Tag bowels

STFU Fridays: Butt Rockets

Heather Christena Schmidt 7 Comments

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Oh, where do I begin?

If you know me personally, have followed the blog for a while, or read my most recent book, you know that I’m not a fan of flatus jokes. I am not a fan of flatus either. Nor am I a fan of the word “fart.” It isn’t allowed in my house. If gas coming out of the ass must be discussed, alternative – less crude – words are used. And then whomever has brought it up gets a stern look from me and an understanding that jokes will not be tolerated.

I don’t know what it is. It might be that growing up, my friends (and I had a lot of guy friends too) didn’t joke about it like I hear people joking now. It wasn’t as socially acceptable.

We didn’t have fucking fart machines.

Besides talking about my disgust for the topic in my book, I think I have only blogged about it once. It was when I went to the post office and saw a woman leaning over the “help yourself” table, while I got the mail out of the postal box. I started to worry that she was in some sort of distress because she seemed to be grunting, and her head was down. I started walking over to her and then suddenly she ripped one so loudly the entire post office went silent, and the stamps on the envelopes started to peel. Then she moaned a sigh of relief and went about her business.

I blogged about that one. Who wouldn’t?

Nonetheless, the flatus jokes and comments and incidences have gotten to something of a fever pitch as of late. It’s in too many kid’s movies we’ve seen. Too many times it’s happened in my presence in the most precarious and awkward ways possible.

So I thought that for this Shut the Fuck Up Friday, we’d plug up the inappropriate butt rockets once and for all.

Excuse Yourself, Or Plug Up Your Butt Rocket

My husband’s father and my husband – both alike – have a very serious problem. They both have major fucking gas issues, yet never – NOT ONCE – acknowledges them and/or fucking apologizes for emitting that shit in front of the rest of us with an “excuse me.”

It’s so offensive when my husband sits there and talks to me, blows his anal trombone, then continues to talk as if nothing has happened. Looks me straight in the eye while he does it and does not even flinch one bit. Would it fucking kill you to flinch already?

The other night, he was eating his dinner and did it. His dinner. His goddamn chicken and rice dinner. Food. Food and flatus – what a romantic evening that was. I considered suggesting he just drop his pants and take a shit right there for all of us to enjoy, but then that would have been rude.

Wait, no … rude is blowing butt rockets and not at least saying “excuse me.” Excuse yourself, or plug it up.

When It Could Make A Situation Very Awkward, Plug Up Your Butt Rocket

Last week we were getting ready to move and both my mom and dad were helping me pack up the last of our things the day before the movers were scheduled to come.

A little backstory on my parents: they have been divorced since I was eight. They have been divorced since I was eight, and my mom has remarried a man that lives in a trailer in New Mexico. They have been divorced since I was eight, and yet they still see each other regularly, and in spite of being remarried my dad still helps my mom out a lot. Read that as financially.

It’s way more awkward than that too.

So you can imagine the strangeness of it all when we were at our old apartment last week, and my parents were both there helping pack. My mom was in the kitchen and my dad in the dining room, and my dad and I were talking about something when suddenly my mom blew her own anal bugle and said “oops…sorry!”

Well Pookie didn’t notice the noise, and asked why she was sorry; but in the middle of asking interrupted herself with “why does it suddenly smell like fertilizer in here?”

My dad dropped his head in his hands and said “oh my God,” and my mom flushed red and asked where the wine was. Which I don’t think she needed any more of anyway, since that seems to be what blows her butt rocket bugle anyway.

It truly was an awkward time for everyone. The overlying lesson here is: when it could truly make a situation very awkward, plug that shit up.

Always Plug It Up If You Think There’s A Chance Your Butt Rocket Could Really Be A Butt Grenade

What I’m trying to say is that if you think there is a fairly good probability that you might let one go only to really shit your pants: just don’t do it. Maybe you just had a Taco Bell 12 pack and your stomach feels a little funny. Maybe you’ve been clogged and just guzzled an entire bottle of Milk of Magnesia.

Maybe you’re Al Roker.

Even in the privacy of your own home. There is never a time that crapping yourself is pretty. Or funny. Or enjoyable.

And on the note of butt grenades: there is never a time that other people need to experience yours.

That means that if you go into the bathroom and things aren’t going well, try to keep your mouth shut. You don’t need to moan and groan and audibly strain so that we all have to know you ate one too many bricks of havarti cheese.

It also means that people don’t need to hear about how your bowels are doing. They talk about their bowels at my in-laws all the time, and I am usually horrified. Beyond belief. Or someone will come into the room and ask for a newspaper “because it’s going to be a while.” I for one don’t know why people read in the bathroom, but it’s true that some people do it. My aunt plays Sudoku.

That doesn’t mean we all need to hear about your butt bombs being the reason you need something to keep you occupied.

And for God’s sakes: don’t ever – I MEAN EVER – intentionally share your butt grenades with others. By share I mean share, like you’d share a bucket of popcorn at the movies by holding out the bucket, or pouring some into a napkin. I may or may not know of someone that perhaps has taken a dump in a shoe box and taped it up, then put it in the locker of someone he did not get along with at work.

No one deserves the butt grenades of another.

So with that, I think I’ll end this – no doubt the classiest of the STFU Fridays. Just remember: when it comes to butt rockets, excuse yourself, avoid unnecessary awkwardness, and for the love of God, keep your butt grenades to yourself.

If you guys need me, I’ll be hanging my head in shame and hiding out until all this flatus blog stuff blows over. Happy Friday, now plug your butt rockets and SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Toilet Humor

Heather Christena Schmidt 2 Comments

Okay, for real.  What is going on with people and their obsessions with the bathroom?  I see three arenas where this has become entirely out of control:

1) Jokes About Flatulence and Other Bathroom Incidences in Children’s Movies

The only thing worse than the level of jokes about flatulence in children’s programming and major motion pictures is when they break out the testicular humor.  But seriously, what kind of values can we possibly be teaching children when every other word out of the mouths of the characters that are to give them moral rigor is followed up with a “pull my finger” joke?

2) Flatulence and Other Related Sounds on Phone and Tablet Apps

I don’t know about you, but I did not buy my iPad, nor my HTC EVO, to put applications on them that can reproduce (at the most inopportune time) the loud sounds of activities normally reserved for the bathroom.  What is so funny about this?  I really don’t understand.  There was this woman that I used to work with that would eat about six deviled eggs every day at lunch.  The effects about an hour after she came back are obvious; but no one giggled and laughed like children when it happened.  In fact, we all did quite the opposite.  It made us act more professional and busy to avoid the inevitably awkward eye contact.

3) People’s Obsession With All-Things-Bathroom

Every day I check my site statistics to see who has been visiting my website, what they’ve been looking at, and how they’ve gotten here.  Included in the latter part is a list of search terms that led people to my site – search terms I often take amusement from.  More than anything, though, people are coming to my blog by searching things such as “hillbilly on toilet” and “old hillbilly on toilet.”  It’s my fault, really:  I started it all by blogging about hillbillies so often.  They are a popular subject it seems, not to mention a pet peeve of mine.  And to top it off, I have included one photograph of a hillbilly on his toilet outside, only because it was the first thing that came up when I searched in Google Images “hillbilly outside.”  But why are so many people searching this?  It is literally multiple searches, every single day!

When I began to look into it more, though, I learned it is more than just people’s obsession with hillbillies on toilets.  It’s people’s obsession with all people on toilets.  On YouTube, searching “on toilet” brings up literally thousands of responses – some of which are pranks, where a person was secretly filming another on the toilet; others are people just videoing themselves and uploading it (why?!); even one is someone that is making his own homemade talk show, filmed while he sits daily in the John:  “Toilet Talk With Catterton.”

What is it about toilet humor that is … well, so humorous?  Is this really the level of whit we have dumbed ourselves down to?  I’m all for a dirty joke or two once in a while – but this toilet talk is just out of control.  To me, this is just another sign that our culture is becoming stupider and stupider; and that in our culture of excess, we overdo everything – even our toilet humor.  It would be wonderful if I could see a kid’s movie just once that doesn’t include anal jokes; or walk through the mall to get my rings cleaned and pick up my makeup at Sephora without hearing those ridiculous apps echoing throughout the entire shopping center.  I get it:  people think it’s funny.  A lot of people in this world are rednecks, and rednecks love the synthesis of their two favorite things:  jokes and toilets.  I understand completely.  But at this level?  Seriously?

Things I Would Prefer You Not Post Online

Heather Christena Schmidt 2 Comments

Thanks for the photo, Metropolitan Mama

When I got home today, I logged on to my Facebook page to see what had happened through the course of the day.  Expecting the usual Saturday fair of “fun in the sun” posts, the occasional article, and baby pictures by the dozen, I was rather shocked to see at the top of my newsfeed a photograph of a woman shaving her husband’s horribly hairy back.

The general rule of thumb with the Internet is that you shouldn’t share anything on there that you wouldn’t share in person.  It is true that in many senses the Internet is replacing in-person experience, but the fact remains that it is both (a) public interaction, and (b) held among people you generally consider yourself to acquaintance in real life.

There are a lot of things I would prefer people not share with me in person, and many of those transcend onto the Internet.  While some are more tolerable when I’m sitting behind the privacy of my own computer, it nonetheless stands that there is a general standard of Things I Would Prefer You Not Post Online.  My mother-in-law always uses the “but it’s like family” argument – but that is a weak one.  No matter who you are, no matter how you are associated with me – there are just some things I don’t want to know.  Here are some of them:

1.  I do not want to know if you just ate a big meal and are now in the bathroom.  Really I can do without all references to bowel movement.  Call me crazy, but I like to keep the privacy of the bathroom … well, private.

Thanks for the photo, Pointless Blather

2.  I do not wish to see pictures of you performing basic hygienic functions.  This includes, but is not limited to, shaving your legs, shaving your back, shaving your pits, shaving any other part of your body that mentioning would upgrade this blog post to PG-13, washing yourself, scraping your tongue, and (most importantly) cleaning … anything.  I will admit, I have cracked an occasional joke about May No Shave Month, but that does not mean I would ever post photos of it.  Please, do me the same courtesy.

3.  It would be totally awesome if you would spare me your relationship drama.  Switching your Facebook status from “in a relationship” to “single” is one thing; blathering note after note, status after status, about all your back-and-forth dramas is another.  Announcing that you are officially divorced is one thing; crying for attention through vague and intentionally dramatic posts is another.

4.  Back to the bathroom, could you please spare me the commentary on your child’s bowel and bathroom habits?  No one thinks all the status updates about your new baby soiling everything around him is cute.  No one enjoys to hear that your toddler is constipated on her sing-a-long potty.  The children’s book is called “Everybody poops,” but that doesn’t mean everybody wants to know about it.

5.  If you are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, et. all to brag about all the mundane, pointless details of your life that bear no consequence to anyone or anything, then fine.  That’s not why I’m on any of them, though.  I’m sure the majority of the world would agree with me – social networking does not mean we need to be with you at all times, from get up and shower, to laundry and bed.  As much as you may think that we all enjoy hearing that you are on your way home to take a nap, or that you’re heading out to another day of work, I think your updates would be much more meaningful if only they carried some sort of meaning.

6.  Check-ins are cool, but not when it’s at your home, or (worse) in your bed.  Why is it even an option for people to create GPS-locatable check-in points at their own home, or (worse) in their beds?  Nothing is worse than logging in to Facebook to see that “Jane Smith and John Doe just checked in to Jane’s Bed.”  Thank you, but we all really (a) don’t care, and (b) don’t want to imagine you getting it on.

I suppose the general idea needs to be reiterated:  if you wouldn’t tell people about it in person, keep it off the Internet.  And, really – if you would tell people about it in person, then society likely isn’t the place for you.  Close friends, family – doesn’t matter who … privacy has a meaning.  Learn it.

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