Tag: farting

#oneaday Day 627: Finding your niche

I was a bit of a latecomer to YouTube. I remember a friend of mine trying to encourage me to follow some of the YouTubers she liked, and feeling curiously resistant to it all. In some respects, I am still quite resistant to certain quarters of YouTube — I have no intention of ever watching a Mr. Beast video, for example — but it's fair to say at this point that YouTube, as a general cultural entity, is an important part of my daily life for various reasons.

One of the things that I've particularly enjoyed about more actively engaging with YouTube over the last decade or so is coming across channels that have very much found their niche, and stick to it. Sometimes this is as simple as "gaming", but oftentimes I find that the most interesting and enjoyable channels are those that get a little more granular: those that choose to focus on a specific aspect of something that they enjoy and dive deep into that.

This can take many forms, so I want to share a few favourite channels in this regard today. Not all of them are gaming related, but all of them are run by people who have found something they enjoy doing and continue to do just that, often regardless of what "the algorithm" supposedly wants or viewing figures. I respect this because it's what I aspire to do with my channel; while my YouTube channel is broadly a "variety gaming" channel with a focus on retro, my preference is to explore overlooked and underappreciated games and platforms from over the years — and sometimes to give games that had a less than stellar reception on their original release another chance.

But I digress. This is not about me. This is about some channels I enjoy, so let's go on a little wander around YouTube, shall we?

Yesterzine

As you probably know if you've been reading this for any length of time, I enjoy old video game magazines, and as such I'm gratified to see how many people out there enjoy making videos and writing about them. One of my favourites is Yesterzine, a channel that describes itself as "The Literal Magazine Show", because it takes a "magazine show" format and is also about magazines, you see?

Presenter Dudley (who, full disclosure, I Actually Know) has a characteristically deadpan style that works well with the show's humour. He strikes a good balance between acknowledging and celebrating the original cultural context of these publications and providing appropriate modern commentary and criticism of aspects that, in retrospect, have not aged well for one reason or another.

Yesterzine videos are worth sitting down and paying attention to rather than putting on in the background, and with such a rich vein of classic magazines to draw on for future episodes, it's a show that will continue for as long as Dudley can be bothered, and he's showing no signs of slowing down just yet.

Zilog and Moto

I've always enjoyed Sega games, particularly from the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. In fact, if you follow my YouTube channel, you'll notice I'm going through a bit of a Master System phase right now.

Zilog and Moto is a channel with a bold aim: to collect all the English language releases for Master System, Mega Drive/Genesis, Mega CD and 32X, then play and review all of them. Presenter Dave is making good progress in both regards so far. His videos are simply presented but effective in what they do, consisting of a short introduction to camera, a look at the game's physical component and then some commentary on how it actually plays.

Dave clearly spends time with each and every game and gives it a proper chance — even in the case of notoriously bad titles. Sometimes this leads to pleasant surprises… and, of course, sometimes those poor receptions are well-deserved. Either way, an episode of Zilog and Moto is always a worthwhile watch if you're an old-school Sega fan.

League of Extraordinary Board Games

This channel, a collaborative affair between well-known tat acquirer Stuart Ashen, CheapShow's Paul Gannon and movie enthusiast Oliver Harper, has a simple premise: dig out an old, obscure board game of the ilk you would have once got at a jumble sale, then give it an honest shot to see if it's any good.

The trio doesn't always get through a full game of something — particularly if it looks like running particularly long, or if it is clear that the game itself is not actually very fun — but they always give it a chance.

It's especially interesting to see the variety of licensed board games based on TV shows — I have fond memories of these from back in the day and wish I'd held on to more of the ones that I used to have copies of. As it stands, all I still have is a copy of MB Games' adaptation of Williams' arcade game Defender.

Anyway, this has a similar feel to Gannon's CheapShow: the sense that you're being let in on a group of friends just having fun together. A good show for when you're feeling a bit lonely.

Lord Heath

I won't lie: I found Lord Heath's channel because of his frankly astonishing fart videos, one of which can optionally be enjoyed above. But I've been enjoying his other… err… output too, the majority of which are the rather more socially acceptable and/or safe for work reviews of drinks.

These are short, simple, self-explanatory videos: he tries a drink, he gives his thoughts on it. Most of them are under three minutes long, but they're all rather entertaining; Lord Heath himself is a joyfully exuberant character who is not afraid to make a twat of himself in public, and he always makes a point of shooting his videos in some pleasantly picturesque locations.

In many respects, this is perhaps the purest example of what I'm talking about today: he's clearly got a vision in his head for what his YouTube channel should be, farts and all, and he's stuck with it. He's not trying to be Internet famous; he's not trying to clickbait; he's just a cheeky chappy who likes burping, farting and trying an increasingly esoteric selection of beverages. Eternal respect to him.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 555: Silly things from around the Web

I can't think of anything in particular to write about today, so I'm going to just talk about a few random things I happen to have seen around the Web recently, or perhaps not-so-recently in a few cases. Hopefully that will at least provide me with some inspiration to say something about each of them. So let's begin.

Lord Heath's farts

This is one of those things that I don't remember the specifics of how I stumbled across it, but I was thoroughly glad that I did. There's a chap on YouTube who goes by the name "Lord Heath", and his channel primarily consists of him doing short, light-hearted review videos of various soft drinks.

However, at various points in his past, he has also committed to video some of the most impressive flatulence ever emitted by a human being. I present to you exhibit A, which still makes me literally cry with laughter every time I watch it (and, more importantly, listen to it):

Everything about this is perfect. The earnest explanation. The explosive opening. The gradual howling of descending pitch. The crescendo towards the end as it comes in to land. The final thrust that accompanies the last burst. The fact that he's naked. Absolutely no notes whatsoever.

Five years I have been pissing myself laughing at that specific video. And I suspect I will continue to do so for many more years to come.

Jucika Daily

Jucika Daily originated on Twitter before migrating over to Bluesky when everyone realised that the place had become a Nazi bar. It's an account that posts Jucika strips, with Jucika being a mostly wordless Hungarian comic strip that ran from 1957 up until its creator's death in 1970.

Jucika centres on the life and times of an attractive young woman called Jucika and the various misadventures she has. She is depicted as being somewhat saucy, risqué and romantically forward, but the comic mostly parodies sexist attitudes rather than objectifying Jucika herself. Indeed, more often than not, Jucika is shown taking advantage of the sexist attitudes of the men around her in order to put herself at an advantage.

The Jucika Daily account posts comics from the 500 strip strong Jucika archive every day, and often includes helpful context in the alt text for each image. While the comics are almost always entirely free of dialogue, there are occasional Hungarian terms that appear on signs and suchlike, so the creator goes out of their way to explain these things where necessary.

At the time of writing, the account's creator is facing a large medical bill for an emergency kidney operation, but they are continuing to post strips while promoting their crowdfunding efforts. Even if you have no intention of handing over money to a complete stranger on the Internet, do at least go and check out the comic strips — they will make you smile.

CheapShow

The CheapShow podcast is ostensibly a show about going through the bargain bins and Poundlands of Great Britain and coming back with the treasure from amongst the trash, but really it's an excuse for best friends Paul Gannon and Eli Silverman to hang out and get very silly with one another — and to include us, the audience, in with their nonsense.

CheapShow has a number of regular features, including The Price of Shite, where Paul and Eli have to guess the prices of various pieces of tat purchased from charity shops; Off-Brand Brand-Off, where one or the other does a blind taste test of branded and unbranded variants of a particular product to determine which is best; and Eli's Country Urban Noodle Test-lab Kitchen, in which the pair taste-test different varieties of instant noodles. Alongside these, which tend to rotate in and out with each episode, the pair also often go on real-life "walkabout" episodes, where they decide to follow a walking tour on a route that falls outside of the usual "tourist" spots in London, and perhaps learn something along the way.

CheapShow works so well because Paul and Eli have magnificent chemistry with one another, and brilliant senses of humour that will resonate well with anyone around the age of 40 or so — particularly those who enjoy a good bit of old-fashioned British toilet humour. Paul and Eli are also both thoroughly lovely chaps outside of the podcast, and they deserve your support.

That'll do for today. I hope you find some enjoyment from these — I certainly have!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 172: Things you're not allowed to pretend you were the first to think of any more

Christmas is coming, and that means yet another year of people who think they are absolutely hilarious for informing you of their sudden revelation that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Societal norms dictate that you are supposed to laugh at this, pretend you've never heard it before and explain, incredulously, that "it really is, isn't it?" or something along those lines.

As an autistic person, I have the regrettable tendency to spot patterns in everyfuckingthing, particularly human interactions. And, doubly regrettably, I find predictable patterns in human interaction oddly infuriating. One would think these patterns would make communicating with one another easier, particularly for one with the social anxiety that so often goes along with autism.

But no; somehow, I have transcended these "easy wins" of polite conversation and crossed over into the territory where I can see these mindless, predictable exchanges as being utterly meaningless, devoid of any real connection between the participants, instead just relying on quoting something other people have said a million bajillion katillion times over already.

I think my distaste from this at least partly stems from someone I knew at university who, in retrospect, was probably also autistic, as his sole contribution to conversations on numerous occasions was to repeatedly and relentlessly quote Blackadder, devoid of any context whatsoever. It wore me down so much over the course of four years that I was not able to even contemplate watching Blackadder for a good long while afterwards.

It's not just that, though, as I'm sure even a non-autistic person can understand how that would become exceedingly annoying over the course of four years. I think the thing that frustrates me more than anything is how I'm sure everyone involved in the conversation about how Lisa from Accounts "can't deal with the word 'moist'" knows that, in fact, Lisa from Accounts really has no strong feelings about the word "moist" and is instead simply parroting something she heard someone else say that she found quite amusing, perhaps in the hope that someone she likes might flirtatiously start using the word "moist" around her more, giving her ample opportunity to do that thing where people go "oh, no, stop, you big silly" and push someone away while laughing, when they actually just want to shag them.

Or something. I don't know. The very prospect of behaving like that has always annoyed me sufficiently that I never attempted to carry it through to potential shag territory.

It's the insincerity of it that bugs me, I think. It's the very worst kind of small talk; supposed "communication" that is doing nothing but fill silences, but nothing of any real substance is being discussed. People aren't actually getting to know one another or improving their relationships with one another when they have the "pineapple on pizza is weird, isn't it?" discussion; they're simply reading from the hymn sheet in a vain attempt to make themselves look Funny and Cool, because as everyone really tries to drum into you while you're growing up, Having A Good Sense of Humour is the most important character trait anyone can develop, regardless of situation.

I do not, at this point, wish to imply that I am devoid of a good sense of humour. In fact, I have a fucking excellent sense of humour, thank you very much. Well, okay, I still have pretty much the same sense of humour I did when I was 15 years old, which means I still find farts hilarious, but at least when you let out a particularly salty grunt in front of friends, family or colleagues, you're taking a bit of a risk under most circumstances. You're putting yourself out there (quite literally, in terms of gaseous emissions) and, effectively, saying "this is something I find funny" without resorting to material that Michael McIntyre might find "a bit tired".

Of course, I appreciate that there are doubtless plenty of you out there who think a rancid bottom-burp is the absolute worst thing someone can do in polite company. And that's fine, too. There are plenty of people I wouldn't (voluntarily) let off a trouser-trumpet in front of because, despite the autism, I know that it's not a good idea.

But even so. A fruity guff is something you've made yourself, rather than stolen from wherever these inane non-discussions came from in the first place. And thus, if you want to be pals with me, I'd much rather you let rip with a thunderous eggy woofter than even think about telling me how funny it is that Die Hard is "technically" a Christmas movie.

Parp.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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I let out a gigantic, unmistakable, uncontrollable fart at the self-checkout in Marks & Spencers.

This is the stock image I got for searching "fart", so this is what you get. Photo by Julissa Helmuth on Pexels.com

It really wasn't a subtle one, either. It was the kind of sphincter-rippling, slack-anused report where you know that every inch, every ounce of buttock fat was involved in producing that triumphant fanfare, and where the moment after it has occurred, you know that there is absolutely no way you're going to be able to pass it off as you knocking something over or scraping something along a floor.

There are two practical ways you can really handle a situation like this: either take ownership of the situation and have a good giggle about it with everyone around you, or simply pretend that it didn't happen, implying that anyone who did happen to hear your eruption was somehow hallucinating. I chose the latter option; I don't have nearly enough social confidence, particularly around strangers, to pull off some sort of "Good LORD! Did you hear that?!" routine around strangers, though I'm more than happy to parp thunderously in front of close friends and family.

Both responses place anyone near you in something of an awkward position, of course. If you take the former approach, then there's the unspoken expectation that those nearby will participate in your routine, congratulating you on your impersonation of a baritone brass instrument and generally agreeing that having a good old guff is the peak of humorous funtimes. This, of course, does not take into account those who find bodily functions objectionable, particularly in public, and is likely to make those people feel uncomfortable.

If you take the latter approach, meanwhile, you place the responsibility on the people around you to either comment on the situation or remain quiet. And if you heard the noise that I emitted while swinging my carrier bag full of groceries around from the self-checkout into the trolley, I suspect some people would find it quite difficult not to comment.

Thankfully, the situation resolved itself with probably the optimal outcome. The only person nearby when the incident occurred was someone else who was packing their shopping, and they either chose to remain quiet or simply didn't notice. There certainly wasn't any sort of reaction, so if it's the former I applaud them for their self-control; by the time I was out in the car park I was already in fits of giggles. I hope that when they meet up with their friends later, they enjoy telling the story about the fat man next to them in Marks & Spencer who let rip with a humdinger of a bottom burp without shame while finishing their shopping trip.

I mean it when I say it was uncontrollable, though; it was the sort of guff that doesn't so much sneak up on you as it is suddenly present, without warning. There was no noticeable brewing time, no bubbling in the gut, no time to prepare — it was simply a case of me apparently moving in the wrong direction and releasing the explosion that had clearly been biding its time in my arse, trapped in a sweaty, fleshy prison, for quite a while.

I am pleased to report, however, that I did not "follow through", as the vernacular has it. It was simply an extremely loud, explosive trump that was gone almost as soon as it arrived. And now I am home I can have a good laugh about it without worrying about funny looks from strangers. Except for all the strangers I've told about it on the Internet with this post.

Oh well. I can't see your faces.

1703: Beans, Beans, Beans

I've never really felt like all those pieces of conventional wisdom regarding certain foods and drinks actually have the intended effect on me — at least not until the last few years or so. I'm not sure if they're actually having more of an effect on me as I get older, or if I'm simply more conscious of the effect they're having on me. Either way, I'm starting to notice that some of the things regarding food and drink I've long had a certain degree of doubt over are perhaps a little more true than I thought.

Take coffee, for example. Now, my past resilience to caffeine — I've long been able to drink a cup of joe in the evening and not have it affect my sleep patterns, though this is perhaps due to the fact that my sleep patterns are already somewhat questionable — can perhaps be attributed to the sheer amount of the stuff I've put into my body on a regular basis ever since I was quite young. Coffee is seen by some as a "grown-up drink" — perhaps because of its bitterness, and the fact that, without milk, it's an acquired taste — but I've been drinking it in various forms for as long as I can remember. Okay, for the first few years of my life it was milky Nescafé, but as soon as the world discovered fancy, expensive coffees I was right there with everyone — though I must confess I don't go as far as some people, largely because I have no idea what a "wet latte" is.

Anyway. The fact is, I've always drunk a lot of coffee — and buying a nice coffee machine a while back certainly didn't help me cut back, not that I particularly wanted to. As such, my body has apparently grown somewhat accustomed to caffeine, and thus a simple coffee never felt like it had a huge amount of effect on me. Sure, if I drank too many coffees and Red Bulls in a day, I'd get the shakes and feel a bit sick — as bad a feeling as any hangover, that, let me tell you — but for the most part, I never felt like caffeine made me any more "alert" or gave me a buzz as legend had it that it was supposed to.

Recently, however, I've cut back on coffee somewhat, largely due to the fact that it costs money to go and get a decent coffee at work (I could take instant, but, frankly, I'm a snob about coffee now and find that most instant — with the possible exception of Nescafé Azera, which is actually pretty good — tastes like crap) and thus I drink far less on any given day. And, as a result, I feel like caffeine is having more of an effect on me. I know a morning coffee certainly feels like it helps — and if I need to pep up a bit in the afternoon, another cup feels like it helps too. It's possibly psychosomatic, of course — which is what I've long suspected when it comes to caffeine — but, well, it's working for me.

An area where I have less doubt is in the matter of baked beans. Now, those of you with fond memories of the schoolyard will doubtless remember the short piece of juvenile poetry that taught everyone that while beans were indeed good for one's heart, they had a habit of also afflicting one with a certain degree of flatulence.

I've never really actually considered this to be true, despite the popular perception of eating beans being akin to allowing a Northern mining town free rein to hold brass band rehearsals somewhere within the cavernous expanse of your rectum. However, once again, just recently I have discovered that there may, in fact, be a degree more truth in this piece of popular wisdom than I had initially anticipated.

I had a jacket potato for lunch the other day, you see. My workplace canteen boasts some of the largest baked potatoes I've ever seen, and they're cooked nicely so that there's a bit of crispiness to the skin while they remain fluffy and not dried out within. There are few fillings available for said baked potatoes, but one of them is the old staple baked beans, optionally with the addition of cheese. I indulged in this classic combination, then went back to work in the afternoon. Upon reaching the end of the day, I found myself feeling a little bloated, but thought little of it and walked the 15-minute walk back to my car.

Upon reaching my car and sitting down inside, it happened: an attack of flatulence that bore an uncanny resemblance to distant — but rapidly approaching — rolling thunder. Starting subtly but quickly building in a crescendo of gaseous overtones, the entire affair lasted a good ten seconds or so, after which the feeling of being somewhat bloated had magically passed. It took another ten minutes for me to stop laughing enough to be able to drive off safely.

Naturally, upon discovering that the canteen's particular brand of baked beans had such a dramatic impact on me, I had to try again. And so it was that today I indulged in another gigantic jacket potato with beans and cheese — and a jelly for afters, because who can resist a jelly? — and so it was that once again, upon returning to my vehicle after a long day staring at my computer screen, I erupted in a cacophony of full-bodied guffs that I can hardly deny were extremely satisfying to release. I was even a bit sorry that no-one was around to hear them.

So yeah. Beans, beans, good for your heart; beans, beans really do… you know.

1056: More Things I Thought Were True, But Aren't

[I have written twelve articles of between 500 and 1,000 words each today so I am too tired to do a comic strip. They'll be back tomorrow.]

A long while back, while I was in my faintly delirious "holy shit my life has just fallen apart, I need to distract myself in any way possible" phase, I composed a series of fever-dream blog posts that I have a feeling might have actually been relatively amusing. (Or at least I found them amusing. Your mileage may, as always, vary.) One of these posts was Things I Thought Were True, But Aren't, in which I explored a selection of things that I had ingrained into my brain for various reasons — either I'd overheard my family or friends say them and gullibly believed them, or I'd simply never seen anything to prove my opinion wrong.

So, in the spirit of that original post from way back when, here are some more Things I Thought Were True, But Aren't.

1. Taking a drink into the bathroom is forbidden.

You just can't do it. You shouldn't do it. I never questioned why this was — I believe the somewhat vague explanation of it being "unhygienic" may have been bandied around at some point — but over time I just sort of gradually grew to make up reasons why people didn't take drinks into the bathroom, unless they were attending a house party, in which case everyone must take their drinks into the bathroom.

My favourite explanation of why you shouldn't take drinks into the bathroom is because of all the "poo particles" floating around in the air as a result of whoever last had a dump or did a really big fart. If you take a drink — particularly a hot one — into the bathroom, then all the poo particles are naturally attracted to the drink and infect it with poo. So when you start drinking your drink that you took into the bathroom, you'll then be drinking poo. And no-one wants to drink poo. So don't do it.

2. You can make yourself dream about a thing by thinking about it really hard before you go to sleep.

I'm actually in two minds as to whether or not this one is actually true. Because certainly when you do something intense (get those thoughts out of your mind, hentai) before going to sleep, you'll often dream about it. See: playing too much Tetris/Klax/Dr. Mario before bed and consequent surreal dreams. (My favourite was the one where I met the lady who said "Klax Wave!" before every level and "Ooh!" every time you got a 4-tile Klax in Klax on the Atari Lynx, and she was like totally fit and into me and we… wait, what was I talking about again?)

For a long time, though, I was utterly convinced that lying there with your eyes shut trying to picture something really vividly would influence your dreams. Of course, it doesn't; your brain occupies itself too much with trying to picture something really vividly rather than actually attempting to shut off and get to sleep, making the whole exercise a fruitless endeavour. I've also found that as I've got older, my concentration span for lying awake trying to think of things has lessened considerably than it was when I was a teenager. This is perhaps a side-effect of the build-up of depression and anxiety over the years.

3. The first time you see something is the first time it ever happened/existed.

I genuinely believed this as a kid. The first time I got a copy of Fast Forward magazine, I thought it was the first issue. The first time I saw things on television, I thought it was the first time they'd been broadcast. Kind of silly, now that I think back on it.

This attitude did sort of perpetuate itself even after I left home, though. When a friend referred to baseball cap and tracksuit-wearing white trash as "chavs", it was the first time I'd heard that word and I thus assumed that it had originated in our social group. Of course, it transpires that the word "chav" is very much in common usage to mean exactly what we thought it meant. It must have spread around the country somehow. I wonder where it originated? I'm pretty sure it didn't originate from my friend Cat on the No. 11 bus heading to Safeway in Portswood, Southampton.

4. If you fart when you're not ready, you'll shit yourself.

I have no doubt that in certain circumstances, this may be true, but for the most part, the act of farting and the act of shitting are two distinct motions — unless, of course, you're attempting to force out the fart, which carries a significant risk of following through. Let it come naturally and you'll be safe. Probably. Right? OH GOD NOW I NEVER WANT TO FART AGAIN.

5. If you sleep on your back, you'll…

To date, I'm not entirely sure if this actually happened or if I dreamed it at some point, but I am absolutely convinced that for a sex education class at secondary school, all the boys were taken to the library while all the girls went off to talk about periods, and we watched a video of a 1950s-style very British man explaining how if you slept on your back, you'd probably spunk your pants in your sleep. He obviously didn't use that exact terminology — I forget the exact words he used, probably "nocturnal emissions" or something — but I vividly remember it. At the same time, though, I also have the strongest feeling that I might have made it up. Because it just doesn't seem very likely.

That said, I used to have a recurring dream where I was going to have sex with someone on the London Underground, but couldn't go through with it because I didn't have the sheet music for it, so… wait a minute, that doesn't really help at all.

I'm off to bed now. To sleep on my side. I have a hellish week coming up. See you on the other side, and apologies in advance for any day's entries that are just "AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH".