“HTF?” with Dr. Kris(topher) Lemon-Burn #1: Plumbing

We here at kristuphil are very excited to start a new feature here on the blog called How the Fuck? Every week, our very own resident Know-It-All, The “Honorable” Rev. Dr. Kris(topher) Lemon-Burn, D.O.A., will field general questions of a scientific nature from our readers. These questions can be about anything and everything, so don’t hold back. Our question this week comes from Ben, age 6:

Dear Doctor Chris,
How the fuck does plumbing?
— Ben “Shitstorm” Dover

Thanks, “Ben”, that’s a good question! Well, it’s OK. And the answer is simple: tubes. “But Dr. Kris,” you then ask, “how the fuck does tubes?” and you’d be right. I see there’s no fooling you! To understand plumbing, first we have to understand tubes. And to get an understanding of tubes, we’ll start with the original tube: the human digestive system.

The human digestive system is “living” proof of the saying “you are what you eat”. The tubes of the digestive system are made out of the food you consume (which is ironic because they are what help you eat the food). This is why vegetarians are so much healthier than meat-eaters—while a meat-eater’s tubes are made out of weak animal cells, a vegetarian’s tubes are made out of plant cells, which are harder because they are little green bricks.¹ So in order for these tubes to exist, first we must eat.

When we eat, we put food into our mouth, or high anus.² This food is chewed (by the teeth) and sent past the phallus into it’s first tube, the esophageal gland (“gland” is a general term for something that is inside the body). This is the longest tube in the body, and it is lined with mussels which push the food down to the stomach, much as they push water along the coastlines they inhabit to create the tides (this is an example of a symbiotic relationship). In addition to carrying food to the stomach (we’ll get there in a second) the esophagus also carries oxygen to the lungs. This dual function is similar to the dual function of the urethra, which carries both pee pee and cement to and from the superior meatus, or dick hole.³

The stomach is the middle anus, and it has teeth just like the other two, used to break down what is at this point called the phood.⁴ This food is then passed through the intestubes⁵ which is where the magic happens! Imagine a game of telephone, in which a person at one end picks a word (let’s say, “food”), tells it to the next person, who corrupts and disfigures it (now “phood”), until it eventually arrives at the other end (as “poo”). This is similar to what happens in the intestubes, except instead of changing words, it changes food into poo by way of the intermediate phood. Through each infernal cycle of perversion, the walls of the intestines grow in power through the Satanic process of pootrefaction, or desecration of spirit. This is what gives you the energy to walk and jump and play ball! Finally the soulless corpse of the food is expelled through the anal ring in the form of poo.⁶

And though this may look like the end, it is actually a new beginning, as poo is the food of Earth, and plumbing is Earth’s digestive system. (You thought I forgot, didn’t you?) Earth is made of dirt, tubes, and hell.⁷ While we don’t know a whole lot about the human digestive system, we know even less about the digestive system of our planet. We know that it eats poo through toilets (its high anus), but we have yet to observe what happens afterwards. Some scientists believe that the plumbing leads all the way to center of the earth, which is home to a kind of opposite-land where poo is valued as rare gems and precious metals are valued here, while others (I count myself as part of this group) believe that the poo is somehow recycled back into food in a sort of reverse-telephone (or enohpelet) and offered back to us in the form of bananas, apples, and perhaps other types of vegetables.

Well, that’s it for this week. I hope that answers your question, “Ben”. Feel free to ask questions in the comments, and Dr. Kris will do his best to answer them either in the comments or in a future installment of this columb. Coulomb. Column.

Footnotes

¹ An experiment you can try at home: If you want to know whether someone you meet on the street is a meat-eater or a vegetarian, punch them hard in the throat. If this makes it difficult for them to breathe, that means they don’t get enough vegetables. If they seem unfazed (though your hand may hurt!), they are vegetarians and therefore have internal tubing made of what is commonly called “plant steel” due to its impressive strength. In fact, a punch to the throat is a common greeting amongst vegans (people made completely of vegetables).

² Ass differentiated from the “low anus” or analis rectorum, often called simply the “anus”. Interesting note: the term “hiatus”, meaning a break or interruption, has its origin in another function of the “high anus”, namely, speech. Thousands of years ago, most work was of a highly physical nature, and as workers would tire, they would take breaks to sit, relax, and talk. They called these “high anus breaks”, eventually shortened and corrupted into the modern “hiatus”.

³ In boys. I haven’t figured out the girl parts yet.

⁴ While we can easily observe the food going in, and the poo coming out, the ephemeral intermediate state is completely unobservable and can only be spoken of theoretically. This word phood (a shortened form of phantom food) was coined in 1948 to refer to this state. The word is also a homophobe, or “word morph”, spelled halfway between the words “food” and “poo” as if signifying the transformation represented by the term.

⁵ Test tubes (those little glass tubes used to make science) were originally made from the intestubes of cows (an animal with an overabundance of internal organs), hence the name.

⁶ As anyone who regularly weighs their poo can tell you, what comes out weighs less than what goes in. The difference is the weight of the soul. Knowing the mass of the food, the mass of the poo, and a few other trivial measurements, one can compute what is called the “soul number” or “soul rating”, which can help you identify the number of incarnations whatever you ate had experienced. The relevant equation is:

Common values of R_soul and their corresponding incarnations are:
1–9: fruits, vegetables
10–19: reptiles, action figures
20–29: fishes, clouds
30–39: waves, mammals, boats
40–49: humans, porpoises, jets
50–59: angels, demons, superheroes
60+: witches and warlocks

⁷ Named for the metaphysical location “Hell” of the bible, the hell we are speaking of here is actually the sixth of the four fundamental elements that make up all of creation. Its defining attributes are dryness, heat and evil. It is balanced by heaven, which is moist, cold and good, and makes up 40% of our atmosphere (the remaining 60% being water and air).