You’ve had it happen to you, haven’t you? A friend, a comrade, someone with whom you’ve entrusted the very secrets of your soul, they usher you into some dark corner and whip their phone out of a pocket like a magician who’s setting up for the last and greatest trick and oh, you haven’t seen anything yet.
They’re giddy like a six-year-old on acid. Fingers trembling, they open YouTube—or maybe Vimeo or even, God forbid, Dailymotion—and type in a deadly sequence of letters.
“duck fart”
Now, I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I was raised in a good household. Well, maybe not a good one, but a decent one, one where the standards of humor were set closer to sophisticated plays on words or elaborate epigrams, properly responded to by a subdued titter, hand over mouth to disguise the teeth, than whatever crude comedy is to be found in flatulence, of all things. Good God, people. We live in a dignified society, not 13th century Germany or 21st century Greater Ontario.
Some may condemn my decision as melodramatic, but hear me roar, my sweet reader.
A friend is no friend of mine if they think to beckon me over, to waste my time, to impatiently wait as the video stops to load midway through its nine second length, to frantically try to explain why it’s funny after—the video now finished—instead of joyous laughter or even a mirthful grin, a slight frown creases the folds of forehead. It’s a duck farting, Jimothy. Mere canard flatulence! And if you ever show me anything like that again, I’ll strangle you with a plastic bag.
Hear ye, hear ye! Let it be known that thine humor should match my own in timbre and tone, lest you try to amuse me and fail, and some poor sap find your body hanging from some roof beams, bluish of face and crushed of windpipe.
