As a boy, I once owned a whoopee cushion. I thought it was hilarious; my aging and extremely "proper" great aunt—God rest her soul—did not, and at one Thanksgiving dinner, she let me know. Chastened, I never used a whoopee cushion again. Nor, as the decades passed, did I think much more about the possible humor value of fake farts.
Until this week, when I came across the strange case of Alexander Paul Robertson Lewis, who has been charged with a felony in South Carolina for—and let me quote from the official police press release here—using "an Internet-acquired spray designed to imitate fecal odor."
The nanny state run amok? The criminalization of fun? Authorities who Just Can't Take A Joke?