Father of H-bomb Dead at 95

oted American physicist Edward Teller, known as the “father of the H-bomb� and the “swearingest man alive,� died Tuesday of acute pulmonary pneumonia. He was 95 fucking years old.

“That guy said ‘Hell’ more than any man alive,� remembered son Arthur Teller. “And we’ll miss him.�

Outspoken and influential in matters of national defense, Teller enjoyed a long career in pushing for bigger and badder ways to blow the United States’ enemies into a mist of lukewarm spittle. In 1939, Teller encouraged Albert Einstein to inform President Roosevelt of the “awesome fucking power� of nuclear fission. Teller thought the splitting of an atom’s nucleus could be tapped to create a weapon that would “make our dickless enemies wish they’d been born dead.�

Soon after the atom bomb was envisioned, it became clear that nuclear fusion, not fission, was a quicker path to realizing Teller’s vision of a “real fucking ass-wiping, holy shit tit-ripping weapon of ball-waxing mass destruction.� Teller quickly took to the idea.

“Yeah… fuck yeah! We’ll blow their asses out through their teeth, the commie fuckers!� Teller enthused.

Teller’s enthusiasm and foul-mouthed pursuit of such a bomb – he called it the “Motherfucker� – won him the title “father of the H-bomb,� a term he thought was “fucking stupid.� The first one-megaton hydrogen bomb was exploded in 1952, blowing the living shit out of a stretch of desert in northern Nevada.

“Gotcha, cocksuckers!� Teller was heard to scream in a westerly direction when reached with word of the successful test.

According to family sources, Teller died in Stanford, California last Tuesday, in a “shitty little room� that “smelled like horse piss,� tended by “frigid dyke nurses� intent on stealing his “goddamned meds� and devouring his “motherloving soul.�

“Hell’s bells, I don’t know what the hell they were thinking when they invaded that fuckin’ hellhole,� were Teller’s last words, dropping his trademark H-bomb several times in reference to the Vietnam War. “We’re gonna kick the runny shit out of those brown bastards like it was a fuckin’ sport, Jack.�

Teller’s dark worldview was thought by some to be caused by his experiences with the communist revolution in his native Hungary in 1919, in concert with the rise of Nazism in his adopted home of Germany in the 1930’s.

“Nazis? Fuckin’ pricks,� Teller once said of the Nazis, fucking pricks. Biographers have marveled at Teller’s apparent knack for living through the shitty side of history, though many who knew him argue that he would have turned out the same either way.

In one of his last recorded interviews in 2001, Teller seemed to lend support to President George W. Bush’s plans to once again pursue the “Star Wars� Strategic Defense Initiative, an improbable missile defense system of space-based lasers, when he responded to the reporter’s question with an affirmative “Goddamn!� But those close to Teller stress that this was also the same way the late scientist answered the phone, so that conclusion might have been premature.

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"I remember it just like it was yesterday, the summer that my brother Goose and I spent trying to build our own airplane. We had it on good authority that none other than the Great Gildersleeve himself would be making a public appearance in St Louis in a month's time, and we weren't about to consider the option of not being there. We begged mom and dad for weeks, but they failed to realize the importance of this event, or the relative insignificance of the 36-hour drive to St Louis. Perhaps if we'd had Stephanie on our side we could have turned the tides, but she was strictly a Fibber McGee girl and she distanced herself from the negotiations, most likely because she was angling for a new bike for her birthday. So it remained for Goose and I to find our own means of transportation to St Louis, and a homemade airplane sounded as good as any.

Our first prototype was a simple model consisting of an old mattress we found in the garage with a red racing stripe painted up the side. And it may have gotten the job done if it weren't for Goose, who was scared by a bee when we were hoisting it up onto the roof and let go of the mattress-plane early, which slid off the roof and into our neighbor's pool. Similar was the fate of prototype number two, an old garbage can tied to a pogo stick, which slid down the roof while Goose was climbing in and ended up putting a big dent in the hood of Dad's car. Goose caught pure hell for that mishap, and I had to join the 4H Club just to provide an alibi as to where I was that afternoon.

Goose thought we should go with one of his designs for our third prototype, and I humored him although I was doubtful because of Goose's well-documented lack of imagination. Prototype three ended up being a big cardboard box with a picture of an airplane taped to the side, and all I have to say about that is I'm glad Goose broke my fall. He's probably lucky he sprained his ankle as well since Mom was pretty steamed at Goose for cutting up the "A" volume of the family encyclopedias the way he did.

After that mom and dad both forbade us from attempting any more flights to St Louis, and we ended up having to listen to the Great Gildersleeve on the radio instead while Goose was propped up on icepacks. It probably would have been more fun to be there in person, but I imagine then we would have missed the fun that night when we heard that great crash outside and all ran out to find dad in the driveway amidst a mangled pile of homemade airplane parts."

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A common question crosses many people's minds when they're scowling at credit card slips in dimly lit restaurants or digging deep into their trouser pockets for a few bills, some spare change and a condom wrapper to toss onto the table at the completion of their meal. Why, for God's sake, did I just tip the guy who brought me the wrong drink twice and left a chunk of his dreadlock skirting around in the bottom of my bowl of soup? And come to think of it, why do I tip waiters at all? I certainly didn't tip the guy who unclogged my toilet with his bare hands or the guy who fucks my horrifically obese wife for me, so why get all philanthropic on somebody for carrying your Diet Slice fifteen feet? A perplexing question, indeed.

The custom of tipping dates back to the Roman Empire, a time that truly represented the Dark Ages of food service. Waiters were surly, sub-literate and prone to having volatile tempers. Diners frequently ate entire meals they did not order out of fear of raising the waiter's ire. The situation came to a head when the Roman Emperor Claudius requested a saltshaker when dining one night and the waiter responded by vomiting down the Emperor's shirt. Claudius had all of the waiters in Rome beheaded that night, and that incident inspired the Roman populace to spontaneously begin tipping their servers out of fear over what kind of scoundrels had been dug up to replace the executed national wait staff. At the time, a small bribe to one's server was seen as a favorable alternative to possibly losing an eye.

The practice of tipping died off with the decline of the Roman Empire, but was born anew in England during the Middle Ages. Feudal lords would throw bits of gold to the meanest-looking peasants as they traveled through the streets, as a way to decrease the chances of the unwashed masses rising up and overtaking their carriages, tearing them limb from feudal limb, and stretching their hides to make ceremonial drums. The feudal lords would tell stories of the cannibalistic masses to their children, who grew up to be generous tippers themselves.

By the 16th century, men of social status were so paranoid about offending potentially murderous members of the working class that they began the tradition of tipping servers in restaurants. The gratuity was meant as an invitation for the server to have a drink on them, and to alleviate their guilt over not having to work a day in their lives while everybody else toiled seven days a week, slaving over sow's ears trying to make silk purses and whatnot. But before long the servers became spoiled and every pub in the land featured a tip jar, inscribed with the words "To Insure Promptitude," which basically meant that if you don't cough up some cash for the jar, you're going to grow donkey antlers before you get a drink, bub. No one is sure where they got the word "promptitude" from, but the most popular theory is that, like today, many of the servers were college grad students who found their degrees useless in the harsh Medieval economy.

The custom of tipping most likely would have faded out on it's own during the Renaissance, were it not for the famed Italian wise-ass, Pico della Petrarka. Petrarka coined the joke "Q. What did the leper say to the prostitute? A. Keep the tip." which has had remarkable staying power over the ages. Many times when the practice of tipping might have faded into the annals of history naturally, it was brought back when someone had to explain the punch line of that joke, which made everyone feel guilty about not tipping and brought back the practice yet again.

Tipping spread to America in the early 1900's, when tourists picked up the custom in Europe and started practicing it back home just to show off how swanky their shit really was. However, like every other time the practice was introduced, servers soon came to expect the tips and actual food service quality remained as lousy and impersonal as ever.

With no fears of proletarian cannibalism to fuel the custom today, modern parents have turned to telling their children fairy tales about how tips guarantee quality service in the future and help out the unfortunates stuck in low-paying food service jobs. Especially bright children who question why we subsidize one unskilled, low-paying profession and not the hundreds of others are sent to bed without a tootsie pop.

Today, tipping has become so ingrained and expected that waiters consider tips below 15% not to be tips at all, but rather personal insults deserving of true contempt, and anyone anywhere who even has to smell the public expects to be tipped, including paperboys and librarians. Some economists argue that tipping provides cost-effective incentives for superior service, but in actual practice, most Americans are reminded of another joke:

A man walks into a restaurant, sits down, and orders a three-course meal. After a time, the waiter comes back with his soup, but the man notices that the waiter has his thumb stuck inside the bowl. Thinking it an odd but honest mistake, the man says nothing. But when his pasta dish comes and the waiter's thumb is stuck into that, too, the man is truly baffled. Not wanting to cause a stir, he says nothing. He merely finishes his meal and waits for desert. Finally, his hot fudge brownie comes, and the waiter's thumb is stuck in that as well! The man has had more than enough, and he demands to know why the waiter is sticking his thumb in all of the food. The waiter explains that he has a nasty fungal infection under his thumbnail, and that doctor's orders require him to keep his thumb in a warm and moist place at all times. Exasperated, the man blurts out: "Well, why don't you just stick it up your ass, then?!?" The waiter pauses briefly, then calmly replies: "Where do you think I had it while I was in the kitchen?" º Last Column: The Trojan Horse º more columns