To everything churn, churn, churn

Enduring an hour-long commute to work every morning would be an absolute nightmare. The monotony of the highway, the too-slow passage of time ... heck, even talk radio would get old after an hour. By my second week on the job, I’d be at the library, checking out audiobooks on the history of fertilizer, just to keep my road-addled mind occupied on the daily slog. That would be my life: Work and poop.

 

Well, I’ve got a friend in pretty much that exact situation. An hour to work, an hour back, day after day, week after week. It’s a testament to her will power that she hasn’t snapped and drop-kicked a family of beavers to vent her frustration. It’s also fortunate for the beavers.

 

I’d like to think I help her out in this regard. Every once in a while I’ll root through my substantial collection of music and make her a mix CD, usually a winding romp through myriad genres of rock – some classics, a few comedy tunes, and a dose of heavy metal to add a little punch to her coma-inducing journeys. If there’s anything that can keep you awake on the turnpike at 5 in the evening, it’s a squealing guitar solo that could melt the eyes of a south African meerkat. 

 

(In case you’re thinking it, no, I don’t have it in for the entire animal kingdom. Just wallabies. Those kangaroo-wannabe bastards.)

 

There are two reasons I make her these CDs. The first and most obvious reason is that I’m a completely awesome friend in every way, minus my tendency to eat all of her York Peppermint Paddies. The second is simple. I like making mix CDs. It’s a fun hobby.

 

Only this hobby is quickly vanishing.

 

Every generation goes through this to some extent – the hobbies and pastimes that define an age eventually give way to new technologies, new ways of doing things. Making a mix CD – indeed, listening to a CD at all – is an activity that’s quickly going the route of stamp collecting and model shipbuilding. It’s passé, and it’s dating me. Living history museums employ actors to fill the roles of bygone artisans, such as butter churners with their musty barrels and oar-like stirring plungers; in another 30 years, these characters will be replaced by a guy sitting at a laptop, trying to find just the right song to transition between Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” and Van Halen’s “Run With the Devil.” People will take photos of this antiquated endeavor, because by that point laptops will be replaced by brain chips and we’ll all be cyborgs eating old engine parts for sustenance.

 

Those in my parents’ generation already have much to lament. My own were a bit nervous buying me my first Nintendo Entertainment System when I was a kid, thinking that perhaps I’d spend all my time indoors, eschewing the outside world in favor of shooting fireballs at spike-shelled turtles and monsters that looked like Ed McMahon. Their fears were partially grounded. I didn’t avoid outdoor play entirely, but I did spend an inordinate amount of time with an electronic laser gun in my hand, shooting computer ducks and bad-boy desperadoes with the twitchy nostrils of coke fiends. That I turned out the way I did is perhaps unsurprising. If there’d been mutant killer turtles at the playground, I might have gone out more, weighed less than a Buick filled with sand bags, and grown up to be a Major League pitcher. This is clearly what would have happened.

 

As things turned out, I became more fully integrated into an age group that was fast adopting video games as a lifestyle – a lifestyle many of us continue to this day. (Though not me; I’m too busy writing screeds about flatulence.) What’s a little off-putting is that the generation below mine – the so-called “Millennials” – have taken preoccupation with screens to another dimension. Twenty years ago, if you wanted to guide Mario through a go-kart course littered with banana peels, you had to actually sit down in front of a wired television, turn on a machine, and play at a fixed location. But everything’s portable now. The lines have blurred. Gaming is no longer an activity for which you set aside a specific time; you do it on the subway, you do it in class, you do it at Denny’s to take your mind off the fact that you’re at Denny’s. The old gives way to the new, and those in the old-school lament the change, believing – perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly – that their way was better. It’s the same ol’ song and dance, repeating endlessly through time.

 

Phones have replaced CDs as the music platform of choice. Tracklists are now playlists. And the hobbies that once defined my youth now place me firmly in a specific historical period – the period of neon slap-bracelets and headbands, of waiting for a song to come on the radio so it can be recorded on a warbly cassette tape. Yeesh. Someone hand be a butter churn.

 

Could these generational divisions have always been so drastic? Doubtful. Youths always break from the traditions of their forebears, but the accelerated pace of technological innovation has an amplifying effect, compartmentalizing each generation into their own distinct eras: The era of the 8-track, the era of the VCR, the era of nudie pictures on phones. (This last era isn’t so bad.) These things no longer evolve. They just change, suddenly and without warning, and one day you’re making a mix CD and wondering why everyone’s lookin’ at you funny.

 

Like many who are faced with this sort of thing, I’m sticking to what feels right. That means sitting down and selecting, song by song, a tracklist – not a playlist – to ease the psychic burden of my commuter friend’s daily pilgrimage. This either means I’m steadfast in my commitment to an era-specific hobby, or I need to join some kind of club. Probably both.

 

And for the record, the song that should fit between “Sultans of Swing” and “Runnin’ With the Devil?” “Still of the Night” by Whitesnake.

 

Like I said. I’m an awesome friend.

 

The place beyond the pineapple

There’s a friend of mine who can’t stand the taste of carrots. I’ve got a suspicion he may be clinically insane.

 

I mean, they’re just so good. Not Krispy Kreme or birthday cake good, but good nonetheless. And even if carrots aren’t really your thing, the idea of finding them actively disgusting is wholly foreign to me. Sure, I can understand that some people may find them bland or unexciting, but to actively hate them? To catch the flavor on one’s tongue and spit them out like so much spoiled meat? Blasphemy. The carrot gods are frowning in disapproval – inasmuch as they’re capable of frowning, being that they probably look like giant carrots.

 

But hey, I can’t be one to judge. Everyone’s got different tastes, different foods that are on their do-not-consume list.

 

For me, it’s pineapple. Acidic, tangy, chop-my-tongue-off-with-a-carving-knife pineapple. The flavor is pure, distilled evil. If crying children had a taste, they would taste like pineapple – the grossest and most offensive of all fruits, somewhere on the Ick-O-Meter between two-headed snakes and a basket full of scorpion droppings. If I’m ever captured by armed militants, the best way for the terrorists to inflict torture would be to feed me spoonfuls of this gag-inducing food; I’d reveal state secrets in about two seconds flat if it meant wrapping my lips around a palate-cleansing steak.

 

“Fine, you’ve got me! The missiles are in a bunker under Pauly Shore’s house! For the love of Pete, get me a damn doughnut!”

 

This is why I never joined the military.

 

Back in college, I had a buddy who delivered pizza for a major chain. Occasionally, at the end of his shift, they’d have a “junk pie” lying around – a pizza with no home. (Is there a sadder image?) Perhaps they tried to deliver it and no one answered the door. Or maybe they made a mistake while prepping it – slipped while cutting it, for instance, resulting in a pie chopped into the shape of Ronald McDonald giving the middle finger. These were pizzas that would be thrown away if not consumed, and this was considered an egregious waste of ingredients. So some nights, on his way home, our pizza buddy would drop by with a free pie, and our hungry little group of cereal-eating college kids would nosh on a mouth-watering treat. This was many moons and about 50 pounds ago. If pizza were still free, I’d have to be airlifted out of my office chair by the National Guard.

 

Delivery Guy dropped by one night with a pineapple pizza, not knowing I had a visceral aversion to this Satanic edible. And in sneaky fashion, the pineapple was cooked underneath a camouflage of cheese and onions. Because cheese and onions are glorious foods, worthy of a seat next to the Norse gods of Valhalla, I recklessly chomped a bite off the biggest slice in the box.

 

Ptoooey! Out shot the nasty pineapple-infected bite. Because my reaction to the enemy fruit was so immediate and powerful, the flying, chewed-up wad of nastiness achieved a remarkable velocity, ramming into a refrigerator magnet with an audible thwap – the sound of a spitball striking a blackboard. The magnet was a picture of me backstage with the frontman for Megadeth. A little to the left, and the pineapple-and-cheese mush would have struck Dave Mustaine right in the kisser.

 

A lesson was learned that day: Never hand me a piece of pineapple anything. It will end up on a musician’s face.

 

Yet there are those who would scarf this stuff by the ton. Curious how one man’s trash is another’s treasure. There’s an age-old question in science – and in drunken conversations with philosophy majors – which asks, “How do you know everyone sees the color red the same way? Maybe my red is your blue.” It’s a tantalizing hypothetical, and perhaps an unanswerable one. It can easily be adapted to address how we perceive flavor. How do we know pineapple tastes the same for everybody? If I were to switch palates with someone, would pineapple then taste like a smoked ham? Or a mound of blueberries lathered in whipped cream? Maybe some people bite into a pineapple and taste something even worse, like the sweaty armpit of a hygienically-challenged professional wrestler. Something tells me that flavor has never been incorporated into a pizza.

 

If there are two things I’m good at, they’re geeking out over scientific advancements and daydreaming about ridiculously farfetched scenarios. (If there’s a third thing I’m good at, it’s playing the theme song from “Shaft” on a kazoo.) It’s in this spirit that I pine for a technology which would allow us to alter our perceptions of the flavor of various foods – thus making it easier to eat more healthfully. For example, we push a button, and voila! Tomatoes taste like Double-Stuffed Oreos. Push another button, and poof! Lettuce tastes like vanilla ice cream. In this fantasy situation, I could gobble down all the nutrient-rich pineapple I could handle, with nary an offense to my sensitive taste buds. Of course, this technology could easily be abused; vampires could use it to make human blood taste like Dr. Pepper. But hey, every technology comes with risks. Paintball, anyone? I rest my case.

 

Honestly, though, what I’d really like to do with this whimsical invention is install it into the brain of my carrot-hating friend. Dislike for carrots is an unspeakable atrocity, and this could easily be remedied by programming it to taste like one of his favorite foods. I’d just sit down with him and ask him what he likes.

 

But if he says pineapple, I’m slugging him.

 

Raising a stink

Flatulence. It’s a real gas.
 

Zing! Thank you folks, I’m here all week. Be sure to tip your waitresses.
 

This particular rumination is dedicated in part to my father, who can consistently be relied upon to double over in laughter whenever someone within earshot releases a gaseous emission longer than a radio commercial and louder than a shotgun blast. Once a toot reaches the three-second mark, his dimples start to crinkle, his eyes fill with mirth, and his delight is matched only by unabashed jealousy. He likes to claim the longest and loudest for himself, and achieves this feat fairly often, though this is usually accompanied by the kinds of noxious fumes that could paralyze the front lines of an advancing 18th-Century British army. Had he been alive during the Revolutionary War, the Americans would have claimed victory in about two weeks, aided by a biological assault fueled by a diet of cabbage and beer.
 

This is what I grew up with. Thanks, Dad.
 

Thing is, you’ve got to pick your spots. If you’re going to impress someone – or drive them to gather their belongings and move to Barbados – you can’t just do it any old place, at any old time. It’s socially unacceptable. There are mores about this kind of thing, guidelines which must be scrupulously followed.
 

Guideline number one: Make sure you’re surrounded by an appreciative audience.
 

The younger you are, the easier it is to get a laugh in this manner. Kids enjoy farts. Like comic books and chocolate milk, it’s a part of their world. The best time to unleash the beast, therefore, is in grade school, when you can squeak ’em out as often as you want to without being permanently branded a social pariah. Unsurprisingly, I used to be known for this kind of thing; the fact that my last name is “Lagasse” played perfectly into this, as the words “gas” and “ass” are both contained therein. The trick is to strategically employ comedic timing. When you feel one building up, the best moment at which to let it loose is just after the teacher asks an innocent question of the classroom. “So, does anyone know what the boiling point of mercury is?” Brrrrrrap. Works every time. Kiddos, you can have that one for free.
 

This segues nicely into guideline number two: Utilize your environment for maximum amplification.
 

Wooden chairs. Need I say more?
 

Again, academia is the best environment for this endeavor. My fascination with the well-timed butt-blast lasted well beyond its acceptable shelf life, continuing through my senior year of high school. I was sitting one day in my calculus class, scrupulously taking notes rife with impressive-sounding words like “sine” and “cosine,” when a boy sitting next to me – I’ll call him “Thundercheeks” – let loose an unplanned emission, one of those weak surprises which sounds like air being slowly let out of a balloon. Embarrassed, he immediately blushed and offered a timid “Excuse me,” which was met by mild giggling.
 

Not wanting to be dethroned, I shot him a defiant look, leaned at about a 45-degree angle, and fired off a rocket that could have blown the eyebrows off a Japanese samurai. The trick was the angle; given a wooden chair, all it takes is positioning to turn a medium-sized explosion into an auditory offensive dwarfed only by nuclear bomb explosions.
 

After shattering a few eardrums, I turned to Thundercheeks and said, “Now that’s a fart.” I then became something of a legend. Sadly, this is one of my greatest accomplishments.
 

Guideline number three: You are what you eat. And so are your trumpet notes.
 

High school again. (Where else?) Earth science, last period. It was closing in on 2 p.m., the final bell of the day was imminent, and I could tell something magical was happening by the sheer volume and tenacity of my gurgling gut. School lunches make for the best fart ingredients by far, especially in the right combinations. Chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, and Humpty Dumpty potato chips are an elixir so potent the United Nations should start issuing sanctions.
 

With two minutes left ’till quittin’ time, I let one loose.
 

Now, there’s often a downside to all this high-falutin’ tootin’, and that’s the olfactory offense it can cause. One by one, in slow waves forming concentric circles around my little nucleus, eyes began to widen in dawning awareness. Noses crinkled. Someone asked, “Who was that?” And then, like horses dashing through the gates at the Kentucky Derby, a mass exodus ensued, students tripping over forgotten book bags to catch a breath of fresh air just outside the classroom door. Even the teacher fled, leaving her swivel chair spinning languidly behind an empty desk. At that point, the jig was pretty well up; I was the only one left in the room, the rest relegated to peeking in at me from safer ground, most with facial expressions that were equal parts puzzlement and wonder.
 

In the final minute before the bell, I walked over to the teacher’s chair, took a seat, and put my feet up on the desk, grateful for the unexpected quiet. Rather than succumbing to embarrassment, I chose to mark the moment as a small victory, silent but deadly. Two things were responsible for evacuated classrooms that year: fire drills and my gastrointestinal system. How that didn’t make the yearbook is a mystery.
 

There’s a fourth guideline, folks, and it’s this: Never do any of the above in professional settings or polite company. Ever. I’ve tried it, and it doesn’t work.
 

Somehow Dad forgot to mention that one when he was indoctrinating me in his flatulent ways. Certain things you’ve simply got to learn the hard way. Let’s just say that the next time I’m sandwiched in the middle of the back seat during a long road trip, I’m holding it in.

Serial vapist

Even intelligent people can make stupid decisions. For evidence of this, look no further than Thomas Edison, the quintessential scientist and self-made man known mostly for inventing the first practical, long-lasting light bulb. Nobody would dispute his intellectual credentials, yet in the early 1900s, he was embroiled in a debate over which was the safest form of consumer electricity: direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). A staunch proponent of direct current, he sought to prove its worthiness by electrocuting a bunch of animals – including an elephant that was slated to be put down by a California zoo.

 

Smart or not, frying an elephant to prove a point is pretty freakin’ dumb.

 

Obviously, I’m no Thomas Edison in the brains department. He was a prolific scientist whose mass-market inventions changed the way people live their lives, whereas I make fart jokes and swear a lot. The distinction is clear. Still, I consider myself a fairly intelligent person – way dumber than physicist Stephen Hawking, but way smarter than real estate mogul and professional bird’s nest impersonator Donald Trump. I’m comfortable in my range.

 

But like other non-idiots, I’ve still made some boneheaded calls.

 

My first cigarette was a Kool Super-Long (now known as Kool 100), which is basically a menthol bomb that numbs your lips and makes you feel as though you’ve just sucked down a York Peppermint Pattie. I bought a pack of them shortly after my 18th birthday, on a dare from a friend of mine, who wanted me to put my newly-acquired “adulthood” to good use. We smoked three apiece in her parents’ backyard, giggled at the unexpected buzz it gave us, and then I tossed the pack in a drawer somewhere and let the rest of the cigarettes stagnate. It was supposed to be a one-time thing, one more youthful experiment to check off the list.

 

A year or two later I went though a bit of a rough patch, found some cigarettes lying around – again, a “one-time” thing – and before long it was a part of my life. Like Batman and cheesy speed metal, only not as fun.

 

I was never a pack-a-day man or anything absurd, but I was still hooked on nicotine to the point at which it had officially become a “lifestyle choice” – that vague phrase which covers the gamut from barroom vices to styles of pants. I wish now that pants had been my worst life choice, because while nicotine is an addictive substance, it’s pretty much impossible to get permanently hooked on neon pink windpants with the word “sexy” written across the buttocks. Unless you’re a high school freshman. Parents, watch for that.

 

Here I am, years later, managing the addiction with a product called an electronic cigarette. They’re growing in popularity; maybe you’ve heard of them. The gist is this: You fill a special nicotine-laced liquid into a battery-powered device, heat it up into an aerosol vapor, and inhale it – thereby getting your fix without ingesting the kinds of carcinogenic chemicals that could eat through a gym locker. Ex-smokers like it because it allows them to blow out a big plume of something, replicating one of the more satisfying sensations of their dubious pasttime. Non-smokers like it because the smell is mild, dissipates quickly, and doesn’t cling to clothing and furniture like microscopic barnacles. E-cigs, as they’re called, fall under a new category of products dubbed “harm reduction,” which is code for, “This will kill you more slowly.”

 

Electronic cigarettes are now a multi-billion dollar industry. Which is what probably caught the attention of Jeff McCabe.

 

McCabe, of Skowhegan, is the Democratic leader of the Maine House of Representatives, and according to the Bangor Daily News, has introduced a bill to ban “vaping” from all the same places in which cigarette smoking is banned, citing the lack of scientific research into the effects of secondhand vapor. Cigarette smoking is allowed in an ever-shrinking list of places, so an e-cig enthusiast such as myself would pretty much be limited to vaping under rusty bridges and behind trash barrels in sketchy alleyways. All I need to do now is buy a pair of fingerless gloves and start playing the harmonica.

 

You might expect that I’d oppose this bill, since vaping is supposedly so great. Only here’s the thing: McCabe’s got a point.

 

Good decisions are made based on evidence, and given a lack of evidence, prudence is best. Since switching to this admittedly weird alternative to smoking, I’ve amassed a pile of circumstantial evidence that’s encouraging. I have more wind during workouts, my throat never hurts, and I don’t reek like a half-ton of wet construction paper burning in a giant diaper. Things are looking up.

 

But that’s all anecdotal. The real evidence, amassed by science, is just starting to trickle in. The early findings are mostly encouraging, signifying that the majority of e-cig/liquid combinations don’t produce the carcinogenic chemicals found in cigarettes. Only that’s not enough to justify blowing vapor in peoples’ faces in the frozen food aisle. This early in the research process, there’s no telling what future findings may hold. For years, I’d been used to smoking in select areas out of respect for the clean-air breathers; I’ve got no problem extending this courtesy in the e-cig era. If there are any conveniences to be had with this device, it’ll have to come in the form of health (and odor) benefits, rather than locational freedom.

 

When you make a stupid decision, you live with the consequences. Electronic cigarettes are great, but they shouldn’t moonlight as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

 

Maybe a fellow vaper or two is cursing me as a Judas, but you know what? Assuming responsibility is the least I can do in light of my own buffoonery. Otherwise I’m just a desperate mind, electrocuting elephants to make a groundless point.

 

So take that, Edison.