"How a Fart Killed 10,000 People" Topic

"Farting, breaking wind, cutting the cheese, or gas. The English language has numerous words for flatulence and this is even before we devolve into the subcategories that make up the genre. Whatever you call it, farting is a taboo act, but it is also a source of fascination. It's not for nothing that there is a popular children's book series called Fart Squad or that the preview of the most recent installment of the Alvin and the Chipmunks dynasty led with the punchline, "Sorry, pizza toots." Today farting is something for which we perfunctorily ask forgiveness, but in the past it has been the subject of legislation, the cause of wars, and even theologized. We might think of farts as trapped gas, but the history of farting is more than just hot air.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, farting has a spiritual side. Manichaeism, a dualistic religion popular in late antiquity that at one time counted St. Augustine among its members, actually held that farts were the act of freeing divine "light" from the body. Manichaeism may have been, as scholar Robin Lane Fox has noted, "the only world religion to have believed in the redemptive power of farts," but they weren't the only ancient group to give the phenomenon a great deal of thought. In addition to laying the foundations of trigonometry, the philosopher Pythagoras was concerned that a person might fart out his or her soul. As classicist Andrew Fenton wryly observed, this can explain why they steered clear of beans. Given that the soul (pneuma) was breath and a fart a kind of breath, the explanation makes a lot of sense…"
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Amicalement
Armand

In my part of Yorkshire it is known as a trump! Make of that what you will.

Beware of 'The Butler's revenge'. This is where someone lets off a silent one and looks accusingly at someone else.

If you look at the full version of the Arabian Nights onr story is called 'The Fart'. Don't think anyone ever rewrote it as a pantomime though.

When I flew crew planes in the Air Force, it was common practice to say "howdy" on the intercom when you farted to give fair notice and also to allow the flight engineer time to select max flow on the air conditioning system. At some point crews replaced saying "howdy" with "Hillary".

TAXI!

Something my father would say after breaking wind.

Tony

Lets not forget "crop dusting". Where you fart while going up a flight of steps and the person behind you gets a mouthful…or "hot-boxing", farting in enclosed space…

I've never known why, but when I was in primary school the favoured announcement was 'Texas!'.

In the Air Force at the NCO Club – if someone let loose a good one – we would say "Captain Who".

In the office a few years back I would call a lift, fart inside then send it down to the debt collectors on 3.

An excerpt from the BBC's John Simpson on his interview with the late Libyan leader Gaddafi.

Throughout our 40-minute interview he would lift himself out of his chair and break wind, loudly enough to be heard on the soundtrack. When I wrote about it afterwards for this newspaper, the then editor gave the article the headline "Warm Wind Of Compromise Blows From Gaddafi".

Stepped on a frog.

Somebody step on a duck?

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Spiders, it was a barking spider.

A friend is known for gas that will crawl upwind against a fan. He habitually says "Safety" at launch.

My RAF days it was known as a badger alert. The worst were the silent but deadly, though at least no-one could identify the culprit.

When only two people are on an elevator, both know who it is.

Woman walked past me in the street a while back. I think she had a belt-fed weapon.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

"Mouse on a motorcycle" was a popular term in my house growing up.

My kids play "doorknob". If one of them farts the other 3 can beat on them until they touch a doorknob. Great fun…

"More tea Vicar?"

One or my elders had this saying:

Better to fart and bear the shame than not to fart and bear the pain.

I've escaped my own pain since, although others may have been pained in my stead.

One of my fondest memories of college is watching television with my fraternity brothers when some of them would lift their posterior, flick a cigarette lighter, and light the emission. They said it cut down on the odor.