It’s a Sunday and I downed some whipped cream. Straight from the nozzle like an animal. Like somebody who knows exactly what sin is. This is good and clean and fun but I’m lactose-intolerant and that sweet sweet heavy cream gives me some sleepy, sloppy farts—some creepy, crappy farts. It’s like Dr. Seuss said: “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes,” and, well, I got gas in my caboose Mr. Seuss and she’s ripping loose like stinky one-liners during amateur hour at the comedy club. You heard that thunder on Sunday? Nope. That was my rear end belting and swan-songing like the prima donna’s understudy.

As you may or may not know, a cappella is a place where sounds are made with the body. Sounds are sometimes words, but sometimes they’re sound turds (i.e. farts). In a sea of bums, and dooms, and ba-da-das nobody notices when you’re leaking and squeaking if you release carefully. But then there’s still the guilt. The silent and deadly guilt. This is my confession in 10 farts-I-mean-parts.

1. one fart
2. toot
3. threet
4. fart
5. the other day I had a nightmare that asian beetles streamed from the Leonard Hall basement water fountain steady and ominous as a deep dark fart
6. hear me out: a spoon and a fork is a spork, so a knife and a fork is a knork, a fork and a fart is a fark, so a spoon and a fork and a fart is a sport
7. these farts range anywhere from warm and wide like mashed potatoes to long and firm like bananas
8. toot³
9. random thought, but you could say Bigfoot hides like a fart—heard but not seen, a suggestion or the hum of an incomplete song
10. I bet Bigfoot’s farts smell like poppies and blue cheese and having nowhere to be

Me, to Chris Raffa before 8:10AM T/R Buddhist Thought & Practice (which I call Booty Thought): “Is it OK if my 10 O’ Clock List(tm) is just ‘The number of times I farted at rehearsal’?”

Chris Raffa: “You’ll have to beef it up, but I like the concept.”

Me: “Got it. I’ll beef all over it.”