Scent
There are some common bad smells that turn my stomach. It’s a slow day on the blog so here is my list:
Microwave popcorn
Patchouli
An electrical ballast that is burning out
Cat urine
Cars that have had big dogs in them over a period of time
Urinal cakes (but I guess it is better than a world without them.)
Feet
Cooking cabbage
Pig shit
Pine-sol
My favorite smells:
Cookies baking
Cinnamon
The combination of wood smoke and horse shit together.
The ocean (sometimes)
Mimeograph copies (only we old folks remember that one.)
A bicycle shops
A freshly cut tree
Lumber yards
Cedar shavings
Coffee
posted by The Guy Who Writes This at 5:24 AM
24 Comments:
Ha ha - I remember the mimeograph copy smell. The purle-blue ink that you would instinctively hold to your nose and sniff the minute your test got passed to you.....
If you were really luck they were still damp.
Ugh... I agree with you on the microwave popcorn. Every now and again someone makes some in our building and that smell takes days to go away.
I used to love that mimeograph smell too. My first year of grad school I was funded through the education division, and had to work at a media center. My primary job was running a mimeograph machine. It's no longer a smell I feel fondly about.
I love pine-sol. Old Spice has to be near the top--it's a familiar, comforting smell. I'm a fan of "fresh showered boy" too, as opposed to one of my least favorite scents, "boy who has been dancing for three hours and just dripped sweat all over me."
I love seafood, but I hate the smell of it after someone at work has heated it up in the microwave for lunch. The smell permeates through the office.
Auntie, yes the wet ones were like catnip to people.
Trop, popcorn in an office is worse than farts. As for the overdose, bummer, but then it is a smell you'll probably never smell again.
Eeew, you like pine sol? That smell tells me that there is some industrial dirt that needed to be cleaned and disinfected...run for your life.
Jeff, I'm with you on this. It's almost like a combo of (oddly) all the things on the list put into one. Damn, it is bad.
A freshly cut tree
Lumber yards
Cedar shaving
I will go along with these as long as the tree is not hemlock. Cedar has a wonderful oder but I have to admit that as good as our western red smells, Tennessee red cedar takes the cake.
Sometimes I keep a half pound of french roast coffee in my car as an air freshener.
While we are on the subject of smells I might as well mention this ancient ozone generator I picked up at a garage sale recently. It's a 2 piece job and has about 8 glass tubes on the top. Plug it in and they light up 4 blue 4 red and they're all crackling like bacon in a skillet. The fellows dad had owned a seafood market and every now and then when things got a little gamey they'd plug it in and soon the room smelled like a thunder storm had passed through.
No, Pine Sol means the dirt is gone. It means clean and fresh to me. I also like the smell of 409.
Hey, Anon, we have one of those built into our heating system at home. It is really cool.
Jaggy, you are so strange.
Good ones for me are-the smell coming off freshly mowed grass close to the beach on warm day-not the fancy kind of imported grass, but the old coarse native grasses-it's a thick almost sweet smell that lingers over yards-the smell that comes out when popping open a bale of good alfalfa-it makes you want to eat some yourself.....and the smell of freshly caught Chinook (not Silvers) Salmon at sea after they've been gutted and washed on a cloudy or foggy evening. One or two fish don't have it, but 4,5, 6 up sure do. Hard to describe it- but, it isn't "fishy" and it doesnt last long-After a couple of hours it changes to something else entirely...
Wont even get into the bad ones-some are worse than others-one is the worst of all, and we all know what it is-and if you dont know, consider yourself lucky in this life for it.
"Jaggy, you are so strange."
Agreed, but have learned that she is a young girl, and,...well...they live in a different world than the rest of us.
more good smells:
-burning pig (bacon, crispy)
-grass - all kinds cut and not
-London on a foggy day
-hay and horse grain
-earlgrey tea
-orange peel
-lilacs
Pam, mix lime and cocoanut. It's good.
Other, a bale of alfalfa smells like sticking your nose into a bag of pot. Damn, I miss those days.
Define "young girl." I've cleaned houses semi-professionally, and the smell of pine-sol means a job well-done. I didn't say anyone was wrong for liking the smells they liked... what makes me wrong for liking something else?
who said you were "wrong"?
In matters of peronal taste you like what you like-there's no right or wrong about it
My favorite smells:
A freshly-opened bar of Irish Spring soap.
Fireworks after they've gone off. Heck, any gunpowder after it's gone off.
Hoppes cleaning fluid.
The hint of a Bar-B-Q from a few blocks away.
The smell of approaching snow.
My least favorite smell:
Dog fart
Jaggy ... Old Spice. Reminds me of a tale. My cousin (when just starting to shave) once asked my dad what aftershave he used, and my dad told him "old spice". My cousin made some comment about seeing it at the store, and my dad said "no, not that. just old spices from the spice rack. I mix my own." A few days later, my cousin was caught stealing spices from his mom's spice rack, to make his own aftershave. I think that was the funniest story anybody shared at my dad's funeral. Dad had a weird sense of humor.
Jaggy, don't feel like you are being put down. Afterall my favorite scent is horse shit and wood smoke together.
Great story, Walt.
My top 10:
fresh cut grass
the ocean
cilantro
oil paints & mineral spirits
burn pile / wood smoke
baking bread
tomato plants
just turned dirt
coffee
the sweet smell of fresh fruit
-db
I actually find most smells evoke good memories, even horse shit, which I spent hours every day cleaning up on the farm growing up. I got to be in charge of cleaning the stalls of 3 giant work horse shit factories. Baking bread is a wonderfull smell, right up there with salty sea air. And no, most excrement does NOT evoke good memories:)
Mike, there is just something special about hores shit, isn't there. No other animal crap is quite like it.
Theater popcorn (nothin' beats it)
New dollar bills
My children's heads after a fresh shampoo
Gardenias
Fresh mown grass
Freshly sawed wood
New car
The ocean
Out of all of the poop out there, the horse has the best. My cat has the worst. Trust me.
Yes, cat is bad, but pig is much worse.
New Car
The Ocean
New Car? Good!
Ocean? Good!
New Car In The Ocean? Bad!!
I also did a post on smell awhile back. Check it out if you're interested.
http://musingsfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com/2007/02/smell.html
I had forgotten about how bad pig shit smells. It's been many years, but yes it is terrible. My folks bought a farm years ago that had once been a pig farm. Even though the place has been vacant for a long time, it still reeked. It took my Dad a long time to disipate that smell and make it smell like, hay and alfalfa and cattle. I'm with the girl who likes Pine-Sol. I think it smells clean. I always use it on my kitchen floor. I love the smell of orange blossoms and lemon trees. I had them in back yard once and they were wonderful!
I yield to the Pine-Sol people.
I'll check it out, Lucy's Mom (I had a hores named Lucy. Remarkable animal...
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