It’s time to hop on down the twisted and winding bunny trail and see what we’ll find by taking a wrong turn at Albuquerque. It’s Random Image Inspiration, The Nest’s Wednesday feature where we’ll draw some numbers, get a completely unexpected image, and try to write something about it so we can get a C-minus and not have to repeat third grade. I pulled the numbers and the image yesterday since I have nothing better to do this week. Let’s see those digits fresh from the Randomator…
33, 66, 15, 30
The 33rd post in my Reader was a pictorial, so I skipped to the 34th post, which was this one by Juliette
The 66th word in that post is “mini”
The 15th word in that post is “a”
Putting “mini a” into Google Images brought this up as the 30th result…
A gift set of perfume. Or parfum, if you like fancy pants talk. Just looking at that makes me want to sneeze…
Or maybe vomit as well.
Why do we live in a world where almost everyone seems to have a fatal attraction to artificial scents? Almost every woman from teenage years to just before the nursing home wears perfume, and a lot of guys, particularly those out on the prowl, like to douse themselves in cologne. Even worse is when the gentleman thinks that if he pours a half a bottle of Stetson on his unwashed body, nobody will notice their terrible B.O. The stuff just makes me sick. There’s nothing wrong with unscented, you know…
The Uncola was unscented, and even untasty.
I grew up with four younger sisters, as I’m sure my astute readers are well aware of by now. Do you have any idea how smogged up the house got with all of the gaudy scents coming from their Caboodles full of scented “smell-goods.” Add a thick layer of Aqua Net fog to the perfume stew that lingered outside my room, and it was an atmosphere 87 times more toxic than the one on Venus. I’ve had sinus drainage issues all of my life, let alone having the mucous membranes in my nose dissolved in the acidic stench of fucking Debbie Gibson perfume…
A souvenir of those days. And like an old war grenade, I sure as hell will ever pull the pin.
My luck at avoiding unnatural aromas didn’t get any better once I reached adulthood, as I inherited the laundry soap and “air care” aisles for over 15 years at Mecca. What does regular Tide, Clean Breeze and Mountain Spring scents all smell like when they waft together in the aisle you have to spend eight hours in? Instant fucking death, that’s what. And of course, there are the scented plug ins, the scented sprays, the scented wax cubes, and of course the scented candles of every possible formula from apple cinnamon to lilac cum. Some people’s houses are ticking time bombs to my sensitive nose because they are so overwhelmed with store-bought stench being piped in from every nook and cranny all in a lame attempt to cover up the fact that their cat shits in its litter box.
Look ma! I covered up that poo scented Renuzit you bought!
Forget air pollution from industry… I’ve been breathing that in for forty years and my respiratory system is doing just (cough! hack!) fine. It’s the contamination of our atmosphere from artificial scents and perfumes that we really need to EPA to address! You might rather smell a cheap imitation of pumpkin spice than the all natural odor of your teenage son’s bedroom, but I have a right to breathe clean air free from shitty smelling man-made chemicals as well! Some of us normal people really can’t hack that fragranced garbage…
Ahhhh, now that’s better! Au naturale for the win!
Edited to add: This classic comic strip of mine that perfectly fits the spirit of this post!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
Okee Dokee….well we know where you stand on that issue! One weird/unusual after effect of my year of cancer treatment some time ago was that I can’t STAND the smell of perfume – no matter what scent it is. I use unscented everything and have done so ever since. So trust me – I “get” where you’re coming from – totally.
Pam
It’s always been an allergy issue with me, making my eyes water and my nose itch. I realize now I forgot to include my rant about magazines that are loaded with smelly perfume ads! It’s hard to read with watery eyes…
I hate that too…..sometimes walking into a department store I had the same problem – they stick make-up departments right in front and they ALWAYS have “aromas” !!
Ack! I forgot to include the Buster comic I did a while back! I need to edit that in pronto!!!
It sounds, seriously, as if you need to consult a good allergist and perhaps find a medication that ‘fits’ to help you out. That won’t ‘cure’ the problem, but it might make life a little more livable? My brother is like you (sans the sensitive to stinky phenomenon – he was one of those rockin’ Stetson and whatever male scent in the day) and he says taking one pill per month (or is it shots? Blame the old-timers’ memory I’ve got) helps him survive an otherwise irritant laden world. I remember growing up and hearing him sneeze and snuffle ALL THE %#$@! TIME. Sometimes I wanted to kill him just to get a little silence. Now I suffer from a lot of allergies (I live next to two industrial areas…one of which uses spray fiberglass and other aerosols in their manufacture of counter tops. Talk about a STENCH! I thought they were a meth lab (not that I know what that smells like) the first time I caught a whiff of that horrible smell. I once worked with a woman who had a psychological aversion to all things stinky – if one cleaned one’s desk with a Clorox wipe (which, to me, smells okay); and she SAW them doing that, she’d gag and act like she was dying. I felt sorry for her until the day I saw someone cleaning and she hadn’t seen. Not a ruffle nor a snuffle. My sympathies to you though. I too have a ‘sensitive’ nose (highly sensitive) and some fragrances make me hurl (literally). Patchouli is among them. What do those people DO? Bathe in that shit?
My years in the smelly aisles at Mecca have gotten me more used to it (It beats being sneezed on by customers, which has actually happened to me before). I just don’t get the attraction to the artificial scents. I think the aerosol hair spray my sisters used to use was the literal worst thing for my allergies, and thankfully those days are long gone. Staying inside a lot keep my exposure to the perfumey stuff pretty limited now…
I’m sensitive to cheap scents, but the pricier ones don’t bother me. I couldn’t work around all those laundry detergents and Glade gel things. Those would do me in, too. But the Jo Malone counter in Nordstrom’s might be a different story…
I don’t know if anything from the Jo Malone counter is advertised often in magazines, but the ones with lots of scented ads are utterly impossible for me to read because they just smell so toxic. The swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated (not that I know from experience) is notoriously rancid smelling from so many perfume ads…
Well I’m not nearly as sensitive to all kinds of smells as you are. Although I do get very irritated when man or woman feels the need to bathe themselves in their favorite cologne/perfume, I mean what the literal fuck?!?
I get that you love that scent, but the entire world might not “love” it as much as you do so please give us a break and just don’t pour it all over you when you “think” it might make you smell better. There’s nothing like the smell of freshly washed laundry or person for that matter, it’s called soap people, plain old soap!
Nothing I hate more getting onto the elevator at work with someone that has on tons of cheap perfume, it’s just plain fucking nasty as hell. And leaves me gasping for air as I claw the doors open.
A lot of the people I encounter who are “bathed” in perfume or cologne are doing it to cover up the stench from them not bothering to take a shower in who knows how long. The perfume and the BO just combine to make you smell even worse!
I’ve got just the air freshener to cover up the scent of all those… scents. 100% natural. Chlorotetraflurohydrothalamide is 100% natural, right? Right? Smells like lavender, anyway.
I actually looked that up to see if it was a real chemical. It does look like a real chemical name… though if you want to market it, you’ll have to pick something that will fit on the package…
You’re soooo spot on. Those plug-ins are a guaranteed way to plug up one’s whole head for days.
Zombie scented, because they eat away at the brain…
The WORST thing is to wind up in the perfume sales area of ANY store. They will spray you until you smell like all the bouquets on the coffin.
I would like to see someone press assault charges upon being sprayed with perfume against their will. I’ll bet it would stick in my jurisdiction, and it might make stores think twice about handing out involuntary samples of fake fragrance…
Wait. What? That Juliette was me? I just caught that. I’m so behind on everything.
LOL! You are the only Juliette I know…. especially on WordPress! You’ve unknowingly helped me make a few of these posts now…