intoxicated poop segment: part lxxxvii

Le Petomane could fart as often and as frequently as he wished. His farts were odorless. As other people use their mouths, Le Petomane had learned to use his anus. Furthermore, by constricting or loosening his anus he could vary the pitch of the air he expelled and by controlling the force of abdominal contractions he could control its loudness. With these two fundamental tools, simple enough but rarely seen, Le Petomane contrived not only to imitate a variety of farts, but also to make music.

He headlined at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, the most famous nightclub in the world at that time, and brought in box office receipts more than twice as high as those of the angelic Sarah Bernhardt. He was one of the greatest comedians of the turn of the century The manager of the Moulin Rouge kept nurses in the theater to tend to female customers whose uncontrolled laughter in tight corsets often caused them to pass out as Le Petomane passed gas. Here was not a court fool at all, but the toast of civilized society.

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wow. i'm surprised i'd never heard of this man till now. thank you, neatorama, you never let me down.

some of my san jose friends and i have been known to spend hours sitting on my porch making the most realistic fart noises possible to conjure with the aide of a mouth and hand-- finding much more pleasure and laughter in it than my neighbors. and once, we debated about whether or not it was humanly possible to fart in a questioning manner. what i mean is a standard question raises in tone and sometimes pitch right before the sentence ends-- aurally, it's the major difference between a question and a statement.

but farts tend to fade out as they continue, no matter the type. at the very best, they bang to an end-- similar to a sentence with an ellipsis, a period, or even an exclamation mark. but we had deemed it impossible to ever fart with a question mark.

and now i'm starting to think there may have been a man who could.