How To Cover A Fart: Part Deux
Recently, I gave insight into the finer points of surreptitiously relieving yourself of the gaseous demons inside, in my since-legendary first piece entitled “How To Cover A Fart.” The feedback I received was incredible. Due to this nearly overwhelming demand for a follow up by the ones and ones of commenter, I had no choice butt to do a follow up. Yes, that was a pun, not a typo, and yes, this piece does now include the words “choice butt.” You’re welcome, World.
Part Deux — which I really wanted to call Fart Poo, but did not because this is a goddamn scientific piece I’m writing here — addresses a comment posed upon the release of the original piece. In the comment, an intrepid reader assumed the original piece regarded learning how to make your farts sound like someone else’s. This assumption, of course, is pure genius. How would one cover a fart? Not cover up, but cover in the way Toto covered that unreleased Weezer song “Africa” back in ’82 (which was written 10 years before Weezer was even formed — that’s how much of a genius Rivers Cuomo is). So I loaded up on kale and broccoli and found out.
There are, as I’m sure you all know, two distinct features of a fart — the auditory and the aromatic. When properly covering a fart, both must be taken into consideration. Let’s begin with the easier of the two, the auditory. While it helps to know the buttular dimensions of the person you’re trying to fart in the style of, this won’t entirely help you as we all know “The cheeks do not maketh the man” (or woman or whatever, that’s an old quote). What’s more important is the specific sonic footprint the fart leaves (referred to as the fartprint, and no I’m not nearly close to done with these types of jokes). Each person’s fart sounds unique. And I don’t mean that each person has only one fart sound, and I’m offended you’d even think so. It’s common knowledge that there are precisely 13 fart sounds a single butt can make. But within these 13, there are infinite variations. So the first step in covering someone’s fart is getting a firm handle of their exact sonic fartprint. Experts in this field can do this by ear, but when you’re starting out it’s good to get a recording. Get several farts on tape, then create a playlist so you can listen back while on the go. This lets you get inside the fart’s head. Sure the fart is making a sound, but what is it trying to say?
Once you have an instinctual knowledge of a person’s fartprint, you’ll need to practice creating these sounds yourself. There’s no wrong approach to this, just make sure you have plenty of kale and broccoli on-hand. Cauliflower is an acceptable alternative, but in general the fartiness of legumes is overstated. Drawstring-based pants are preferable here, as this type of practice (or “brrraptice” as I’ll call it), will put you square into the sharting danger zone. Be ready for a quick dash to the bathroom when you squeeze just that extra bit too much.
Having mastered the sound of someone’s fart, you’ll now need to focus on the second, and exponentially harder, feature. The distinct smell of their fart. As with fart sounds, fart smells vary wildly and are obviously influenced by what that person ate, but still have unique scent signatures. Here, the only way true mimicry is achieved is through intestinal biome manipulation — we’re talking changing the bacteria in your gut to match the person who’s fart your covering. Now, this is admittedly extreme. There are only certain scenarios in which you’d need to do this, and it is to be reserved only for the people whose farts you admire the most. It took me 2 years, but my crowning achievement was my Obama fart of 2017, commemorating his last day (and presumably last fart) in office.
An acceptable workaround here is to simply eat what the other person is eating for a couple of days to generate an approximate bouquet. This isn’t as hard as it sounds, as you’ll most likely be following the person around recording their farts anyway. Studies have shown your fart cover will smell 80–92% similar, and most layfarters won’t be able to tell the difference. Plus, you tend to get some pretty decent insight into a person’s life by eating like them. So not only will you fart like them, you’ll actually learn something about them too.
So there you have it — how to cover someone else’s fart. I hope you learned a lot. When properly executed, the person will turn in your general direction with a look of surprise and shame. Did they just fart? It didn’t feel like they did. But it sounded like it. And hold on a minute, it kinda smells like it. Did they just fart without realizing it? Have they lost control of their farts? Is up down and down fart??? At this point you should make eye contact, and wink. This will assure them that no, down is not fart. They just had their fart covered.
A final note — covering someone’s fart is an homage. Much like a Weird Al parody, it is not done out of malice. NEVER cover someone’s fart with the intent of embarrassing or harming them in any way. This is not a tool for destruction, it’s just good clean fun. Well, maybe not clean, but good fun at least.