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 was 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 and then 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. (With no apologies! 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 free, 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 feel 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.
