Farting is such sweet sorrow

“DON’T terrorize me again. Not these days when methane farts off Glorietta and Gloria.”

Thus I farted off a few pesos worth of text messages like that after my son sent a P20 load to my mobile phone. The load expires in 2 days—it takes me more than three weeks to fidget and fiddle a P30 load off an idled mobile phone that takes after Samuel Butler. “To do great work a man must be very idle and very industrious.”

Blame not this sucker for a quote on quietude: “Don’t speak unless you can improve the silence.” Besides, suction slurps louder than words.

I don’t have to explain to folks I plied that two-sentence note to that methane buildup stems from corruption and rotten organic discards. If the gas buildup isn’t confined in a structure of sound integrity, lots of gas—and guise like lame excuses and news releases—are issued off. Such bouts of oral flatulence can be nauseous.

The guys I sent that message to don’t have to be told in length that suspicions are rife over the methane buildup in either Glorietta or Gloria—just keep an open ear and nostrils that can hear and smell where flatulence bursts out.

Flatulence need not sully the air. It ought to be kept in chambers that can withstand tremendous pressure—mostly internal. Why, methane has the same chemical makeup of propane, butane, and acetylene. It’s a tenable combination of carbon and hydrogen, burns off as carbon dioxide and water. It is earth-friendly clean fuel, harnessed and tabbed with a technical term—CNG or compressed natural gas, a bit denser than LPG. Flatulence can be piped into suitable storage tanks, fed to engines that can run transport vehicles or plant turbines.

If memory serves right, ‘twas Yen Makabenta who retrieved “methinks” out of Andrew Lang’s fairy tales, plied it out to spice his ruminations on politics. Here comes an erstwhile beer buddy from those same parts, one who must have thought LPG can be made to stand in lieu of LPP—that bloke spouted off, methinks, a gush of methane.

That he did after reportedly doling out P500,000 each to a few dozen top provincial honchos and around 190 benchwarmers in the so-called Lower Chamber. Now, methane reservoirs also go by such a name. Chamber. We haven’t figured out if that chamber has built up significant volumes of methane. Or flatulence that can be siphoned off or piped out as, well, explosive gas.

So most of those benchwarmers hailed from a so-called Gas Chamber. They do farting shots there, farting is such sweet sorrow.

I’d say that wasn’t gas. ‘Twas grease.

And wasn’t Grease a Broadway musical with a score of boring songs that benchwarmers and provincial top dogs can sing bow-wow-wow and dance something like Itaktak Mo to?

Such sumptuous sums as P500,000 each can be dealt like cards. By, of course, cards.

Deal ‘em cards as a has-Ben Evardone does, we’ll take the cards. We’ll not take to the game.