LoC #1: Farting is Always Funny

There is something quite unnerving about setting up a blog. For starters, it means that I'm committing myself to having an opinion about something. Am I that opinionated...? Probably not. But I tend to think that some of the opinions I do have might matter. 


Take Law of Comedy #1, for instance: Farting is Always Funny. Now, obviously, there are the exceptions that confirm the rule. I doubt very much, for example, that you'd agree with that statement if you've ever had the misfortune to suffer IBS, or to be around someone who's suffering. I'd probably also want to eliminate any fart that resulted in an unexpected and/or unwanted follow-through. But, in general, farting is funny. And I'll tell you why...


Farting is the great equaliser. Like pooping's lesser-known but funnier cousin, everybody does it. The people who tell you that they never do, or tell you that they don't smile a little on the inside when (not if) they do - they're liars. I do it, you do it, my baby daughter does it, Abraham Lincoln, Margaret Thatcher, Adolf Hitler, Mother Theresa... all farters. Ugly people do it, as do the beautiful; your bottom doesn't care how pretty your face is... fact. There is even a Facebook group devoted to documenting famous farters. And yet, we all try to act as if it's the most disgusting and unnatural thing to have happened. I say embrace the fart. Accept that, at some point in your life, your bottom is going to make a sound, and maybe even a smell, that you'd rather not have shared. And it's going to happen whether you like it or not, whether you fight it or not.

It's not it's a new thing either. Farting has always been around, and it's always been funny. Chaucer thought so, Shakespeare agreed. But they were hacks when it came to funny farting. The oldest known joke, in all of human kind, is about farting. From the Summarians, circa 1900 BC: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." I'm not saying it was HILARIOUS, but it was funny... to them.


So I guess that's my first opinion: farting is always funny. The sooner we all accept it, the happier we'll be.