By Mike Leonard

When the asshole shocked the body politic by launching a war against Iran with little explanation and no exit strategy, the body parts quickly assembled to consider the consequences.

The brain immediately claimed dominion over the others, decrying that “I’m like the computer that every system runs through. Without me, nothing works. So, naturally, I should be the boss of what goes on from here.”

The heart fluttered. “I keep the body functioning. I circulate oxygen and nutrients. The brain’s out over its skis here. I keep the lights on. I should be in charge.”

“And?” the stomach grumbled. “Who powers all of this? How would the brain think, or the heart pump, without the fuel that comes from the nutrition I process for the body?”

The legs kicked up their heels. “You couldn’t go anywhere without me. Feet on the ground.”

The eyes fluttered. “And how could you know where you are going if you can’t visualize it? You need me to lead the way.”

Having heard the buttload of criticism, the asshole farted his defiance. “Nobody understood that we needed this war but I am a great thinker and nobody can fix this but me. Everyone says that.”

An uncomfortable silence followed. And then, the gall bladder said, “I may be dispensable but the asshole isn’t. I love you, sir.”

The other body parts titter, snort and guffaw. They make asshole jokes and allusions to the power of the pucker.

Meanwhile, the angry asshole sizzled like a fart in a hot skillet.

There was no movement in the body thereafter. For hours. And then, days.

The brain began to complain of fever, irrational thoughts and then, few thoughts at all.

The heart said it was winding down like a dusty metronome on a rusty card table at a yard sale.

“I got a cold Big Mac and a handful of ketchup packs down me gullet and that’s it. I can’t power this bloated mass of protoplasm on that,” the stomach growled. “I’m . . . a stomach.”

The brain spoke out again and said that it was clear that the asshole made a huge mistake, and you’d think he’d know his assholes, being the biggest asshole of them all. But that asshole narcissism rendered him blind to the threat of the Sphincter of Hormuz.

The Spinchter of Hormuz, the brain repeated slowly, with the confident cadence brains are known for. “Leave it to the biggest asshole and its hubris to turn a brown eye to a critical detail obvious to everyone. I cannot undo what he has done, nor envision a future devoid of this stench.”

But the brain still wanted to live, as did the other body parts, and so they held their noses and went about doing their jobs while the asshole claimed credit for solving the problem it created.

The moral of the story is that you don’t need to be a brain to be the boss. Just an asshole.