E=mc2 , three simple letters which spelt dis-arse-ter for the modern world, for as every schoolboy knows, E=mc2 is the fatal fundamental physical formula which made the B-U-M possible. Funnily enough (though the joke is on us) this totally incomprehensible expression of the Ultimate Nature of Matter occured to the young Einstein in the process of voiding his bowels at the local public convenience. Convenient for him perhaps, inconvenient for the public. His idea stank. You Reeker, exclaimed Albert, upon examining his stools after a particularly strenuous bout of intellectual dysentary. That flash of insight would probably have been little more than a splash in the pan had he not then & there started scribbling his notorious Theory of Rectal-activity onto a handy sheet of toilet paper. By the time he had finished, he had got thru an entire roll. With behindsight, we may wish he had thought better of it & pulled the flush.It was only a matter of time before someone discovered the Chain-Reaction. One little problem remained, however: what the hell to do with it. The answer came from Enrico Fermi, an anal-retentive Italian scientist in the pay of the Mafia. One day, while playing with Atoms (the basic building blocks of the Universe), childishly he decided to make a pile of them just to see what would happen. Fermi's famous Atomic Pile turned out to be the prototype Nuclear Reactor. It made a pile for Enrico but was a pain in the arse for the rest of us, because to a logical mind, Atomic Piles could mean only one thing: a posteriori, there had to be an Atomic BUM.
When President Poosevelt got wind of this, fearing America might be caught with its pants down, he instituted a top-level research project in the remote New Mexican desert where further experiments could be carried out without social embarrasment. There, a team of smart-arsed perverts under the guidance of Robert call-me-jobby Oppenheimer, another scientist stuck at the anal stage, constructed the first B
ums in strictest secrecy (to avoid a scandal.) Dropped on an unsuspecting Japan in 1945, the 'Little Boy' & 'Fat Man' Bums were an immediate hit, in fact they completely flattened two cities. Anatomic Warfare had arrived with a bang. The victims whimpered.
As was only right & proper, America led the world & continued testing more BUMS, A-Bums & H-bums, (& if the military had had their way, they would have tried every letter in the alphabet - these men were scholars & knew their Greek; alpha, beta, gamma rays presented no linguistic problems to their enlightened understanding. All this was done in a spirit of pure scientific enquiry, for the common welfare of course. There was no question of any Yankee hanky-panky. It would be another story if the BUM fell into the wrong hands. Unfortunately this was just what happened. By means of an audacious cloaca & dagger operation, enemy spies got hold of an army-surplus enema, & before very long the Russians had their own BUM (a Red Bum). There were now two fingers on the button, or rather the buttock. Soon other nations rushed to join the queue for the SuperLoo. It wasn't enough to have a Behind. To get ahead, you had to have the BUM.
Admitedly, throughout history, visiting the lavatory had always held slight hazards. However, the advent of these excremental weapons made defecation a deadly business. With the Bum hanging over our heads, never again could we shit in peace. For the first time, but not the last, the man (or woman)-in-the-privy must have felt an intense nostalgia
, a longing for lost innocence & erstwhile happier days when Bums were merely Bottoms. Whereas formerly they might have killed a few innocent bystanders, from now on Bums had the potential to lay waste a continent. The incontinent had always had to be restrained but, once upon a time, a simple nappy served. Now shit was not just poo-poo, it was radio-active. A new word had entered the English Language: Radio-Isoturd.
Lavatorial humour had become a bad joke. Hitherto unheard of graffiti began to appear on the walls of the Gents: BAN THE BUM, MAKE LOVE NOT MANURE, SMASH THE CISTERN. What we were witnessing was Hysteria in the Making. Those of us who weren't abject arse-lickers, were shit-scared. It was every subject's democratic right to object. To the commited, it was a duty. They came out of the closet, into the street. A Mass Bowel Movement had been born.
Today, nearly forty fraught years [1984-Ed] after the explosion of the first BUM, millions of otherwise ordinary people, with little more in common than a deeply-felt belief in personal hygiene & an overwhelming desire to be rid of the BUM forever, are coming together in urgent protest against what can only be described as imminent, insane, insanitary, planetary sewercide.
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Part II - SOME MORE DISTURBING FACTS ABOUT THE BUM
The number of BUMS is increasing: the Nuclear Arsenal is so large that there is now one Bum for every man, woman & child on the planet.
Bums are getting bigger & more powerful, - for instance, a medium-sized Bum could obliterate a major city & the heat & blast generated by the explosion would cause everyone within a radius of 100 miles to shit bricks.
The fallout from Bums will kill all living things. If you become contaminated, remember to wash your hands afterwards & put on clean underwear. A pair of heavy-duty domestic rubber gloves will provide some protection from radiation, but you should dig a hole & bury yourself, just in case.
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PART III - SUMMING UP THE BUM
For many the choice is quite clearcut: Faeces or the Species? As they see it, there is a very real danger that Civilization will go down the drain. Already, we're up Shit Creek without a paddle.
Advocates of the Bum say this is a load of crap. They insist that without Bums we would be entirely defenceless, but opponents point out that that, even if we got rid of all the Bums, we would still have more than enough Arms to defend ourselves with. Some people don't know their arse from their elbow.
Other upright upholders of Law & Ordure seriously maintain that, without the Bum, our legs would fall off. Supporters of W.C.N.D. claim that those who adopt this potty position in defence of anatomic weapons are obviously off their heads & are approaching the problem arse-about-face. Certainly, there is little doubt that, if the Bum did ever drop, a lot more than just our legs would fall off. Even if our legs were miraculously still intact after the Nuclear Holocaust, they would be somewhat superfluous: corpses can't walk, let alone run.
Left-wing extremists, financed by the Kremlin, would have us believe that the truth of the fecal matter is that the Body Politic uses the Bum to keep us in our place. According to their crude rhetoric, we sit on our arses & do bugger all about it. We don't give a fart. So, they urge us to give the Government a good kick up the pants.
If all this is slightly confusing, perhaps the best advice an impartial observer can offer the bemused consumer is: don't take no shite from nobody!
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RAVING REPORTER ® © (1982)
