Genius!

 

This guy in Brooklyn has jumped onto the non-fungible token craze by selling digital recordings of his own farts.

This is brilliant on so many levels.

While giving Alex Ramírez-Mallis all due credit as a (f)art world innovator, I do have some reservations. Having listened to a few of his audibles, he seems to be—if not a true squeaker—a short-burst specialist. The type Dr. Raymond Stantz might classify as “a focused, non-terminal, repeating phantasm or a class-five full-roaming vapor. A real nasty one, too.”

You can spend your crypto-currency on ARM’s staccato output, or you could wait for someone in the basso profundo category with a more sostenuto style of delivery. It’s all a matter of taste.

Something in the Air

Via Gizmodo

My recent inquiries from online journalists are beginning to form a pattern and it’s not good.

First came an email from Eric Spitznagel at Vice Tonic asking about the science behind the age-old saying “he who smelt it dealt it.” His starting point was the idea that laws of gas diffusion and the concentration gradient of odor dispersion would invariably indict the smeller as the dealer. (From the published piece it appears he got this working hypothesis from an engineering professor at the University of Colorado.) My response was to distinguish between models that describe the behavior of ideal gases, and the more complicated turbulent currents and plumes found in real life. The non-ideal distribution of scented air streams is the basis for the “casting” behavior which many animals species use to localize the source of a smell (they zig-zag back and forth through the odor plume in ever-shorter tacks until they reach it). Given these atmospheric vagaries it is entirely possible that an emission from the guilty party might curl up an innocent person’s nostrils first.

Next heard from was Daniel Kolitz at Gizmodo who was putting together a “GIZ Asks” installment on the legitimate if somewhat feculent question “Why does dog poop smell bad to us but good to dogs?” Kolitz collates answers from a crack team of dog specialists and smell researchers including, beside yours truly, Alexandra Horowitz, Don Wilson, Peter Hepper, Cat Warren, and Charles “I’m publishing as fast as I can” Spence (I kid, I kid). What’s interesting is that several of the experts blithely assume that all human odor responses are cultural, while other take the (correct) view that certain smells or categories of smell are inherently (biologically) offensive. Click over to read the whole thing, but here here’s the pungent part of my answer:

Dogs don’t approach shit as an aesthetic experience—they treat it as a source of social information, like an olfactory Instagram. It answers a lot of questions: Who left it? How recently? Is the pooper healthy? We are able to extract similar information. The lingering cloud in the office restroom tells you who had lunch at P.F. Chang’s. Plumbing and ventilation rob us of the social signals in feces and leave us with mere disgust.

So where is this latest journo-trend heading? What follows farts and dog poop? I could make an educated guess, but I’ll take the lazy way out and just wait for the next email from an inquiring mind.

The Release from Suffering

The Dalai Lama makes a point about our shared humanity—with a story about getting gassy on an airplane.

P.S. At FirstNerve, we refer to the phenomenon by its technical name: “decompression syndrome.”

Hat tip: Instapundit

Game Time

Simon Niedenthal is a guy with some interesting credentials: “BFA in photography, an MA in Medieval English literature, and a Ph.D. in interaction design.” He’s also an associate professor of interaction design at Malmö University in Sweden and has published a paper in the most recent issue of Eludamos - Journal for Computer Game Culture. His immediate topic is the use of scent in digital games but he goes much deeper than that.

Niedenthal is very good at putting game scent into the bigger picture:

Playfulness is one way in which we reclaim our humanity, and smell is one of our most basic channels for engaging the world.

Yet the history of designing mediated scent experiences is a litany of failure. Not only did media experiments such as AromaRama, Smell-O-Vision and the DigiScents iSmell computer peripheral sink without a trace, they have been mocked in retrospect, as if the effort to engage smell in media and computational forms was in itself laughable.

The mockery continues—Niedenthal pulls examples from deep in gamer online discussion groups—yet so does innovation in digitized scent technology. And the public remains curious. Will game designers ever get it right? Is it even possible?

Niedenthal’s historical review of the field is excellent. He covers everything from “Leather Goddesses of Phobos” to “Leisure Suit Larry,” and is up-to-date on scent technology. Perhaps because of his background in the fine arts and literature, he doesn’t climb onto the techie hobby horse of “immersion”:

A naïve understanding of immersion as sensory verisimilitude, however, offers one of the least promising avenues for the development of scent for games . . .

He offers a way forward, but only after acknowledging “some of the difficulties faced by the designer of scent games.” Experience shows that even simple games can become hard to play when they rely on olfactory ability. As for “Spice Chess” . . . well, forget about it.

One of the essential tasks of designing smell into games is to help players develop a basic smell connoisseurship adequate to the challenges of the game . . .

Niedenthal’s recommendation for game designers is straightforward:

The scent challenges in games should be kept simple. Rather than seeking to establish the “meaning” of a scent in relation to what is seen on screen (the pitfall of naïve immersion, complicated by the difficulty of synchronizing visual and olfactory stimuli), or seeking to draw upon the inherent “meaning” of scents (rendered nearly impossible by the great individual and cultural variability of scent associations), the designer ought to plan to establish scent associations within the game itself, and view the game, essentially, as a learning system.

Niedenthal offers a couple of examples where scent might be engagingly applied. One is called “Sillage” and involves a quest for characters who are never directly seen—the game relies on the inherently sad and nostalgic character of smell that is too often neglected. Another example is “Scratch Me, Sniff Me,” which plays on the possibilities of bodily intimacy that lurk in any scented game. Finally, he points game developers toward “abuse, power and transgression” as a promising area.

Hmmm, let’s see . . . Fartcheesi? Stinktionary? Trivial Purfume?

Wait, I’ve got it! How about “Sniff My Butt,” a game of Russian roulette played with a squeezable, farting Cartman doll?



If you are thinking about using smell in games (electronic and otherwise), art installations, or any other interactive medium, you should do yourself a favor and read Niedenthal’s paper. For some reason, he chose to write it in clear, entertaining English, instead of Academic Gibberish. [You mean he doesn’t attempt to recontextualize the metaphrand and situate it within a hermeneutics of post-colonialism?—Ed.] [Exactly.]

The study discussed here is “Skin games: Fragrant play, scented media and the stench of digital games,” by Simon Niedenthal, published in Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Culture 6:101-131, 2012.

The Swedish Definition of Erotic Catastrophe

From The Local:

The Victoria Milan dating site, which targets the market for Swedes wanting to have an affair, asked more than 2,000 of its more than 200,000 Swedish members what they find most irritating about their regular partner.

Being bad-tempered, whinny and nagging are the top turn-offs for Swedish philanderers.

Other complaints included the woman being too close to her parents, being stingy, not cleaning enough, poor personal hygiene and snoring. 

“I had no idea women had such poor hygiene!” Victoria Milan spokeswoman Dominika Peczynski told The Local. 

“In my opinion, farting in front of a person that’s supposed to view you in any kind of romantic or erotic way is a catastrophe.”

Maybe that explains these Swedish traffic signs . . .

Disability or Hostile Workplace?

From TheSmokingGun:

A federal employee was formally reprimanded this month for excessive workplace flatulence, a sanction that was delivered to him in a five-page letter that actually included a log of representative dates and times when he was recorded “releasing the awful and unpleasant odor” in his Baltimore office [of the Social Security Administration]. 

According to the letter of reprimand—which is the least severe administrative sanction that can be levied against a federal worker—the man was first spoken to about his flatulence during a May 18 “performance discussion” with his supervisor. He was informed that fellow employees had complained about his flatulence, and that it was “the reason none of them were willing to assist you with your work.” 

After stating that, “It is my belief that you can control this condition,” the author of the reprimand letter then noted, “The following dates show the time of your flatulence.” What followed was a log listing 17 separate dates (and 60 specific times) on which the employee passed gas. For example, the man’s September 19 output included nine instances of flatulence, beginning at 9:45 AM and concluding at 4:30 PM.

Exit questions:

Does Obamacare pay for Beano® and Lactaid®?

Has HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued regulations on what constitutes excessive flatulence?

How soon before OSHA formalizes an indoor air quality standard for workplace flatulence?

UPDATE January 11, 2013
The guy gets a pass: reprimand withdrawn.

Another Fart-Related Homicide

Headline: “Teasing over flatulence leads to deadly fight.”

WOIO Channel 19 Action News in Cleveland, Ohio has the story:

Police say a 16-year-old girl is dead and another 16-year-old girl is in police custody. Officials say the girls were fighting around 8 p.m. Wednesday at 4769 Walford Road in Warrensville Heights. 

According to witnesses the victim was teasing the suspect because she passed gas. One thing led to another and fisticuffs began flying. Witnesses also tell 19 Action News that several adults stood around and watched the whole thing go down, including the victim’s stepfather. But by the time he intervened, it was too late.

Good grief.

And yet not unprecedented.

Fart Rage and Old Age

Dan Ivers has the first story at NJ.com:

Police: Teaneck man pulled gun on neighbor for farting

An elderly man was arrested Monday night after a neighbor’s fart allegedly drove him to threaten him with a gun, police said.

The impulse is to criticize 72-year-old Daniel Collins for going all Harry Callahan on his apartment house neighbor. However, FirstNerve readers know that deliberate farting is an effective provocation.

Police say Collins and his 47-year-old neighbor were involved in “an ongoing dispute over noise.” So there could be an element of aggravated farting involved.

Exit question: Why isn’t the alleged victim named in this story? Do journalists have a fart-shield rule?

Meanwhile, a few miles down the Garden State Parkway, some other elderly Old Farts are audibilizing tonight not far from FirstNerve Manor.



70, 67, and 70, respectively.

Notes from a Canadian Fumehead

Via GeekyCanuckGirl

The Calgary Herald publishes Bruce Weir’s entertaining ramble through his personal smell associations. Weir is FirstNerve’s favorite kind of Canadian: to establish his olfactory cred he tells how he once cleared a disco by farting. Then he turns to the smellscapes of Calgary:

I’m also generally delighted by the reliable smell of beer that wafts over Inglewood from the Canada Malting Company on Bonnybrook Road. On a good day, when the wind is out of the south, that smell combines with the yeasty goodness of the Fleishman’s plant—it cranks out about 14 million litres of yeast annually—to produce a sensory knockout.

Along the way, Weir provides an interesting vignette about the sequence of aroma released during coffee roasting:

One of the first things to burn off is chaff, a papery coating that [head coffee roaster Tim] Houghton compares to a peanut skin and which smells a bit like hay as it combusts. At about 375 F, the beans go through the “first crack” and release a lot of oil. As that burns off, it produces aromas that Houghton calls “chocolatey and a bit like a camp fire.” Once the beans lose those substances, they develop flavours like “nougat, honey and chocolate,” he says.

Not bad, eh?

Gas Attack at Camden Yards

Via MLB.com

There are two ways to clear a dugout. One is for an opposing batter to charge your pitcher. The other is . . . well, let’s go to the videotape.

Smoke Your Own

According to the Huffington Post, Cash Koszela of New Castle, Pennsylvania has been “smoking his own sausage for about 30 years.”

If, in reading that phrase, you thought

(a) wow, yet another euphemism for self-abuse,
(b) that pathetic son of a b****, or
(c) is that a Polish joke?

then you are definitely reading the right blog.

Lighter’s Historical Dictionary of American Slang never got past Volume II (H – O), so I can’t evaluate option (a). However, choking the chicken appears on page 396 of Volume I (A – G).

Pages 729 and 730 are of special interest to olfactologists: comprehensive entries for fart, including its first recorded literary use by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1386 (“This Nicholas anon let flee a fart”) and more recent coinages such as fart around (1931), fart face (1943) and fart-knocker (orig. 1952; Beavis & Butthead, 1993).

But I digress.

The Huffington Post goes on to quote New Castle’s Assistant Fire Chief as saying “This is definitely the best-smelling fire we’ve seen in a long time.”

Still not following?

OK, then click here for enlightenment.

Sunday in the Park with FirstNerve

[This one is for +Q Perfume Blog.]

Seemed like a nice day to tunnel into Manhattan—so I did!

First stop, the Sephora/Firmenich Sensorium. More about that in a separate post. Gulped down some truck food afterwards on 14th Street—tasty pork & scallion dumplings from Rickshaw Dumplings—then three more stops downtown on the A train. A short stroll and behold!: Zucotti Park, home to Occupy Wall Street.

One small square block, packed with tourists, police, and a motley and largely unimpressive assemblage of cranks, kooks, and die-hard “activists.” Do I sound too harsh and dismissive? Well, I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s, and went to school at U.C. Berkeley. So I’ve seen a few protests and happenings.

On my personal rating system, Zucotti Park scores about 3 out of 10 for colorfulness; any Wednesday on Sproul Plaza has more exotic causes and more flamboyant performing weirdos. As for message impact, ZP gets a 2 out of 10; the Wall Street hate was almost lost in the general chaos. Regarding the drumming circles, the less said the better. The stoners on Hippie Hill in Golden Gate Park have better polyrhythms and more ensemble discipline; the ZP slammers are a couple of cuts below the subway guys with their overturned plastic buckets.

I did get to meet the leader (and only member?) of the FSM: the Fart Smeller Movement.

He's a bit of dick (what, you expected Ghandi? Mario Savio?), but he has his standards. He won't ask to sniff a girl's farts unless she is at least 17 years old. Then again, he says in a pinch he'll also sniff B.O. (These are hard times for the 99%.)

Best of all, there were some old time Hare Krishnas, doing the classic chant. But this being the 21st century, they had a new twist: occasional Bourbon-street trumpet riffs by the guy in the saffron robe. Coolio!

For a big neo-hippie clownfest, OWS also failed to live up to its olfactory potential; despite the piles of bagged garbage, it didn't smell too bad.

The obese homeless guy dozing on a bench in the Chambers Street subway station was another story. Acrid butt-crack stench that pummeled you in the face at thirty paces. Pheeeeuuuuwie!

“The Whole World is Farting!”

It looks like the aimless whine-fest that is Occupy Wall Street has finally found its mission: It will become the FSM. No, not the Free Speech Movement. The Fart Smeller Movement!

Time to refresh those old chants (seriously, kidz, they were stale by ‘69).

“What do we want?”

Gas!

“When do we want it?”

Now!

“One, two, three, four, let it go and give us more!”

“All we are saying, is give farts a chance!”

“We are the farts we’ve been waiting for!”

[From the New York Post via JammieWearingFool.]

Multiculti Farting

Since I was a kid I always look forward to a visit to San Francisco’s Chinatown. The food is an attraction but the bigger pull is the ever changing assortment of novelties sold by sidewalk vendors. I have fond memories of super-realistic plastic barf, dog doo, exploding pebbles, and of course bottle rockets and firecrackers. The product of the moment is the Fart Bag, sold at the irresistible price of 5/$1.

The foil pouch contains about a tablespoon of sodium bi-carb and sulfur, plus a small plastic bag with a teaspoon of citric acid solution. To activate the Fart Bag, you squeeze the pouch until the liquid packet bursts, then place the unit near your target (another 11-year old boy or any convenient family member). The expanding gas pops the pouch and (allegedly) leaves a farty smell hanging about.

I say allegedly because the liquid packet was impervious to my squeezing attempts. Not wanting to stink up the rental car or the hotel room or my luggage, I never got around to a successful test farting. Has anyone deployed one of these babies? Lemme know.

Meanwhile, via Drudge: “For Marines in Afghanistan: Be careful where you fart.” The story appears on the Military Times site:

audible farting has been banned for some Marines downrange because it offends the Afghans.

I know there are many things in the Afghan culture that don’t seem normal to Americans and it’s hard to spend seven months working in someone else’s back yard. Still, the Marines I saw downrange are doing a pretty good job at trying to do the right thing around the Afghans.

They’re not supposed to cuss because it could be misunderstood (that one goes out the window a lot). And they stay away from talking about politics, religion or girls because those topics could escalate into major disagreements (they can’t communicate anyway because of the language barrier).

But farting?

Sigh. The Department of Defense has shown alarming signs of political correctness, but this would seem to take the cake. The Military Times comments section makes for amusing reading: a lot of current and retired military folks and their family members give the new anti-farting policy the razzing it deserves. A few examples:

Michael Says:
August 24th, 2011 at 12:25 am

I have to ask….what disciplinary action does UAF (Un-Approved Farting) carry these days???

Fart Knocker Says:
August 24th, 2011 at 2:59 pm

Just release at the same time as a .50 burst. Then the requisite denial, of course.

J.B. Says:
August 25th, 2011 at 12:12 pm

Next on the quartermaster’s list, order 5,000 GI Butt Plugs.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Smell…

Jason Prather Says:
August 25th, 2011 at 8:05 am

I will tell you why, if you promise not to think me racist, or laugh too hard, according to the Hadith, one of their ‘Holy Books’ in the section Sahih Bukhari (1.4.137) writes that Allah will not accept a Muslim’s prayer if he/she passes wind during the ritual. The exception occurs if the worshipper farts silently, or the fart does not smell. I wish I were making this up! If they have gotten so intolerant of our soldiers, perhaps they should try to free their own country, and their precious Allah can do it all himself!

Jason Prather’s claim checks out.

Ablutions (Wudu’)

Volume 1, Book 4, Number 137:

Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah’s Apostle said, “The prayer of a person who does ,Hadath (passes, urine, stool or wind) is not accepted till he performs (repeats) the ablution.” A person from Hadaramout asked Abu Huraira, “What is ‘Hadath’?” Abu Huraira replied, “ ‘Hadath’ means the passing of wind from the anus.”

OK, then! But the DoD goes from an Islamic rule on do-overs during prayer to telling Marines not to fart around Afghans in public—an extrapolation that pretty much defines the PC mentality.

Farting on the Bus: Questions for Daniel Senu-Oke

Our new hero is Anthony Nichols, a thirteen-year-old student at the Canal Winchester Middle School, in Ohio.

Anthony and his buddy were on the school bus last week when they cut the cheese in a big way. This led to an utterly predictable response by their fellow riders:

the flatulence apparently caused a ruckus on the bus amid a flurry of laughs, jeers and lowering of windows

Pretty standard stuff for a middle school bus.

The bus driver, ticked off because he had previously warned the dastardly duo that this behavior was unacceptable, turned Anthony and his buddy over to Assistant Principal Seymour Skinner Daniel Senu-Oke for discipline.

Also pretty standard stuff.

But then Mr. Senu-Oke guaranteed himself a place in the annals of school administration idiocy when he suspended the boys from the bus for “making an obscene gesture in violation of the student code of conduct”. According to the boy’s father, Mr. Senu-Oke also “suggested my son should hold his gas on this hourlong bus ride”.


Assistant Principal Daniel “Hold It In” Senu-Oke

The social psychology of farting is something we take seriously here at FirstNerve. But the notion that farting constitutes an obscene gesture breaks new ground in semiotic theory. It raises some philosophical questions we’d like to ask Mr. Senu-Oke:

Does the gestural equivalent reside in the sound or in the smell?

In your view of Canal Winchester community standards, is a Silent-But-Deadly not obscene?

Is a Bart Simpsonesque armpit fart noise obscene?

And finally, when someone cuts you off in traffic, is your response to fart loudly?

Chicken Fried Steak for People in Relationships

A new cookbook promises to reduce not the volume of your post-prandial gas attacks (that’s what Beano is for—and we already have a case of it delivered weekly to FirstNerve Manor), but the offensiveness of the odor. Elena Ferretti gives an enthusiastic review to Fart Without Fear: Comfort Food for Uncomfortable Times, by Wayne Chen and Gary Goss. The authors claim that foods rich in the sulfur containing amino acids methionine and cystine yield the stinkiest farts; think chicken fried steak (open the window!) or turkey club sandwiches (run for the hills!). Their solution is to offer modified versions of traditional recipes that will render your emissions less toxic. Sounds like the perfect gift for everyone in your carpool. Order The Fart Without Fear Cookbookthrough the Amazon link in this post and you’ll help keep us in Beano at no cost to yourself.

As Jacques Pepin would say, happy eating!

Sir Elton’s Dirty Diaper Fantasy

A month ago I was contacted by Damian Whitworth, a feature writer at The Times of London. He had heard Elton John at a movie premiere say, “I love the smell of nappies.” For some reason, Mr. Whitworth felt his readers would value my opinion on the topic. Or perhaps he just couldn’t find any other PhDs willing to be quoted by name.

In any case, I obliged and promptly forgot about it. Today I finally got around to looking for the story on LexisNexis (Rupert Murdoch has The Times behind a paid-subscription firewall). It turned up on page 2 of the January 25 edition under the headline “Don’t go breaking a fart . . .” [Heh.]

For all you poopy-minded fans of syrupy pop ballad icons, here’s the relevant bit:

A new-born baby soils an average of 60 nappies a week. Some claim that they really don’t mind changing them but, says olfactory scientist Dr Avery Gilbert, it’s often those with a “less hands-on” approach to the nappy who “associate the iconic scent of baby powder with the entire experience”.

“New born baby poop doesn’t smell all that bad,” he says, “but once they start eating solid foods it’s a different story, but still less offensive than the adult variety. Sir Elton isn’t attracted to that, is he?”

Ooops. Did I just smear one of Britain’s favorite elderly “rock” stars? 

Well, who cares. I like him even less than Sir Paul McCartney.

Ooops. I did it again.

They Stink Among Us: Another Classic from the First Nerve Library

FirstNerve commenter EdC has a knack for delivering book recommendations during the lull before the Super Bowl. Responding to last week’s item on Malawi’s proposal to outlaw public farting, Ed suggested I look at John Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars because “the extraterrestrials communicate by smell.”

Well, that sounded like just the ticket for a slow Friday night. Especially after a miserable week of navigating around potholes, through slushy intersections, and around mounded ice-banks, all freshly glazed with that depressing combination of snow, sleet and freezing rain known as “wintry mix.” Thirty seconds after seeing Ed’s comment, Agent to the Stars was on my Kindle and I was horizontal on the couch with a brewsky.

What a great book to kick back with. It’s a light but clever story about space aliens who discover Earth after picking up our television transmissions. They watch enough sitcoms to learn English and acquire a flawless ability for wise-cracking. Sensing from broadcast entertainment that Earthlings are ambivalent about aliens (Predator versus E.T., for example), they realize their introduction to humanity must be managed very carefully. So they decide to hire a top Hollywood talent agency to handle it. The job goes to Tom Stein, the story’s narrator, an up-and-coming agent whose sharp verbal sparring reminds one of Ari Gold in Entourage.

Scalzi has fun with Hollywood’s cut-throat, self-absorbed ways. The assortment of characters is satisfying: the ultra-bitchy actress, the beautiful but vacant one, the sleazy, client-poaching junior agent, and the creepy, stalkerish reporter for the universally despised industry tabloid. The collisions between Hollywood and the outsiders resembles those in Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty, except that it’s aliens instead of mobsters who mix things up.

The aliens in question are five-gallon blobs of protoplasm who, in their natural state, communicate with one another using smell. (Each “speaker” accompanies his olfactory message with a unique molecule that identifies him personally.) There are some good scenes where Joshua, the lead alien, hangs out with the neighbor’s golden retriever—they get along famously.

Soon after meeting Joshua, Tom Stein asks him what his species calls themselves. They are the Yherajk.

“It’s not our real name,” Joshua said, “but you couldn’t pronounce what we’re actually called.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well, for one thing, it’s a smell,” Joshua said. “Would you like to smell it?”

I glanced at Carl. He shrugged. “Sure,” I said.

The room filled with a stench that resembled the offspring of a rotted sneaker and Velveeta. I gagged involuntarily.

“God, that’s horrible,” I said, and immediately regretted it. “I’m very sorry,” I said. “That was probably the first-ever insult to an extraterrestrial. I apologize.”

“No offense taken,” Joshua said, mildly. “You should come to a Yherajk get-together. It’s like a convention of farts.”

The Yherajk have an olfactory art form they call tivis, which loosely translates to “smell painting.” It consists of bits of crusty stuff in a shallow bowl equipped with wires as heating elements. (These shapeless aliens aren’t big on visual aesthetics.) The smells in a tivis are designed to evoke specific sets of major and minor emotions. Tom Stein experiences one for himself:

I smelled something acrid, but I was also immediately overwhelmed by a sense of wistfulness, with overtones of happiness but the slightest bit of regret. It was the feeling you get when you see an old girlfriend, realize that she’s a wonderful person, and that you were kind of an idiot to let her go, even is you’re happily married now.”

The host alien is dismissive of this particular example of olfactory art.

“This one is actually fairly crude—it’s just one primary emotion with only a couple of emotional harmonics. Any of us could have made it, actually. It’s the tivis equivalent of paint-by-numbers. Some of our tivis masters can create works of incredible emotional depth, layering emotion on emotion in unexpected combinations. You can get really worked up over a good tivis.”

Agent to the Stars may qualify as science fiction, but I’d call it a comic novel that happens to include space aliens. The dialog is snappy and the olfactory speculations are sprightly. Very entertaining.

“The horror! The horror!”

Via JammieWearingFool:

Breaking wind is set to be made a crime in an African country.

The government of Malawi plan to punish persistent offenders ‘who foul the air’ in a bid to ‘mould responsible and disciplined citizens.’

I have to say I didn’t see this one coming. My money was on New York Nanny Michael Bloomberg to be the world’s first fart regulator. President Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika, not so much.

UPDATE February 2, 2011:

Well, that didn’t take long. Embarrassing third-world potentate New York Nanny Michael Bloomberg strikes back—his City Council lackeys approve an outdoor smoking ban in all parks and beaches, starting in 90 days. He’s told New Yorkers what they can’t eat, what they shouldn’t drink, and where they can’t drive. How far off is the ban on perfume in the workplace? in bars? on the beaches?

Party Farting Leads to Homicide

We follow criminal flatulence pretty closely here at FirstNerve.

We’ve written about fart-induced rage, but it was displayed by a prisoner whose cellmate kept letting them rip. We’ve even covered fart-related stabbings before: Remember Jose Braule Ramirez? He took offense at the gas-passing of his companion in a motel room in Waco, Texas, and attacked him with a knife.

But this story from Bristol, Connecticut is unique: it was the farter who got enraged. Ken Byron of The Hartford Courant has the details:

Police: Derision Over Flatulence Was Stabbing Motive

A 21-year-old city man charged with stabbing four people at a party Saturday night, killing one, told investigators he became enraged because people were criticizing him for passing gas, police said.  [. . .]

Police say Higgins got into an argument with another person at the party, Stacy Buccheri, who chastised him for being flatulent. Witnesses told police that Buccheri slapped Higgins, who smashed a beer bottle and then stormed out of the apartment.

He returned about 45 minutes later, police said, and attacked several people on a porch with knives, including all four who were wounded.

This chain of events make no sense anywhere along the way. Who farts at a party? How loud or ripe does your party farting have to be that you get slapped by a girl? And why stab a bunch of people but not her?

The mind boggles.