Friday Five: August 30, 2024

friday flatulence

Aug 30, 2024

Welcome back to the Friday Five, your weekly roundup of joyful, cathartic content from the corners of my mind and the world wide web.

New York Moment: This might be the first personal story that makes it in here, and there’s a first time for everything. This Monday, I was walking the dog around 8:00am, enjoying the general solitude of an early start to the work week. I began marveling at my only other companion on the sidewalk: an older man who appeared to be well into his 70s (at least) walking at a brisk pace. We kept pace for a while, and I made up an entire life story about him in my mind. Smiling to myself, I thought how I’d like to be energetic like him in my old age. I picked up the pace, ready to walk past with a smile, a thumbs up, a ‘have a great day!’ moment just for the fun of it. We were about three feet apart when he let out an earth-shattering fart. It was significant in tenor and stench, something like a sonic boom in broad daylight. Then I was faced with the Herculean task of continuing to walk without laughing, and feeling like the thumbs up was now inappropriate. I hope your mental image of this brings you laughter — which I patiently suppressed until I took a sharp turn onto the next noisy block.

Language Lesson: Relatedly, there are two words for Fart in Farsi. For my Consumers who speak another language, I’d love to know if this exists in your langauges as well! In Farsi, “gooz” means audible fart, while “chos” is silent but deadly fart. I promise that I’m not making this newsletter the Flatuelence Five, but that will take us to our third topic:

This old Nickolodeon commercial that brings Iranians to tears:

Playlist: In the multiverse, there is a version of me who lives in the Pacific Northwest and climbs mountains. She is in her late 40s and proudly tells anyone who listen that she went to the Lilith Fair where Missy Elliott had one of her first live performances ever. Anyway, this playlist makes me think of that version of me and makes me feel like a badass. It’s great for cooking and singing along to — I chopped onions to the beat of Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” and truly wondered where the cowboys are these days.