Bungs

This picture has very little relevance to this article

“Bung”

~ Me on Bungs

AAhhh, Bungs. Those cute little rubbery bungy things. Don't you just love bungs. Bungs. They're so bungy. That's bungy; the adjectivisation of the noun bung. Not to be confused with bungee as in jumping. Bungee doesn't have same bungy kind of ring to it that bung has. It's the "-ng" in particular I think. Although there's nothing that special about lungs. Well I mean I suppose they're pretty handy things to have. More handy than handy actually; you'd rather have no hands than no lungs wouldn't you? But then "lungy" would just sound creepy. And "hearty"'s already taken by large jovial men. But I'm pretty sure it's not the "bu". I mean I have nothing against buggers or bums, but neither give me nearly the same satisfaction, and I'm sure nine out of ten of you would agree. I secretly think more actually; I'm sure you see more than nine straight couples for every gay one. Well not that secretly any more I suppose. I mean my thoughts, not the gay couples. Hmmm. I reckon it's just one of those things that can't be broken down. Irreducibly complex. Which presumably means it was made by god on the seventh day 6000 years ago. I wonder why he did that? Good plan anyway. Divine foresight really, to guess that we'd start making dinghies and test tubes. Though I suppose divine in this case hardly means miraculous. Which raises the interesting question as to whether gods can actually perform miracles. Well, quite interesting. Perhaps more interesting than whatever you're supposed to be doing right now, but slightly less interesting than the car park outside your window. But definitely less interesting that than the many and varied uses of bungs.

Uses of Bungs

A bung. More exciting than it looks.

One major use of bungs is for bunging up bung holes on sailing dinghies. Many ignorant skeptics have suggested that if they didn't make bung holes in the first place they wouldn't need bungs to bung them up again. However this purely facetious objection completely overlooks the fact that often bung holes leak or someone goes sailing without remembering to put their bung in. But the problem of water taken into the hull when this happens is easily solved by simply removing the bung! If these skeptics had no bunghole and this happened they'd be in a right pickle.

Bungs are also commonly used in test tubes in the labatoratory. In this case they are essential for performing many experiments with chemicals. For example if a toxic gas is produced by your experiment and you have no bung then you may inhale some of the gases and suffer from a headache or nausea. However with a bung all that needs to be done is to push the bung firmly into the the test tube after the reactants, and proceed quickly and calmly out of the lab. If the appropriate bung is chosen it should be possible to get well clear before either the bung is fired off or the glass shatters, releasing an explosion of glass fragments and poisonous fumes across the room. Almost as important as a bung for this approach to chemistry is a good lab technician.

Bungs are also handy (or even lungy! ha ha ha) for use as non-offensive projectile weapons and are widely used in classrooms and lecture theatres across the world. They have the range of a metal ruler or pair of compasses, combined with the endearing friendly feel normally associated with paper spit-balls. The advanced thrower can also achieve greater accuracy by spinning the bung about it's axis of symmetry and throwing perpendicular to the direction of spin (conventionally narrow end first, although there is a school of thought within aeorodynamic bung theory that suggests some advantages to the "backwards" approach).

This one has even less

In summary, bungs are incredibly useful. In fact that could be a new application for "bungy", my adjectivisation.

Bungy(adj):Useful in a tight spot.

Ho ho ho. Did you notice my bung pun? It's a shame the word's pun rather than pung. Then it'd be a bungpung. That'd be hilarious. Anyway, my bung pun is even more hilarious because bungs are commonly used for bunging up bung-holes. Which are pretty tight spots. And they're also useful in a tight spot metaphorically speaking in the sense of a time of difficulty. Some say it takes the fun out of jokes to explain them but I think this underestimates the average intelligence of my readers. After all, it does take a special kind of mind to have got this far and still wish to continue.

Bungs in linguistics

The word bung; being so delightfully satisfying, delicious and just downright bungy, has inevitably gathered new meanings over time. People were just never going to accept that only sailors and craftsmen got to use the word bung. Though amazingly there was once a day when many people could go weeks at a time without saying the word bung. I think I would have killed myself.

I love bungs

• Bunged As in bunged up with the cold. This use is thought to have been derived from the bungy kind of sound people make when they're ill. I sleep outside all winter to be able to make that sound. Bunged is now used in place of many other verbs too, since people who get well again don't want to stop using it. These people are not smart enough to bung themselves sick like me.

• Bungy Bungy is now bunged as an adjective! That's thanks to me, and to you my dear reader! Well actually it's just because of me but I like to keep you involved. Bungy can mean cute, sweet, funny, bizarre, cool, stupid, clever, or just about anything else.

• BUNG! BUNG! Now you can bung bung as an expletive. While I like to bung the bungy sound of bunging, it bungens me a little to hear it bunged in such a context.

• Bung The noun. Or rather the bung. The only bung apparently. I actually think this is bunging a bit far. But on the other bung, I bung bung to bung bung more. Which bung bung to bung bung. Bung. Bungy bung bungs. Bung Bungedy bung bung bung. Bungy bungy bungs.