Press Release: Did Somebody Step on a Duck?
Did Somebody Step on a Duck?
A Natural History of the Fart
By Jim Dawson
“Yo’ mummy so old she farts dust.”—oldest recorded joke from ancient Egypt
When someone passes gas, the atmosphere changes in more ways than one. A fart can instantly erase the luster from someone stunningly gorgeous—or make them touchingly vulnerable. It can strip the authority from a cop giving you a ticket or from a brainy professor at a lectern. We are surprised and shocked because someone (unwillingly) has spontaneously confronted us with their humanity, and suddenly, the playing field has been leveled.
“Did Somebody Step on a Duck?” is a new collection of snappy and entertaining gas-passing anecdotes and historical tidbits from fart historian Jim Dawson. The anecdotes cover a broad range of pop culture, news, and history. Readers will be impressed by how broadly flatulence has memorably permeated politics, science, religion, history, sports, entertainment, literature, and daily life.
Jim Dawson is a rare fart historian (e.g., Jim is rare, not the fart) and the author of “Who Cut the Cheese” and “Blame It on the Dog.” He has appeared on more than 200 radio talk shows across the country. Needless to say, he is available and gives great interviews.
$9.99 ? paperback ? 192 pages ? 9781580081337
E-Book edition also available.
Did You Know…
George W. Bush thought it was funny to punctuate a joke by breaking wind in groups of people. Favorite targets were new young aides, who fell prey to Bush’s “Austin Welcomes.”
A man in West Virginia was charged with battery on a police officer when he “passed gas loudly” and “fanned the gas toward the officer.”
In HBO’s Sex and the City, Carrie is thoroughly humiliated when she toots in front of Mr. Big. She laments, “This is a watershed relationship moment and I’m never going to be able to erase it….and he thinks of me as one of the boys, and I’m going to have to move to another city where the shame of this won’t follow me.”
Termite flatulence contributes up to 30 per cent of the methane in the earth’s atmosphere.
Joe Francis, producer of the Girls Gone Wild videos, defied legal proceedings in a court of law with “repeated attempts to disrupt the deposition with flatulence.”
Morticians vigorously massage a corpse’s lower abdomen to release postmortem gas.
Gastrointestinal surgery makes the stomach smaller and allows food to detour around part of the intestine, thereby restricting the body’s natural absorption of calories and nutrients. This leads to flatulence at a new level of intensity.
Poor Charles Darwin was not the fittest of the fit. He suffered from wrenching stomach aches with fits of flatulence, which sometimes made him too embarrassed to leave his house.
