The Plumber who could not fart

Ah, Calgary. Cold in winter. Filled with people. People whose plumbing backs up. This is where The Plumber lives, works, and plays. This plumber, he works for a living. No employment equity for him: no high pay, no high pension, no nap time. But The Plumber is resigned to his lot. It is for the best. He works with the public, you see. Baby mommas have sinks that clog; Welfare artists have drippy faucets; socialist social services sector have needs for new and fabulous fixtures. They pay, sometimes, in cash; which offsets the confiscation of income which pays for the baby mommas, the welfare artists, and the socialist social services sector paper passers that confiscate, dole, and spend. 'Cash is good,' says The Plumber. He is not known for conversation. In his free time, at home, he reads books, and he makes stuff in his basement workshop. Lately, he has been struggling with the miasma that is the Green movement. Working in a trade named after the hated, toxic, earth rapist element of lead (you know, plumbum is Latin for Lead, and the first pipes were made from lead, hence plumber) one should be concerned that the trade will go the way of the light bulb. At least, The Plumber is concerned. He is also worried about his health. Who is not these days? There is no scientific consensus about food safety: does tofu give you worms? But The Plumber has a personal worry: he can no longer fart.

There is information on the internet. About replacing plumbers, plumbing, with sustainable technology; and about farting. The Plumber has concluded that the Greenies, whom he calls Greenshirts, want to go back to living in tents and huts of wicker and dung. No need for plumbers there. Just a bucket to fetch water from the stream. Maybe a bucket, and a pot, a pot to piss in if you don't want to go out into the yard to the outhouse. His clients, those that pay cash and those that do not, talk green. They talk about the beauty of living next to nature. Everyone but them will be living in tents, in huts of wicker and dung. A water bucket and piss pot society, a Green society, has no room for plumbers. The Plumber thinks he should make his money while he can. And while he is making money, he should make more money. The Plumber who talks rarely, and nods mostly, thinks he should offer up Green products. Nothing related to plumbing is green. Solder is made from the evil, hated, toxic, earth rapist element of lead. Drain opener is a capitalist blood suckers mixture of evil, toxic stuff. Actually, it is sodium hydroxide, which you used to learn about in Grade 10 chemistry before the education system was dumbed down so the dumb would not feel dumb. Now the ignorant are more easily deceived, and their sinks are clogged, more with vegetable matter than fats, it is true. Drain opener is great stuff. If only there was an equivalent for his colon, wonders The Plumber, for he is the plumber who cannot fart.

His current client spent around fifty bucks on useless Green products. They did not work. They have nice packaging. Green with smiling pandas and tropical palms and salamanders. The Plumber took some of the stuff home, to his basement lab, a few days ago. It is not a big, professional lab, like the government, or the military, or big corporation lab that he has in his basement. He could not, say, synthesize hypergolic fuels on an industrial scale. But The Plumber could determine that the useless Green drain cleaner was salt (sodium hydroxide). It was colored green, and smelt of pine. Could not he himself make up some green colored Sodium Hydroxide, scent it with pine, and sell it, for money, before the Greenshirts made everyone but themselves live in tents and huts made of wicker and dung? He was clever, he dyed up some sodium hydroxide, doped it with pine scent, and reused the Green packaging. Reusing the package offset any carbon crime. Selling a dollars worth of product for ten dollars offset the confiscation of income that is income tax. The Plumber felt good, but not good enough to feel good about his inability to fart.

His current client gives him tea and cookies. The Plumber is not paying any attention to his host. Her kitchen sinks plugs up every lunar month. Five minutes with sodium hydroxide and it is open again. Maybe the real product being sold is entertainment. The primary male in the client's life is a paper pushing metrosexual, drained of testosterone. Quite useless at putting up a tent or dabbing wicker with dung. On a lifeboat, he would be delegated to food. But assigning the role of handyman to the man is assigning a role by gender, which is not politically correct, sexist, and an attitude that will bring taxation down upon your head. Instead, The Plumber eats his cookie and drinks his tea. For today he is handyman, and getting paid with confiscated dollars. But there is melancholy in his mind. In the past when he ate in public he was worried that he would fart. This was his lifetime worry: when young, his mother would smack him. A girlfriend deserted him once, over his farting. And his wife, she would scowl and kick him under the table and give him an acid bath with her tongue in the car on the way home. Farting is bad. It is an uncontrollable bodily function, your conscious mind is not responsible; it just happens, like being born gay, or stupid, or not white. To be a public farter is to be a victim. To stop farting, to cease farting, is to open the mind to worries about disease, diet, and decay. The Plumber who could not fart is a victim.

After tea and cookies comes coffee and cake. The afternoon client has a backed up sink. How to turn a five minute job with sodium hydroxide into an afternoon of billable hours, with a leisurely coffee and tasty cake break? The Plumber is no stranger to making a small job appear large. He still has his union card, and attends union meetings. But the thoughts of coffee and tasty cake, combined with union meetings gets his mind back on his inability to fart. Union meetings are filled with farts and laughter. The Plumber spoons a tablespoon of sodium hydroxide into the standing water of the backed up sink. It, the hydroxide, has be colored green, and scented pine. It is stored in a retasked Green drain cleaner container. There is a happy panda and smiling salamander. The afternoon client, who washes her trash before sorting and recycling, smiles at the green packaging. There are some bubbles, then a gurgle, then, like magic, the water drains away. The afternoon client is happy as a panda on green product packaging. She is delighted to sign the chit so that the socialist social services will give fours hours of union scale wages to the plumber for his five minutes of work. But The Plumber is not happy; he cannot fart.

The afternoon client is active with something or the other. She needs something to do with the hours in her day. She collects welfare, lives in welfare housing, and is tasked to look after her three children by two fathers. The children are in welfare day care, all the children now that the youngest, Bastardio, is weaned. The afternoon client, as activist, talks up her cause as she serves coffee and cake. The Plumber sort of listens, and only pays conscious attention to those parts of the pitch that come tangent to his first concern: his inability to fart. Perhaps he should, tangentially, go in for a sex change, and work in his fartless situation in a sideways matter. He would get fast track access to health care that way. How else do you get attention when attention is only for those on the approved list of situations? Being fartless is neither racism, nor sexism, nor something that non white people suffer. The Plumber sort of listens, and wonders how he can get his agenda advanced on the un level playing field, past the moving goal posts, the biased referee, and the ignoring media. If only he could fart again, then he would not care.

I, Fenris Badwulf, wrote this. I care.