4 Attempts to Overcome the Subtle Butt Gas Neutralizers

So sometimes wind shoots out of your ass. It happens to the best of us. Like any system of caverns, occasionally a deep wind picks up a head of steam and makes its way to the surface bringing with it the dread perfume of yesterday’s beef stroganoff and a beer-battered applesauce. Mankind has evolved to the point now when we accept this as a hilarious part of everyday living, unless someone else does it, then it’s disgusting. When you do it, it’s hilarious. Even if you’re a girl. You can pretend you don’t think it’s funny (probably you’ll pretend it never even happened or that you’re somewhat mortified) but you can’t fool me because we all know, deep inside, you’re laughing. Funny.

Once the hilarity subsides, the grim reality of what you smell like several inches below the surface sets in, and it’s just depressing. You’re carting that around 24/7. No matter how pretty you are on the outside or on the metaphorical inside, on the literal inside, you smell like fart. That’s a downer.

In the year 2010, you’d think mankind would have evolved to the point where we could have created some kind of machine or pill or zeppelin accessory that allows for the transmutation of farts into something more useful and beneficial to all mankind – like maybe when you fart it checks to make sure your watch is keeping proper time, or the alignment of your tires. But that never happened. However, the good people at Solutions That Stick did the next best thing and gave us Subtle Butt, disposable gas neutralizers. Is that exactly what it sounds like? It sure is, it’s a little carbon filter that you can tape inside your drawers. Yes!

So the idea of a fart pad is that it sucks the stink out of your stink, seems pretty simple. But as a man, I have a certain pride in the ferocity of my post-digestion undercarriage belches. Frankly, the idea that a little black square could render me as impotent as a vampire assaulted by garlic-laced holy water is insulting. And surely I, internet comedy writer and noted source of smell, could overcome a carbon filter for my ass. I went to college almost. And so the battle was joined!

#1 Clench – My go to method for fart manipulation is the clench. Like if I’m at a fancy luncheon or funeral, I tend to work the glutes. In my mind, it’s like putting a walnut in a vice, shattering it to barely identifiable smithereens. Likewise, my high decibel jackhammer of a fart will be reduced to scattershots of silent wind wisps. It’s how I understand theoretical fart physics.

After applying a fart pad to my jeans I was ready to go to town with my clench method, supremely confident that I would be able to divide and conquer. My gas would disperse and at least a few would escape the perimeter unharmed.

The Test: The thing is this, cutting loose on demand isn’t as easy as it sounds. That’s a skill to make you the king of any frat, but my almost college had no fraternities and if it did, they would have shunned me for inability to stew up laughs at the drop of a hat. I waited for a good hour with this mildly irritating thing taped to my ass in which I learned two valuable lessons;

1. You should prepare your insides a day in advance for a fart-based article.
2. Wear underwear if you’re taping a carbon filter inside your pants.

Results: After an hour I figured I was primed for some kind of action so I worked my magic and shuttered the backdoor like an old lady at a farm house leery of city slickers trying to steal from her mattress. The fortress of solitude was nigh impenetrable. Unfortunately, finding someone to test the results proved impossible. I was going to have to stand in my closet and give things a spin.

In the dark, in a closet, a carbon filter strapped to your tightly clenched ass, you really stop to think about what you’ve done with your life. You also notice, as your wind breaks on the walls of your heiny, no smell whatsoever.

Conclusion: Thwarted? Maybe. Or maybe it was just one of those scent-free freebies you get every few weeks. You know, where its like a phantom. You heard it, maybe it rumbled the sofa, but then there’s no trace. I was not about to admit defeat.

#2 Acrobatics – The Subtle Butt is only a few inches squared, and that’s not very large. Admittedly, the ground zero in my ass is smaller judging from the awkward measurements I tried to take with the tape measure and my bathroom mirror, but there is a blast radius we need to consider. The plan is to exploit the inherent weakness in the Subtle Butt, its size limitations, and make a mockery of all it stands for.

The Test: In order to circumnavigate the Subtle Butt I need to only make my ass into a ninja. It will bend like a reed in the wind, it will bob, weave, jump and jive. It will be in all places at all times and the Subtle Butt will be powerless.

Learning from my previous mistake, I had been enjoying some spicy pepperettes purchased from a Middle Eastern deli and was ready to blow a gasket. At once I leapt to the center of my living room and began a series of kicks, spins and assorted moves I am far too embarrassed to do in front of others and let myself go.

Results: As someone who sits for at least 8 hours a day before getting up so I can go home and sit some more, I’m not adept at the high impact dance I was attempting to parlay into a successful experiment. I became winded quite quickly, the sort of out-of-shape gasping you hear from people who have only gone up two flights of stairs overtook me and I had to find a bottle of water. When I finally did pass gas it was the lazy fart of a man dying – there was no effort involved.

Conclusion: The fart crashed against the walls of the Subtle Butt like so many Persians meeting their doom against a phalanx of Spartans. I smelled nothing but my own humiliation and shame that this is what I do for a living.

#3 Brute Force – My dad never taught me a lot of things as a child – never tossed the ball around with me, never taught me to drive, but he did teach me how to haggle with a prostitute and get arrested when it turns out she’s not really a prostitute. I also learned that nothing made him laugh more than the kind of gas that erupts with such force it makes everyone else in the room wince. The kind you think might actually ruin pants, upholstery and the sense of well being previously enjoyed in a happy, moderately healthy home. The more powerful a fart is, the more commanding its presence.

The Test: This is never easy as the minefield of hard gas is almost as disgusting as this article is turning out to be. The key, of course, is to bear down and hope for the best, like throwing a Hail Mary pass or trying a purloined password on an adult website. Two hours after accepting the challenge of a full on Taco Bell lunch extravaganza I sat in my chair by the office window and watched the world pass by as turned my insides into a metaphorical pinball machine and pulled back the plunger with all the vigor and potency of Samson.

Results: I felt a moment of serenity as it became clear to me that my already very miniscule chances of ever seducing a woman via the writing of online comedy shrank to an amount so small science is literally incapable of calculating. My ass hurt a bit, too.

Conclusion: I can smell my shame but I really don’t know if I can detect any other odors here. No one wants to share an office with me any more, that’s something.

#4 Zen – My last resort is to turn to the ways of my Buddhist brethren. I assume I have Buddhist brethren. I’m going to be honest, I’ve seen about 200 kung fu movies in my life and that really covers the breadth of my knowledge and experience with eastern philosophy, other than the odd Chinese menu and fortune cookie saying. But I feel that’s a pretty substantial knowledge base. Plus, if I try hard enough, I think I could either punch through a wall or shoot a hadouken. Through this mystic power my fart and I will become one and simply transubstantiate across time and space and the Subtle Butt will have no hold over us. Incidentally this sounds as stupid to me as it does to you.

The Test: I downloaded some Enya, which is to say I already had some Enya on my computer, and sat cross legged on a rug. As I returned to innocence I really felt like I was connecting with the Earth in some way. That may be shamanism rather than Buddhism, but like I said, hadouken. 

Conclusion: Was it the rug? Or did my own methodology work against me by making my insides so relaxed they couldn’t be bothered to struggle against an already passive force? I have no idea. Point is, I didn’t reek. Did I win or lose in this experiment? I don’t know. I just don’t know.