Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Quick Sniffs

[photo by Rodrigo Argenton]

If you’re a weenie who wears a bicycle helmet then this may strike you as a good idea.

Once the ginkgophobes in your town have annihilated all the female trees, you could suggest they plant these.

Here's a story that combines two of my favorite topics: perfume and animal behavior.

Feel ripped off the twelve blank (but scented) pages in the recent Mono.Kultur? Then try the new issue of Sactown—it has content plus orange flavor!

7 comments:

ScentScelf said...

Weenie here.*

When I first heard about the helmet that warns you it has been compromised, I thought it was brilliant. Still do.

Among other reasons:
1) Cyclists know well that a solid hit makes a helmet no longer functional for its intended purpose (protecting your grey matter), but a clear indication of when such a breach has occured was never available.

2) A friend was in a collision (struck by an auto, actually) that would have been much worse, perhaps fatal, had he not been wearing his helmet. As it was, his life since has been permanently altered, because as a result of the head injury he did sustain, he became...can you guess?...anosmic. Now leads a life where he had to give up a host of pleasures, and compensate for a host of new dangers. (Smoke? Fire? Rotten food? Can't detect 'em.)

*Actually, I'm not a weenie. Weenies aren't the ones in helmets. Weenies are the ones who wear lumpen lycra spandex gear with Italian logos in neon colors.

+ Q Perfume Blog said...

When I was taking care of my sister's cats (2) while she was traveling to NY with her husbbie, I brought home some raw materials that I got from a fragrance house.
Since I have noticed that the cats were very much interested in perfumes, I began to give them paper blotters to smell to check what they would like or dislike.
Turns out that some scents do have a special affect on them.
They love amber! They wanted to smell that all the time and even lick it!!!
They hated all citrusy notes and I think they also enjoyed opoponax very much.
I also notice that the cats HATE Narciso Rodriguez for Her, they ran to hide every time I wear it. But they loved Van Cleef's Bois d'Iris.
I watched this video some days ago and added in my fantastic article yet to be published, about perfumes and sex.
It will come out later to celebrate my blog's anniversary.

keep giving us juice, xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Avery Gilbert said...

ScentSelf:

There is simply no limit to what intrusive government nannyism will attempt to accomplish, citing health and safety as the reason to curtail individual choice and freedom. "You must wear a helmet" "You can't smoke/eat transfats/drink soda". Little plastic helmets and laws compelling their use turn us into weanies--if we permit it.

So yes, sadly, you qualify as a weanie, although at least not a garishly dressed one.

Exit questions: How are anti-fragrance-wearing regulations and ingredient restrictions not part of the same regulatory impulse? What good is an intact nose if the nannys don't leave us anything to smell?

Avery Gilbert said...

+Q Perfume:

Cats hate Narciso Rodriguez for Her? Excellent! You've discovered the long sought-after cat repellent.

I'll spray a little on my ankles the next time I go to a cat owner's home and maybe that will keep them away from me. (More subtle at least than trying to kick them when the hostess isn't looking . . .)

Looking forward to you sex post, although almost all of your posts are . . . stimulating.

ScentScelf said...

Nanny here.

Sorry, it sounded like you were calling helmet wearers weenies, not legislators. If it is the intrusion of the state upon the individual's right to do with his/her body as they see fit, so long as it doesn't harm others in the process...well then, I wish you a swell weenie roast.

I'm not garbed in spandex. Jury is out on garish. Which would, of course, be in the eye of the beholder...so long as they have been given the freedom to develop their own aesthetic based on their senses as they work for them. As intact as nature and their personal proclivities allow, natch.

As for your exit...

Head spinning a bit at the leap from the potential manufacture of a "sensitive" bike helmet which customers have the OPTION to buy to regulatory impulses, but like a cat following Obsession for Men, I've followed along your thought trail...so...

You are concerned about the sensory and moral implications of an Olfactory Prohibition Era that could be wrought from writ and law? And asking me how the impulse to regulate safety does not lead down the path to regulating what our nose can know?

In a comment box?

The CNN sound byte: I worry, too, about the rights of individuals to pursue their happiness and live lives on the edge or in a cave, as they see fit. There is, of course, the balancing of the populus vs the individual...when it comes to fragrance issues, I'm a fan of putting the ingredients on the label, and letting Jane Q. Public decide whether to proceed with a dousing of citrus/oakmoss/civet/the rinsewater of twice-worn Joe Boxers. I'm also a fan of being informed if I'm holding a bottle of original formula or another version, not for purchases of shaking my fist at the corporation, but so that I can find my favorite should I determine I have one.

But that's just dreaming.

So, my exit is just a reminder that Weenie Nanny was championing wearing a helmet so that noses and their apparatus have the best chance of smelling whatever they want to...maybe dung, at the circus or in Dzing!?

(Okay, I'm also going to point out that I enjoyed being able to use that end punctuation for the first time ever...the "!" +"?" not as a typographical expression of emotion/attitude, but as matter of fact editorial mechanics. Which means I guess I'm signing off...)

Yours,
Geek Weenie Nanny

ScentScelf said...

Actually, GWN was championing the manufacture of a helmet that would clearly let you know if what still functioning. The wearing of which was not specified as an act of self-determination or Big Brother.

Writing too early in the a.m. is ungood.

EdC said...

The big cat story is very neat. But loving OfM must be cat-specific. I tried it on my dog last night & she wanted nothing to do with it. At first sniff she flinched. When I kept encouraging her to sniff it, she came a little closer but then turned her head & moved away immediately.

Avery, do you know if there's ever been a study of smells different kinds of animals like? I assume there must have been some work to find the scents that are supposed to keep animals away, e.g., from furniture you don't want gnawed or crops you don't want chomped.

Thanks.