Paul J Penton – Songwriter

Lips curl at the edge as I read the word and think about all its implications- how to talk about just one, there’s been so many, memories spring back to school and the discovery of a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy for a ‘Grand Farting Competition’. That’s just about the only really legible words on this smudgy facsimile, we manage to interpret the rules to discover that ‘blanket rippers’ and ‘thunderclaps’ are allowed but soggy wet ones may attract disqualification. We laugh ourselves silly in that sobbing, ‘please, no more, make it stop’ sort of laughter that ripples through us like writhing snakes, our eyes watering with delight.

 To get us in the mood It’s lips to the flabby bit of skin over the biceps and we let go a big watery fat one. Of course there’s that other method for developing a decent faux fart -cupping a  hand under your shoulder and working your arm like a hand pump, I find this is not as effective and certainly there’s less control  than the Bicep method. Thankfully there’s no gaseous indulgence also, which makes me think of standing in a pub recently where some bastard did let one go, I think most people in the immediate vicinity were choking in their beer – it was a meaty odour – but what can you do mate?- And was the person responsible really going to go outdoors especially to relieve him or herself? NO.  Just thinking about the relief that is to be found in a good fart, especially if its been gathering in there for a while. Those clouds of humid gas gathering in the pit of the bowel seem to have come all the way from Jupiter- or could I say Uranus…..the relief is like a cool change on a sweltering Melbourne day. 

 There was an incident in English class once, the scrabble of pens the shuffle of chairs and the padding feet of the teacher echoing off the wall all seemed to be frozen in a moment of time, just as I chose to let a quiet one one go, and of course it was on a wooden seat , and wouldn’t you know it WAS a f#^%#ing well blanket ripper, a real rip snorter and that chair vibrated like a jack hammer.  The whole class erupted in a storm of laughter, it rained down from the roof and the streamed from the corners. I think I got put outside for ten minutes for disrupting class.