the brownhouse effect

You know, I've never been able to read one specific part of T S Eliot's Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, i.e. the Sherlockian part, without thinking of farting it up in the winter. Specifically, the lines are:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

(In case you haven't read what is like the most famous poem in the history of English poetry, you should Google it and read the whole thing.)

I always picture the smoke there being like how smells are visualized in the old Tom & Jerry cartoons--poking at someone, wafting in a thin line and leading Tom towards the blueberry pie while Jerry sniggers and magical negroes play mandolins and stereotypes in the background. Which may or may not be how Eliot pictures it. If he's imagining it that way then he's far ahead of his time, because we didn't even have talking cartoons when Prufrock was written. (Correct me if I'm wrong but Prufrock is 1917, and Steamboat Willie is 1928, and that's what really sets off the cartoon revolution, right? But maybe it's all from Punch and I don't know what the fuck.)

But I also associate--once again, always--this stanza with flatulence. Flatus, the exhalation of the gods. Le Pétomane would know what I'm talking about. In my Wikipedia searches for the history of flatulism (professional farting), I came across this amazing man:

Le Pétomane was the stage name of the French professional farter and entertainer Joseph Pujol (June 1, 1857 - 1945).

He was famous for his remarkable control of the abdominal muscles, which enabled him to fart at will. His stage name combines the French verb péter, "to fart" with the -mane, "maniac" suffix, found in words like toxicomane. In English, a translation might yield "the fart maniac". His profession can also be referred to as a "Flatulist" or a "Fartiste."

It's one of my great sorrows that I could not ever incorporate farts into any of the campaigns that I've worked on. The closest I ever got was at a factory tour of a client, where I blamed my own forceful brownouts on my boss. (Not Awrup, who farts perfume and shits roses and pays me too much money to discuss his windbreakage.) My crime eventuated into nicknaming said boss the Pad Patsy ("pad" being Bangla for fart, and a Pad Patsy being someone who gets blamed for another person's farts) and then, at one point, confessing to him in a methane-infused guilt fit that I had blamed him for my own vile flatus. I expected to be kicked out of my job. But my boss then, i.e. Mr. PP himself, is well known for being one of the nicest (among other things, all of them good) people in Bangladesh, and not without reason. He shouldered the blame gracefully and said that I was welcome to blame future farts on him. He also convinced me that he himself had Godlike control over his own sphincter and could fart at will. Cue weeks and weeks of begging to hear the effusions of my world-shaking Slartibartfast employer, until he gently let me down and told me that he really couldn't fart at will. Alas, uni cherechilen pad kom.

The reason why I brought all this up is because I have been farting up a storm today. I think it's the Thursday lunches from Cafe Alpona, who gives us a banquet on the final day of the working week, which encourages overeating and leads me to express my appreciation in ancient manners. Where I sit, I have two copy writers around me, and we now have to work on Saturday because neither of them could take my shit-buffering. (Given the loading time, the load had better be worth it!) And just now, I was about to leave, for pastures greener or perhaps browners, and I just made the stale air uninhabitable for two more colleagues. Sorry guys, I promise we'll deal with Djuice someday. Let me just deal with my own stewing juices right now.

PS: I just had to add that while I was tagging this post and just before I clicked on Publish, I let another one go and boy is it fucking vile. But was it not A E Housman who said that no man dislikes the smell of his own farts?