ISDP: Long, Hot Summer Edition

It’s been a hot month. Muggy and oppressive. And the thirteenth of August has rolled around again like a fat repeat customer at the cotton candy booth on the midway. That means it’s time for a new edition of I Smell Dead People, the internet’s most complete compilation of gruesome olfactory discoveries. Fair warning: ISDP is an acquired taste like cocktail olives, cilantro, and hot pickled okra. It’s not for everyone. Maybe you should go visit your FarmVille acreage and count your unicorn herd instead. But if you think you have what it takes, read on.

Our first report doesn’t count as a deceased person being discovered by olfactory means, but it is a related, and rather unusual case from Albany, Kentucky. WBKO reporter Caitlin Coffey has the story: “A bad smell coming from a cemetery in Clinton County has been causing problems in the area for at least three weeks.”

[Pastor Larry] Jones and his wife have been battling an odor emanating from a mausoleum at the Central Grove Cemetery in Albany, Kentucky.

The problem?

Shirley Lovelace, 59, passed away a little over a month ago and was buried in an above ground tomb without being embalmed. Also, according to Jones, she was only placed in a body bag. (. . .) Jones says he has contacted the funeral home, the coroner’s office, and multiple agencies to find a solution to the problem.

“We wound up talking to the Attorney General’s Office, and they said there is no law against this type of burial in Kentucky,” he says, “But what people don’t realize is these tombs have vents on them and the odor is horrific.”

The funeral home says they followed all rules and regulations and even double checked with the state board before burying Lovelace.

According to Jones, the smell “can only be described as a dead animal but much worse.”

A woman’s body was found in Louis Armstrong Park on Basin Street in New Orleans last Thursday morning, when a person walking a dog “noticed a foul smell” and went to investigate. Police believe the body was that of a homeless person.

There has been a rash of DBs discovered in cars and trucks this year. This month brings another vehicular incident involving, like several previous ones, a Walmart parking lot. The location is Springfield, Missouri, where “a Walmart shopper noticed an overwhelming foul smell” coming from a red Ford Focus. The deceased was a 45-year-old woman.

Police tell KSPR News the woman’s car had the keys in the ignition, but the battery was dead. Officials suspected the car had been running when the battery died.

According to officials on the scene, no obvious signs of foul play were detected, however the investigation is ongoing. An autopsy is scheduled for the next week.

In Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, on July 15:

police removed a decomposing body that was discovered in the trunk of a car in the Trinity Lutheran Church parking lot.

Shortly before, someone reported an abandoned vehicle that had a foul odor coming from it.

The body is thought to be that of a woman whose family reported her missing a week earlier. Police do not suspect foul play; people living in cars are known to sleep in the trunk and this one was equipped with an emergency latch.

Our vehicular theme continues with this succinct headline: “Body, wrapped in blanket, found in a minivan.”

Detectives on Monday were investigating the discovery of the body of a 23-year-old man inside a minivan in South Philadelphia.

Police were called to 10th and Jackson Streets at 5:23 a.m. Sunday on a report of a foul odor emanating from a green 2000 Mazda MPV minivan. In the backseat, they found a man’s body, wrapped in a blanket.

Our vehicular theme takes us next to Florida, which continues to live up to its top ranking as an ISDP state:

Police are investigating a body found in car in Winter Park. Residents at the Tranquil Terrace Apartments called police after noticing a foul odor near an area of the parking lot. When investigators arrived, they tracked the odor to a car.

The death is considered suspicious by local detectives. Another story identifies the deceased as a 29-year-old woman.

Here’s another one from Florida:

The Escambia County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a death at a Pensacola Beach residence reported this weekend.

At about 11 a.m. Saturday, deputies responded to a report of a foul odor coming from a unit at Starboard Village condominiums on Fort Pickens Road on Pensacola Beach.

Inside the condo, deputies found a woman’s body in a state of decomposition.

And yet another in Florida, with an odd twist: the body was that of a man who had locked himself inside a shed.

Deputies think that after a man got kicked out of a home near West Melbourne, he found shelter in a neighbor’s backyard shed, locked it and died.

After noticing a foul smell about 8 p.m. Monday, area residents found human remains behind a home at 48 Paul Rene Drive.

It’s a long, sad, story, enlivened by a bit of local color from Lt. Bruce Barnett of the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office:

“In Florida, remains can become skeletonized in as little as two weeks,” he said. “Especially with the heat we’ve been having, it speeds up the process even more.”

Here at FirstNerve, we are interested in ISDP false alarms: since they are relatively rare it implies that when people smell the proverbial foul odor, they usually make the correct inference. From the crime blotter of Carlsbad, near San Diego:

CARLSBAD: A person reported a suspected dead body inside a storage unit on Tyler Street because of a foul odor and flies in the area. Police found that was not the case, 7:29 p.m. July 27.

Folks in Carlsbad seem to be a little on edge lately. Here’s the next item in the crime blotter:

CARLSBAD: A woman parked in a Circle K parking lot was loudly playing Alanis Morissette music, disturbing the neighborhood at 2:36 a.m. July 26. She turned down the music after police approached her.

Well, good!

In southeast Houston, Texas, a not-so-rare double ISDP: a case of mother and adult daughter. The deaths may have been heat-related as the house lacked a working air conditioner. Here’s a piquant detail:

A pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses reported a foul odor emanating from that home in the 5800 block of Ardmore Street on Aug. 6.

Houston Police and fire department officials arrived to find the bodies around 11 a.m., according to an HPD statement.

On reflection, it’s remarkable that Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t discover a lot more such cases.

And finally, from Winthrop, Massachusetts:

Police are investigating the discovery of a body found under the porch of a Winthrop home

Authorities say they found the decomposing body on Tuesday afternoon after receiving reports from neighbors about a foul odor.

Vanishing American Smellscapes: The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Riverdale’s Stella D’oro cookie factory, which infused its Bronx neighborhood with the scent of vanilla for decades, is set to be sold to developers who will raze the site and build a shopping center.

According to the Wall Street Journal’s Dawn Wotapka, the plant

became a symbol of the Bronx’s loss of relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs. The bakery operation ended about two years ago after a lengthy strike, putting about 150 employees—some earning more than $20 an hour—out of work.

Family Feud: Gilbert vs. Vosshall on Human Sex Pheromones

Here’s a video snippet of the World Science Festival smell panel in which Prof. Leslie Vosshall and I argue about human sex pheromones. I say the original concept has been stretched to fit so many variant results that it’s no longer useful. Leslie thinks otherwise.


P.S. Earlier in the program, Leslie mentioned this study showing that lap dancers make better tips during the ovulatory phase of their cycle. I agree this might be due to an airborne chemical signal but I don’t think it qualifies as a pheromone (unless tossing $5 bills at a naked girl is a behavior hardwired by evolution). Thus my otherwise baffling line: “I believe in strippers.”

P.P.S.Well, okay, maybe not that baffling.

Social Media Company Buys Itself a “Pheromone”

Somehow, I missed this press release back on May 17th:

CrowdGather Partners with Human Pheromone Sciences to Launch “Made for Social Media” Patent Pending Attraction Fragrance

CrowdGather, Inc. is a company attempting to create new value in the social media market by bundling together fan forums which, in the age of FaceBook, are considered a rather old-fashioned form of social media. Human Pheromone Sciences, Inc. has patented mood-enhancing compounds for use in perfumes and colognes, and licenses the molecules to companies such as Victoria’s Secret and Avon.

The headline was justified by this portion of the press release:

CrowdGather will partner with Human Pheromone Sciences to launch and distribute Erox®, a unisex fragrance, which has been proven to increase feelings of arousal, excitement, social warmth and friendliness in both female and male users. The fragrance will be launched, sold and marketed through the use of social media and forum communities. Erox® will be the first commercial product to contain Human Pheromone Sciences’ patent pending ER303 compound which has been shown to increase feelings of attraction and flirtiness in both males and females during a double blind placebo controlled study.

The idea of a conglomerate of online fan-sites (PaintBall Nation being one of the cooler ones; Pocketbike Planet not so much) merchandizing a flirtiness fragrance to its socially awkward base of geeks, nerds, losers, dweebs, and tech enthusiasts generated immediate mirth at Mediaite:

This Exists: ‘Social Media Fragrance’ Oddly Does Not Smell Of Cheeto Dust And Tears.

This weekend Ad Age blogger Bob Garfield joined the mockery, suggesting that one of the prime reasons for the project was “the crippling horniness of the 70% male CrowdGather crowd.”

“Our network is a sausage fest,” [CrowdGather CEO Sanjay] Sabnani says. “There’s always conversations about picking up on the opposite sex.”

[Sausage fest?—Ed.]

Being keenly interested in the business end of the perfume blotter, and having met some of the principals of Human Pheromone Sciences, Inc. [HPSI] back in the last century when it was known as EROX Corporation, my eye was drawn to the second line of the press release:

CrowdGather (OTCBB:CRWG.ob - News) today announced that it has acquired brand assets from Human Pheromone Sciences, Inc.

Hold on! There’s a world of difference between partnering with a firm and acquiring its brand assets. Exactly what assets are we talking about?

As part of the agreement CrowdGather will acquire the Erox.com domain name and trademarks from Human Pheromone Sciences, and make a strategic investment in the company via a private placement at the time a final product is accepted by CrowdGather. Human Pheromone Sciences will design and contract out the manufacture of the fragrance for CrowdGather and its distribution partners.

Hmmmm . . . With a little digging at the SEC website I found the specifics of the deal, which was consummated the day before the press release. It smells a lot more like a creeping takeover than a “partnering.” CrowdGather will provide HPSI the grand sum of $100,000. An initial $50,000 buys CrowdGather the Erox trademark and erox.com domain name, plus product development, manufacturing and fulfillment services for a CrowdGather flirtiness fragrance. Once the fragrance is launched, CrowdGather kicks in another $50,000 to acquire restricted common stock of HPSI. (This is the strategic investment or private placement part.)

HPSI stock is currently selling over-the-counter at about 11¢ per share. At that price, Crowdgather will pick up around 454,545 shares. As of its 2010 annual report, HPSI had about 4,151,954 shares of common stock outstanding. If all goes as planned, CrowdGather will own roughly 10.9% of PHS, making it the company’s second largest shareholder after HPSI director Carson Tang and the shares he owns personally and beneficially through Renovation Global Funds, L.P. (32.8% in total).

In its annual report released in March, PHS acknowledged that it “has not had sustained profitable operations,” that it “is dependent on a few major customers,” and that “it requires additional funding to continue operations.” The situation is dire: “management believes that the Company’s existing cash resources and cash forecasted by management to be generated by operations will not be sufficient to meet working capital and capital requirements through the current year,” i.e., through 2011.

So, thanks for the additional funding and welcome aboard, Mr. Sanjay Sabnani! What sort of top note did you have in mind for Eau de Geek?

The Commerce of Fragrance: Politics Obtrudes

The current congress has re-introduced a thoroughly bad bill that seeks to over-regulate and impede the ability of American companies and individual citizens to make and sell their own perfume creations. Not surprisingly, H.R. 2359, the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011, has caused an uproar in the smelly blogosphere. Anya McCoy of the Natural Perfumers Guild has been sounding the alarm, as has Robert Tisserand, who says the bill “is over-reaching, unworkable and unnecessary.” In a post at PersonalCareTruth he gives ten cogent reasons why you should not support it.

I applaud those who are standing up to this Nanny State effort to regulate to death perfumes and cosmetics. Here at FirstNerve, I have not been shy in calling out those who want to control what you eat, where you can smoke, what you can drive, what fragrance you wear, and what you must strap onto your head when you ride a bicycle. No doubt I strike some readers as a bit cranky, but a little bit of cranky—along with eternal vigilance—is the price of freedom.

In the spirit of calling out the nannies, I took a closer look at the members of congress behind the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011. The bill was introduced by Rep. Janice Schakowsky and has twelve co-sponsors, listed below. I also provide their 2010 voting ratings as compiled by the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action. The ADA rates each member of congress from 0 to 100% based on 20 key votes. A 100% rating makes the legislator an “ADA Hero” and proudly identifies them as among the most liberal members of congress.

H.R. 2359, The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011

Sponsor
Rep. Janice Schakowsky [D, IL-9] 95%

Co-Sponsors
Rep. Tammy Baldwin [D, WI-2] 100%
Rep. Shelley Berkley [D, NV-1] 85%
Rep. Earl Blumenauer [D, OR-3] 100 %
Rep. Judy Chu [D, CA-32] 100%
Rep. Diana DeGette [D, CO-1] 95%
Rep. Barney Frank [D, MA-4] 100%
Rep. Luis Gutiérrez [D, IL-4] 90%
Rep. Barbara Lee [D, CA-9] 95%
Rep. Edward Markey [D, MA-7] 100%
Rep. James Moran [D, VA-8] 100%
Rep. D. Wasserman Schultz [D, FL-20] 90%
Rep. Lynn Woolsey [D, CA-6] 100%

So who are the nannies in this case? They are all Democrats. They are also among the most liberal or, if you prefer, the most progressive members of the House: seven of them are “ADA Heroes.”

Nannyism has a face, and it’s not the face of mean, old conservatives who want to starve poor children and de-fund cowboy poetry festivals. The face of Nannyism is the condescending smile of people who are smarter than you, who know better than you how your business should run and whether, indeed, your business deserves to keep running. The sponsors of H.R. 2359 are not just misinformed about the facts of cosmetic and fragrance safety; they are philosophically at odds with the practical concerns of small business owners, and they have an expansive view of the federal government’s role in our daily lives.

They need to be set straight.

Call the bill’s sponsors—phone numbers are at this link. Members of Congress no longer have direct email addresses; if you live in the district of one of the bill’s sponsors, send a message via the web form at this link.