I have always detested potty language.  Obscenity bothers me not.  But potty language always causes me to pause. Sexual allusions are one thing.  But potty mouth always makes me queasy.
Fart is a particularly despicable term.  Expelling noxious fumes from ones anus is disgusting.


It is a natural enough process by which the body and its digestive system relieves itself by expelling methane, a gas that is created during the digestive process.  It appears that for some spicy  foods, certain meats or my mother's cooking appear to enhance this digestive activity.

It is one of the favorite references for stand-up comics and characters in sit-coms. I will usually turn the channel. But ancient Romans and Greeks and English writers like Chaucer could not omit references to the basic human activity.

Off subject, did you know that recent survey demonstrated that 2/3 of the audience will turn the channel when w appears?  So do I.  You get the point?

But now there is a new theory for the End of Times that is as equally disquieting as others that have been endlessly depicted on the History Channel or Discovery Channel or PBS.

In a December 12th piece posted in Salon,  Kirsten Weir discusses yet another scenario where Global Warming destroys all life on earth.  Isn't that delightful?
    
"Some geologists say rising temperatures will uncork vast deposits of undersea methane. If they're right, we're cooked.

During the last year, geoscientists have held several workshops and conferences to discuss what is known -- and the great deal that isn't -- about the "deep carbon" cycle. Next week, at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, scientists plan to hold a special session devoted to one potentially frightening aspect of that cycle: a strange little substance known as methane hydrate.

Methane hydrates, or clathrates, are icelike gas deposits buried under permafrost and deep below the seafloor. Some researchers fear that the hydrates are on the verge of melting en masse and belching out a cloud of methane gas that will send global temperatures skyrocketing."

Now a certain James Lovelock with the help of William Golding has come up with a theory known as the Gaia theory.I am sure we have all seen him on the History/Discovery Channels.

Now Gaia, or Gaea , was the Greek Goddess of the Earth.  According to Hesiod, in the beginning there was Chaos and out of Chaos came Gaea and Uranus.  And Uranus, the God of the Skies, lay upon Gaea and out of this union all flora and all fauna flourished.

The Gaia theory posits that the earth is one gigantic living organism.  It is a complex organization  of the atmosphere, the cryosphere, the hydrosphere, and the lithosphere.

Now you may demur on the grounds that one organism cannot be some collection of other organisms.  Yet we must be reminded that we, as human beings are a collection of organisms to some extent. Most people know that 70% of our body is water, but 60% or more of our body is composed of bacteria.  A terribly frightening concept for people like Monk.

Now how does this concept relate to methane and Armageddon?  Read further:

"The doomsday scenario goes something like this: If global temperatures keep rising, some methane hydrates will melt, sending methane gas bubbling up through the ocean and into the atmosphere. Like any good greenhouse gas, the methane will trap heat close to Earth's surface, causing temperatures to climb even higher. Hotter temperatures will melt more hydrates, and on and on. In other words, methane hydrates could trigger the mother of all feedback loops. The story, says David Archer, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago, "has a great apocalyptic side to it."

In other words, man has succeeded into adulterating Gaea's body with too much spicy foods like chemicals from use of fossil fuels into her air, and pollution of her seas, destruction of her forests and rerouting of her rivers and lakes. To the point that Gaea has an upset stomach.

And one continuous and noxious fart may mean the end of life as we know it.

The end.