Table of lies. The truth behind the Periodic Table of the Elements. An IBR exposé.

You’re forced to learn it in junior high as your chemistry teacher prances around and points to it on a wall. The numbers seem like nonsense and your mind fades as you’re told to memorize the seemingly meaningless letters and symbols. Some you’ve heard of—Gold, Silver. But others come at you out of nowhere—Nobelium, Bohrium. In your pubescent petulance, you want to shout out, “Boringum!” but you feel guilty and sense that there is majesty and respect in this table, built to honor the pantheon of great minds who represent science and knowledge. You quietly shut your mouth and try to pay homage, just like all the other acne covered pupils around you, and soon you submit to the numbers and the symbols and the letters too.
 
But did you know that this chart of elements is also a table of lies? And that the great “scientists” who contributed to it were the ones who paid the most or offered sexual favors to be placed there?
 
In a new exposé, the Intergalactic Business Report’s Cedric Bigglestone goes inside the corruption behind chemistry’s deepest, darkest secret.
 
 
My quest begins
 
A few months ago, I had a meeting with an editor from the Intergalactic Business Report. He told me that he and some others thought it was time to really investigate what was behind the periodic table of the elements.
 
He went on to explain that the Intergalactic Business Report had a mission to uncover and expose all the things that nobody else would touch, usually because the Centers for Disease Control forbade it. 
 
Our conversation went into the night and for the first time in many years, I felt alive without having to place a loaded gun in my mouth while ejaculating. I told the editor this, and he just laughed and laughed even though it wasn’t a joke. It was like we had a psychic brain connection to the point at which I began to wonder if I would even need to write down my article and could instead just think it back to him.
 
We decided I would write it down and we moved on to budget. I would travel the world, as far as I could on seventy-five dollars, to find out what was behind the mysterious table of elements. What I discovered was that it was actually a table of lies.
 

History that is mystery
 
Before I began my exposé, I admit I had my own doubts about the periodic table. But it wasn’t until the Intergalactic Business Report funded me that I was able to truly expose it for what it is. Reading what I just wrote now, I notice the words “exposé” and “expose” are very similar. It’s as if I am writing an exposé in order to expose something. 
 
If you read history, you probably will see something about how two 19th century chemists “invented” the first periodic tables. This is true in the sense that they wrote some stuff down and gave it to other people, which is something anyone could do. For instance, I wrote a poem for my girlfriend in eighth grade. Does that make me an “inventor” of a periodic table of elements? 
 
I could probably end my article with that last point, since I’ve clearly obliterated the entire basis for the periodic table, but since this is supposed to be a longer article, I’ll continue on by obliterating it even more. You won’t believe what I uncovered as a dug deeper.
 
 
The “rock and roll hall of fame” of chemistry
 
After the table was “invented,” it was revised again and again and new elements were added over the years. I asked myself, “How does a new element get added?” And the answer was obvious.
 
As I looked closely at the table of elements, it occurred to me that many of the elements were named after chemists who had “discovered” the element. If new elements weren’t named after the chemists, then the chemists gave them made-up names that pleased them or were inside jokes. In another IBR article, we point out that “Thulium,” which is pronounced, “Tool-ium,” is number 69. Next time you read the periodic table, imagine a bunch of chemistry nerds just laughing at you in their lab coats. Because that’s what’s happening. Every. Time. You. Do. It.
 
The anger rose in my body and I considered getting removed from my apartment again by local and state authorities. But instead, I calmed myself with a drug/alcohol concoction I just have come to call, “Bad Mama.” This familiar lady starts off ugly and rude but after you get to know her, she’s more like a best friend who tears your nipples off when you’re sleeping but is super apologetic about it the next morning.
 
As my mind steadied, I focused on the question, again and again, “How does a new element get added?” I thought about the universe and how many elements must be out there. The periodic table only lists 118. In the whole universe (according to the table) there are only one hundred eighteen elements. That’s like saying there are only 118 good death metal songs or only 118 healthy cereal brands, and I could go on and on.
 
Just like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, there had to be someone controlling the system. Someone, or some group, who decided who was in and who was out. I decided to find out exactly who that was and expose them with my exposé.
 

My source reveals a secrety group who controls the table
 
I found that a shadowy organization called, creepily enough, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, controls the periodic table and they probably* do it through intimidation and treachery. 
 
For close to a hundred years, this group has decided which elements are in and which are out. I spoke with a chemist** who refused to use his real name for this article. Then I spoke to another one named Ricky von Felt, who also refused to reveal his name for this article. Ricky told me that at one point, several elements were going to be “dropped” from the table if the families of the chemists who named them didn’t come up with enough money to “maintain their spots.” 
 
Ricky also told me that element inclusion is a “pay to play” system, in which the International Union of Racial Purity and Applied Chemistry*** allows in only the highest paying applicants. In 2016, for instance, four new elements were added: Nihonium, Moscovium, Tennessine, and Oganesson. 
 
While the sinister International Union says that only the scientists who “discovered” the elements can propose the names and that these have to come from either the scientist’s name (sheer vanity), mythology (because they all are into sci-fi and hobbits), a substance (like cocaine, I'm guessing), elemental property (do elements own property? What?), or a place.
 
While Cocainium was not chosen this time, Tennessine was. That’s right. An element named after the state of Tennessee that’s not called Moonshineium or Maryyourcousinium. But while we consider the details of naming these elements, we have been cleverly distracted from the bigger question: which elements were not added to the table and why?
 
 
The elements we left behind
 
Shortly after I interviewed Ricky, I showed up at his house and he told me he was getting spooked about having talked with me. I asked him why and he told me it mostly had to do with the fact that after I bought him some drinks I followed him home and pounded on his door all night till the police took me away.
 
I explained that I do that with all the people I interview and that it is a journalistic technique we use to get to the truth. He told me this “weirded him out” and that he didn’t want to talk more to me. He then pretended he hadn’t told me any of the things I have printed in this article and attributed to him. As I repeated back to him what he had clearly told me the evening before, he went on and on about how he wasn’t a chemist, didn’t know anything about what I was talking about, and that he had barely spoken to me yesterday. Chillingly, he asked me why I kept calling him “Ricky von Felt,” which, he said, was suddenly not his real name. Clearly the International House of Chemistry had gotten to him. So, I used another tactic from journalism school****and threatened to burn down his house if he didn’t answer one last question.
 
As he looked at me with his scared eyes, I wanted to whisper “Checkmate” to him, but I resisted because I have class. He asked me what the question was and I said, “Which elements didn’t make the table and why?”
 
Ricky pretended not to know and even ran for a few blocks before I caught up with him in an alley where he wrongly thought he could lose me. As I played hardball with him and pushed him against a dumpster, he finally gave me some answers.
 
There were three elements that should have been on the table but were dismissed by the International Union of Hitler Chemists*****. Why were they excluded? Because the chemists who discovered these weren’t rich enough or willing to offer sexual favors to the committee.
 
Appropriately, these “missing” elements have decidedly lower middle class and anti sex with chemist names—all hated by the International Union. They are:
 

1. Layawayium.
2. Walmartium.
3. Notsexuallyinterestedinchemistsium.

 
 
Future elements will only represent the rich, elite, and people who want to have sex with chemists
 
With its brutal control over the periodic table, the International Union for Racially Pure Chemists will likely only accept new elements that fit their narrow and venal desires for wealth and sex. The next three elements to be included on the table will likely be:
 

1. Hotforchemistdickium.
2. Hugeexpendableincomium.
3. Privateyachtium.

 
 
Conclusion. Where do we go from here?
 
The only conclusion I can draw from my excellent exposé is that we are in dire need of an alternative table of elements that represents real people and not just the ones willing to have sex with nerdy chemists and pay them sick amounts of money. 
 
While I am incapable and unwilling to make such a table myself, I do hope that a new generation of youth will rise up to finally overthrow the powers who control not only junior high chemistry classes, but also other things, like air and water, which are part of the periodic table. 
 
When I speak at schools, I often tell students that the very basic things needed to survive on our planet are bought and paid for by some organization that is linked to fascism and that no group or person has the right to decide what we breathe, drink, or even put in our butts. 
 
Now that I’ve finished my exposé, it’s time to rest. But that doesn’t mean I won’t have my eyes open for new stories and new injustices. I am so serious about this that if you live by me you may as well start applying for that restraining order against me now, because I’m on a mission to guard and protect society against whatever you’re doing which I haven’t found out yet but will.
 
Exposé done. 
 
Cedric Bigglestone.
 
*I assume this since if I controlled a shadowy organization I would definitely do it through intimidation and treachery. 
**A man I met in a bar.
***I think there’s a typo there.
****As a self-taught journalist, my school was also known as the school of life.
*****Another typo. I regret the error.
 
 
 
Cedric Bigglestone is a self-taught journalist who exposes things through exposés. Contact him at [email protected].