The Bumbastories Weekly Magazine – Sunday Edition
HUH??? What’s this? First you say it’s an Every Day Another Story blog. Now you’re talking once a week? What’s the story, Bumba?
The following is a once-a-week literary (well, not so literary), humorous (funny might be too strong a word), illumunating and enlightening (Hey, take it easy!) magazine sort of blog with a couple of informative articles, a few pictures, some musical accompaniment……..
Presenting Bumbastories’ Sunday Special. Start off your read with some music recorded by Bumba and Maybank
This week’s Edition of Bumbastories’ Sunday Special – a Weekly Magazine – the first and perhaps the last issue of 2014-
presents
A Bumbastories Science Report – An actual Refutation of Newton’s Law of Gravitation!
An As I Sat On The Bus contribution by George Packard.
Two Poems – Yikes!!!
A Picture by Max Ernst
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Los Angeles Buses Defy Newton’s Law of Gravitation
According to Newton’s Law of Gravitation, the gravitational attraction between two objects is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them squared. Or, G=m1m2/d2.
So, the farther away two things are from each other, the weaker the gravitational force. Right?
No!
Los Angeles buses defy Isaac Newton’s universal – and heretofore-thought-inviolable principle of physics. MTA buses, supposedly spaced across the space-time continuum by the “bus schedule” to run at intervals of up to 20-30 minutes, appear together amazingly often. These buses, spaced evenly by the schedule along their long routes, somehow wind up travelling together! The evidence is overwhelming, and clearly speaks to this fact of MTA reality: the buses cluster, they group, they travel in pairs, even in convoys.
Newton must be turning over in his grave – or mausoleum – in Westminster Abbey. (And then we’d only have to bury him again!)
What possible explanation can there be for this mass transportation pairing and clustering? Physicists are puzzled.
Is it perhaps some special esoteric energy generated by the Los Angeles/Southland basin – some underground tectonic plate effect? Or are we witnessing a manifestation of dark energy?
Bumbastories, in a fine piece of investigative journalism, investigated the problem last year. A simple, but admittedly silly, explanation was proposed. In short, a socialization instinct, indeed a sexual drive, was ascribed to the buses.
In any case, as the universe expands, as the matter from the Big Bang disperses and entropy increases, we wonder whether the expansion will ever stop. How can the expansion be reversed? Perhaps Einstein’s cosmological constant is actually the MTA bus system. The jury is out – or perhaps they’re late. That’s right, they’re waiting for the bus!
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As I Sat On The Bus (AISOTB #33) by George Packard
George Packard was back on his bike again.
Yup. George had drawn yet another of those As I Sat On the Bus assignments.
George didn’t mind. As a roving reporter for Bumbastories, he was always roving around anyway, performing his various assigned roving tasks, and …… well, it was pretty easy to spin out one of these AISOTB thingies.
So thought George Packard.
As a somewhat concerned and involved citizen of the City Los Angeles as well as the County of L.A., George wished to tip his hat to whatever gov’t agency it is that has been slowly and gradually painting bicycle lanes on the streets of the city.
“It helps. It saves lives,” thought George. 
“Also,” George considered, “if it were safer to ride a bicycle around town, a lot of people would chose the bicycle over the car as a way of getting around – at least part of the time.
“I’d bet a lot of people would be riding their bicycles to work and the like if they had decent, safe bicycle lanes,” said George Packard to himself.
In further AISOTB deliberations George Packard asked himself:
“And do I really have to sit on the bus today to post an AISOTB post? I could just as easily insert an old photo taken weeks ago. Nobody would know the difference. Bumba has a ton of them stored on his Cloud thing…..”
“No. That would be cheating. It wouldn’t be ethical….. Hmmm.” 
Two Poems
TWO POEMS
Enjoy the Beauty I
Enjoy the beauty of the day
The majesty unfolded
The water rushing through the valleys
Where we lingered
The silence of the sun
On a September morn
A song to you
Unsung but
Burning still
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Enjoy the Beauty II
Enjoy the beauty
Of unfulfilled love
You dream…..
And remember yet
The grace
Of a love fulfilled
And then it all disappeared
In the chill of the late afternoon
You walk through the fallen leaves.
An Occasional Story or Magazine 
Great stories and beautiful poems, Steve. I especially love the poem: Grace!
groetjes, Francina
Thank you, Francina
Bumba is always ethical. One must sit on the bus.
Yeah, but sometimes he paints himself into a corner – or into the back seat of the bus.
sitting here listening to the music Bumba, I didn’t recognise the tune, BUT doing a bit of detective work, (finger wise) I saw the comment above about Robert Johnson, AND that clue plus the lyrics you sang, I went searching googlewise, and found t’Rolling Stones cover song…Love in Vain … 🙂 I feel better now… and of course the two poems, and Georges ruminating about busses, they come in pairs kemo sabe, for protection methinks. 😉 Loved the set up,… and still laughing a the comment above and your reply, “was the bus on schedule” … My oh my I bet it wuz!! xPenx
Glad to entertain. Sorry, I should have provided some info about the song – which you have already researched.
I also thought the poems were excellent and as for the bus stuff…well being a former bus-driver, it brings back many goofy memories. Great job on the old Robert Johnson tune. Didn’t he get hit by a bus down at some lonely humid crossroads?
Thanks. I’m more familiar with the Rolling Stones version. Was the bus on schedule?
Yes it was, and that was Keith behind the wheel. He was in a hurry to get to Jiffy Lube for a bloody oil change.
What a great idea, Stephen! I want a lifetime subscription to this magazine! 🙂
We’ll see if I can do one again! You know, when I started this blog I wanted it to be a magazine with everyone sending in stuff – With me as editor just about everything would be included in the magazine..
A cluster-bus, a brainstorm – who cares – it’s all great stuff, especially the poems. Oh and the Max Ernst. And the Newton refutation. And George cycling not bussing and then nicking Bumba’s photos…is this chaos as we’d like to know it…?
Thank you for the kind words, Tish. I like that chaos as we’d like to know it… All the best.