BUTT ENOUGH about such trivial concerns. Seagulls, indeed, what rot! Let us discuss Olympic farting contests instead. Farting contests, you say? Yes, indeed, farting contests. There were several farting events in the 1912 Olympics. There were the pairs farting, the hop, skip and fart, and a new event, the long fart. To win the long fart athletes had to stand in front of a candle and fart while the judges measured the length of the plume of fire that resulted and granted artistic points for shape and color of the flame. Serge Nikodemonovich Flatulov of Russia won the first gold medal for the long fart, but was later disqualified when the IOC discovered that he had been filling his large intestine almost to the breaking point with propane. Flatulov always denied any wrongdoing and spent years touring Russia with the gold medal he refused to return, giving demonstrations and encouraging Russian youth to take up the long fart. Flatulov’s end came in 1929 during a demonstration at the Bolshoi ballet's theater in Moscow, when he accidentally set fire to Stalin’s mustache, a prima ballerina, two children, and half the Politburo. Comrade Flatulov was immediately taken outside and shot, whereupon the unused propane in his large intestine exploded, killing the firing squad and a stray dog. The long fart was subsequently banned in the Soviet Union as a capitalist diversion unworthy of a socialist people.