When strangers ask:"Do you play a musical instrument?", the correct answer for men, women and dogs is:"Ab-so-toot-ly." A smiling Creator has given us the ability to pass gas, and in such a tuneful fashion. An infinite variety of sound, from tasteful whisper to butt thunder. Yet humans are a shy and peculiar breed, embarrassed by our animal origins. If you don't care to know how many farts make up an average human day, or what happened to the German zoo keeper who gave an elephant an enema - TURN THE PAGE NOW!
Okay, the sissies have gone. Who but a gastroenterologist could get more than 100 pages of anecdote and observation out of flatulence? The Seltzer Brothers, that's who. Barry Seltzer is an attorney whose peculiar curiosity about all things odd or legal has produced such epics as It Takes Two Judges To Try A Cow. Erwin Seltzer is the producer of legal self-help videotapes. Their new paperback, The Other F-Word, is subtitled: A fart by any other name would smell as sweet.
Attorney Seltzer claims his interest in the subject was tweeked by a California case where a defence team was cruelly gassed by the district attorney. The D.A. apologized once for an accidental ripper, but the defence claimed there were more than 100 farts during a month-long trial, including several where the prosecutor lifted his leg. The D.A. broke wind several times during the defence's closing argument, cracking up the jury.
Intrigued, the Seltzers began collecting other nose wrinklers from law records and the Internet. Among them
* The proposed Alaska law that would prohibit "flatulence, crepitation, gaseous emissions and miasmic effluence." Each toot would bring a $100.00 fine. "Would the state have modelled something like the parking authority to sniff out culprits and issue tickets?" the authors wonder.
*The six Edmonton police cruisers that chased an armoured car after reports it was driving erratically with the back door swinging open. One of the guards had passed gas and the other guard was trying to air it out.
* The Dutch Intestine Foundation that campaigns to make public wind events acceptable. Fifteen times a day is their recommended pain threshold.
Actually, with public breast feeding well on its way to being tyhe world's biggest non-spectator sport - it's not politically correct to notice- public flatulence might be perched at a similar brink of possibility. Can't the same arguments for one be made for the other? A natural function. Nothing to be ashamed of. And too demanding to delay. We are probably only moments from the first Flatulence Rights demonstration. And no, I don't want to think about how and where they might best demonstrate their displeasure.
But you came for the constipated elephant, right? The Seltzers offer news of a German zoo keeper who gave his beast 22 doses of laxative, along with a bushell of berries, figs and prunes - then gave thye elephant an enema. Jumbo unloaded a blast that knocked the keeper to the ground, where he struck his head on a rock. The keeper was found an hour later, under 200 pounds of pachyderm poop.
There is no moral here for all of us. It's always the fart you don't hear that kills you. To the industrious Seltzer brothers, a bottle of Bean-o.
Gary Durnford's Column The SUN April 27, 1999
