I am pleased to report that I farted at 3:46 PM this afternoon. The fart’s intensity was somewhere between one of those silent stinkers that people are often in denial about and one of those noisy rattlers, reminiscent of a distant motorboat, that can be heard in an adjacent room. In volume, it was perhaps a few decibels; in odor, it lingered around long enough to require a slight crack of the window. (From one crack comes another.) I presume that this afternoon’s lunch — with its plentiful egg and rice — was one of the reasons for this fart. But one does not always look for direct cause when flatulating. The ideal way to undergo this quite normal biological process is when there is nobody around. As I’ve insinuated here, this was neither the worst fart I’ve ever emitted, nor the best fart. I’m pleased to report that the fart harmed no one. It was a fart somewhere on the left of middle C, although I wasn’t paying too much attention to the precise frequency. If the fart were political, and the middle C represented a centrist way of thinking, then I’d probably style this fart as soft left. Probably the kind of fart you’d see attending a few rallies, but not hard-core enough to become a full-blown Marxist.