths out a window, too. But I’m kickin’ myself now. This pesky Steve Bannon
still scurryin’ about the place has me feelin' like I wanna’ boom-biff a Nazis
square in his dangle deuce.
When a Steve Bannon first scampered inside, it
stopped in the mud room beside the galoshes heap. I’d once seen a picture of a
Steve Bannon in an alt-right field guide so I knew exactly what that danged
shit widget was. But the thing looked as scared as a runt puppy starin' down
the barrel of a well-oiled meat grinder. I think back and curse 'dem pitiful
eyes behind that soused 9 o' clock chin shrub. I kinda’ felt bad for the bugger
at first, but how was I supposed to know ‘dem things as wily as a friendly
necromaniac? I tried to shoo it back out
the door with the McDunkle family corn broom. Five minus six plus one dice.
Damn thing began inchin’ toward me. I always keep a spray bottle handy in case
I need to go fisticuffs with a stuttering gout farmer. So I sprayed the foul
lil’ scrotum pole but good. Barely even ruffled his teats. Then it really
started to move on me like a bitch, all the while snarlin’ like a virgin albino
after snortin’ a codpiece full of Baby Beluga's fever dream at an Appalachian
rave party. Got me? I began backpeddlin’ real slow. I felt helpless as a
ticklish amputee. The blasted Steven Bannon inched closer, and closer, and
closer. “This is it,” I thought, “it’s gonna’ gnaw my grizzle nob to the bone.”
But I thought quick and grabbed the New
York Times off the Poang. What? You don’t believe I read the New York Times, or shop at Ikea? Then I
rolled up the newspaper and boom-biffed that fudd-muckin’ Steve Bannon straight
upside his crimson pockmarked coconut. It yelped as if it’d been
unceremoniously introduced to the business end of Grammie Gertrude's happy
hammer. Then it went scamperin' into a load bearin’ hole in the wall.
I haven't actually seen the Steve Bannon since.
Doesn't mean I still ain't hot like a skinned mongoose lathered in ghost pepper
brine. I know it's still in the house…somewhere. I hear its filthy little claws
tappin' against the floorboards in the middle of the night. Can't sleep
sometimes. I hear him rummagin' up in the attic when I'm trying to
reverse-kerplunk my badoozled jigger nozzle. Hey! How else is a homemaker like
me supposed to earn a livin'? Sometimes, the Steve Bannon causes so much
hullabaloo behind a closet door, or at the end of a hallway, that it makes my
hounds, Sparkplug and Remus J. Smudlaugh VII (named 'em after my daddy and my
daddy's daddy), go batshit crazy. Hmm. Batshit crazy? Is that something folk
say or did I coin a new phrase? Sorry if I lost you. Anyway, I'm sure you know
what an upper-decker pecker-checker that can be when you don't have swamp fog
insurance!
Listen good as ya' should. I'm tired of cleanin' up
piles of Steve Bannon mud nuggets scattered about the place. I'm tired of
vacuumin' molted Steve Bannon fuzz clumps outta' the drapes. Although I can’t
pinpoint the rascal, this whole house fucking smells like Steve Bannon. Olly
olly oxen fee you little shit.
I gotta' get that hideous thing outta' here. It's
plottin' doom. I sense it. I don’t know how, but it’s plottin’ doom. I sense it
straight to the core of a chimneysweep's crotch.
I'm a mother. I gotta' save my little boy Jeffrey,
and all his unborn grandchildren, from the ravages of an unchecked Steve Bannon
run amok. I don't care if I gotta' stack blast candles to Gulliver's taint and
'splode this place straight to Micky Dolenz's locker. That Steve Bannon gotta'
go.
