Ass Smoking
This guided tour is a little different. It’s about a thread I posted, and it’s a thread that got deleted from the site (though thankfully the way post deletions work on MetaFilter is that the post is still around at the old URL). I totally understand why it was deleted, but I still think it’s a cool story.
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My ass smoking post started with a idle thought by a friend of mine: “If you smoked a cigar with your butt would you get colon cancer?”
I pondered. “Yes, if you smoked enough.”
“If you had a three pack a day butt smoking habit.”
“But from just one, no, right? I’m going to ask IRC.”
And I did, and it was in the channel for the Metafilter TF2 group. No one had an answer, but it cracked a few people up. One of the guys there said it was totally AskMetafiler worthy, which lead me down the dark path toward this post:
If you smoked a cigar with your butt would you get colon cancer?
It was a weird question a friend of mine had and now I just have to know.
I assume that if you get into a cigar a day butt smoking habit you’ll get cancer of some sort eventually. But would it be colon? And can you really smoke a cigar in your ass, and if you did would you have to inhale? Can you inhale with your butt? And if you could, would the smoke or other carcinogens get to your colon?
I assume we’ll never know because I don’t think anyone will get in the habit of butt smoking, but please help me settle this bet.
I wrote this post out and just stared at it. I didn’t hesitate because I thought it was going to get deleted. I was more scared that I’d become known as the ass smoking guy. Reputation means something on MetaFilter, though really I think that most users would be cool about it.
Despite my reservations, I went ahead and posted it. The first comment (which was deleted) asked if I was posting while drunk. I actually wasn’t drunk when I wrote this but I decided that pouring a little rum into my Coke was probably a good idea. The alcohol made the little star that ignited inside of me each time my question was favored burn just a little bit brighter.
Though I only got 16 answers in the end, there was some interesting stuff put in there. I marked this one by ohshenandoah “best answer” despite the deletion. Good answers deserve a little reward.
lining of mouth = mucous membranes
lining of butthole = mucous membranes
seems like cigar smoke would trigger the same irritation and ulceration in mouth or butthole. Plenty of people take medicine as suppositories, the drugs absorb quickly. As a nicotine delivery system, you could catch a buzz. Finally, I read as a child regarding a yogi practitioner. He could lie in a bathtub full of water and suck the water thru his anus into his intestines. With a few years of training, you could learn to inhale and exhale cigar smoke. (#)
This one by TedW is especially cool for bringing up Le Petomane, so he gets a best answer too.
One cigar would probably not do it, but repeated exposure to the carcinogens in smoke certainly could cause cancer. The first reported link between occupational exposure to chemicals and cancer was made by Sir Percival Pott, who noted that chimney sweeps had high rates of scrotal cancer due to exposure to soot. As to the mechanics of smoking via the anus, Joseph Pujols, AKA Le Petomane, did it as part of his act, so it is possible. (#)
And then there’s crapmatic messing around.
You know, back in 1979 I never thought one day that I’d be on some global computer network answering a question about smoking a cigar through one’s butt. I can only wonder what wonders 2039 holds, and that makes me a little bit excited about the future. (#)
Who knows what kind of weirdness would have been posed had the thread continued?
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At this point in my original post about this subject I used this moment to say that I thought that the deletion was bullshit. I’m now a little more used to Metafilter and I see that the deletion was probably for the best. AskMetafilter gets it’s use from the fact that so many people browse the front page looking for questions to answer, and the more it fills with questions that could put people off the less useful it is, and in a case like this where getting an answer to this question wasn’t hugely important it was worth getting rid of.
So, R.I.P. ass smoking AskMe, we hardly knew ye.
Anyway, did you guys like this more personal story? If you have a story about something that you posted to MetaFilter go ahead and submit it.
