"But oddly, he seemed to be most obsessed with her farts. It’s a repeated theme in his letters - here’s one example"

Is it "one example", or is it the only example? I found a website with his love letters to Nora last year, and I read nothing like an "obsession" with farts. There was the occasional being-colorfully-dirty-for-the-sake-of-being-colorfully-dirty mention of farts, with the quote you cite being pretty much the only notable example, really. They are quite obviously tongue-in-cheek (so to speak!), and are quite obviously more about having fun and being saucy than tweaking out on some fetish.

This is only irritating because I've come across other websites that treat these letters as more bizarre than they actually are.

I have this annoying image in my head of stiff collared Google historians in the year 2100 interpreting my exhumed flirty Gmails too literally and not getting the point of being fucked up and pushing the limits of good taste because it is childish fun and can be arousing, even when the literal subject matter by itself is not arousing.

This story has the formula of an Onion parody:

Imply a human interest story is heart-warming by superficial narrative structure, but then don't reasonably articulate why it is heart-warming in the story, or even frame the story in a heart-warming way. Make all story details depressing, be condescending in tone, make man seem utterly defeated, resigned to a lifestyle that he easily has the talent and resources to rise above, and disingenuously optimistic, rather than hopeful or inspiring (contrast this with Pursuit of Happyness, where Will Smith's similarly disgraced character actually does overcome a surprise avalanche of midlife misfortunes using hard work, ambitious optimism, and intelligence). But keep throwing in just enough genre cliches to keep the absurdly unjustified "heart-warming" premise tethered: "The actor Tom Hanks has plans to produce and star in the film version."

Of course he does!!

"These days, when the divorced father of five is not whipping up a caramel macchiato or perfecting his latte foam, he's sweeping floors and scrubbing toilets.

"I still have trouble with some of the drinks," he admits, "but I'm a good cleaner.... I can make a toilet shine like a Ferrari."

If life continues on an upswing for Gill, he may one day be able to purchase a Ferrari."

WOW, AFTER LOSING HIS FAMILY AND HIGH STATUS JOB, HE SOMEHOW, AS IF BY DIVINE MIRACLE, MANAGED TO DEFY ALL ODDS AND GET A LOW STATUS MINIMUM WAGE JOB!!!!

Simpson's quote time:

Kent Brockman: And from our 'It's Funny When It Happens To Them' file, remember millionaire C. Montgomery Burns? The man who blocked out our sun, ran over a local boy, and stole Christmas from 1981 to 1985? Well guess who's flat broke and picking up trash for a living? Excuse me, Mr. Burns. Now that you're completely ruined, how do you feel?

Mr. Burns: Excellent! I'm on my way back to the top! I've turned these cans into can-do!

Kent: Well, you smell terrible! Good luck to you, sir!

93%, but not because of logic, but because I was reading and answering very quickly.

Misread 'should' as 'could' on the horse question. The murder and water questions are intuitive if you know that they are distinguishing induction from deduction.

I'm sorry but I'm sure we can all agree that feline stupidity is only amusing when it appears to result in a concussion or paralysis.

A frame-by-frame analysis reveals that the cat's entire head briefly disappeared inside the mirror, and entered the 26th dimension.

It's a sasumata, a Japanese police pole.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasumata

The Sun has a picture slideshow

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/woman/real_life/article1922302.ece

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01111/kor2_1111849c.jpg

Those production values look ridiculously high for such a one-note gag premise intended for the Internet. Who paid for that? How did they make money off it?

The "Axis of Evil" can't even Photoshop a picture without signaling utter incompetence, and I'm supposed to be worried about their military capabilities?

What, are they going to make a nuke out of Windex and wrapping paper tubes?

0.222
0.106
0.23
0.205
0.096

= 0.171

Aaarghh! Ok, well, just open your souls and try and imagine the glorious new number in the previous comment as if the brown-shirted commie-nazi islamo-fascists at Neatorama actually allowed the superscript tag.

OMERGAH!,

I just discovered the largest number that ever did be discovered:

10googolgoogolgoogolgoogolgoogolgoogol

I call it a Bazooglenoodlebooglekitnkaboodleplex

Alert the media! Update Wikipedia! Oh, and I have many more discoveries to come. Nine super computers in my basement are working full time to keep multiplying that little superscript.

Now THAT'S the biggest, baddest sinkhole on Earth.

TL;DR