Do not can your anus

We've all said it.  If you haven't, you really aren't living.  It goes like this...

Next time you're strolling along outside in the evening, you look up into the inky night sky.  Hopefully there will be a few twinkling stars above for effect, but it's not really necessary.  Turn to your friend and say with feigned astonishment, 'hey, I can see your anus from here!'

Laughter ensues.  Oh yes. Relationships are strengthened.  The universe is at peace.

But these days you may run into the following problem.  Apparently a cultural change is afoot.  Our children, at least in some sectors, are being taught to pronounce the planet Uranus as 'yer-uh-nus' instead of as, well, 'your anus'.  My teenage child told me this cosmic shift was occurring but I thought he had made it up just to stop me from making that same joke again (which he's probably heard about 12,243 times in his life- often multiple times in one night).  

But alas this evening my television found itself on the Science channel.  Beaming from my screen was some yawn worthy documentary about the universe or something as massively boring.  Note, I took in zero, absolutely zero information from this program other than the narrator (probably Morgan Freeman- what in the world are we going to do when he dies and no one is left to narrate documentaries) pronouncing that hunk of rock near the former planet Pluto (puzzlingly named after Mickey Mouse's dog- I knew Walt Disney was more powerful than we've been told) 'Yur-uh-nus.'

Even though I was doing something else entirely, upon hearing such a pronunciation of Uranus I whipped my head around violently like Martha Stewart being served wine in a scotch glass.  It's just. not. on. 

How can society do this to me?  After all these years of faithfully passing on, to the point of abuse, my offspring this classic joke?  I toiled and troubled and made the joke, "I can see your anus from here!" even at inappropriate times (grandma's funeral) because I knew it had to be done.  It is the perfect one liner.  It is science and laughter wrapped together.  It's fucking educational for fuck's sake!  Why make education even more boring for our children?  You bloody bastards are the ones who NAMED it your anus after you had I assume already NAMED our anus the anus.  Because if you hadn't, well who in their right fucking minds named our poop shoot after a planet a million fucking miles away?

It's not our fucking fault! We've just made the best of a silly situation.

Whatever your feelings are about this, you know the joke must continue.  

This joke, while childish, probably saved lives. And that its existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want that joke told. You need that joke told.

I say we take back the pronunciation.  In the hallowed halls of our universities and Sunday schools we must make the joke as often as possible.  We must tell it to our children, to our children's children, and to our children's children's children.  

Make sure their teachers know it; their coaches know it; their Girl Scout leaders know it...  because folks, if we let your anus die, it could mean a shit storm of epic proportions.