Just For the Smell of It

Predator Press

[LOBO]

I struggled for days with the "Smelly" meme-slash-tag from the delightful and original Nooter the Dog, "Name 5 Smells You Like and Dislike."

I did two or three drafts and didn't like any of them.

But the harder it was, the more it intrigued me. The difficulty, I finally concluded, was mostly attributable to the nature of the question: I don't really have five "likes" and "dislikes" in this particular category.

Smell for me is like how I regard the weather: the best weather is weather I can't feel. There's good weather, and then there's too hot weather, too cold weather, too rainy weather, blah blah.

Similarly, with smell there's good smell, and then there's serin gas, burning living room, freshly-baked bread probably laced with anthrax, et cetera.

-The role of smell for me has pretty much been reduced to that of an Early Warning System.

Based on this logic, I did finally come up with my one best candidate for "most disliked smell": the smell of burning nostril hair. But burning nostril hair also appears at the top of my "Most Liked" smell chart, as this smell would trigger my brain to fire all the necessary synapses required to pull my head out of the deep fryer (should that embarrassing circumstance ever occur again -melting flesh doesn't smell too good either, but it wouldn't make my top 5).

Ultimately I decided when I sat down to give the theme my own "twist": I would give my #1 topmost "dislikes" and "likes" for all the senses.


Top Sensory Likes:
This one is easy.

-They are all my wife, Terri.


Top Sensory Dislikes:
#1 Sight Dislike: Suffering

Be it human or animal, physical injuries and dead stuff give me the willies ... there's apparently a strong visual component to my level of empathy.

Remember that movie where the entire town was bustling about waiting for a giant great white shark to eat them, but then the writers used a word processor to replace the words "great white shark" with "volcano" and "Sheriff Brody" with "Pierce Brosnan" in the script -and then renamed the movie Dante's Peak? Pierce Brosnan gets a compound fracture in that movie, and it totally freaked me out. That's how utterly and helplessly squeamish I am: Pierce Brosnan getting banged up at the end of ninety minutes of full-blown big-budget Hollywood cowchip shoulda made me cheer.

To this day, if you showed me a picture of myself in that theater suffering through Dante's Peak I would totally pass out.

But speaking of cowchips ...

#1 Smell Dislike: Dairy Farms

We drove by a dairy farm twice a few weeks ago on the way to and from Morro Bay. See that I underlined 'drove by'? I did that on purpose. I wanted to point out that we were not stopping there: we were going 65 miles per hour. I also wanted to differentiate between that and a 'drive by,' which would imply Terri and I were gunning the cows down in the street while flashing Hereford gang signs.

So now that that's cleared up, on the way up to Morro Bay it was pretty bad, but not particularly bad enough to make this list.

But driving back that night it was horrendous. Seriously. Remember that scene in Total Recall when Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rachel Ticotin tumble out onto the surface of Mars without an atmosphere and their eyes get all weird and freaky? That was me 'an Terri. That thick air hit us like a wall -even with the windows rolled up- and it was all I could do not to light a match and blow us -cows and all- straight to Hell.

We should make these cheap farmers just buy their damned milk at the store just like everyone else.

#1 Touch Dislike: Velvet and Cotton

Call it a phobia or something. I'm fine with snakes, spiders, whatever ... but if there's a cotton ball in my aspirin and I can't find assistance, I'm totally screwed: something about that intemperate soft dryness makes my skin crawl.

Eweee!

#1 Sound Dislike: Terri's Ringtone

I love Terri with all my heart, but I'm not alone on this: everybody hates it. It's some chick singing "I hope you know, I hope you know that this has nothing to do with you." The song in itself isn't bad, but Terri -a person who's cell goes off constantly- has had it for a year now. Plus she's a 'Gal on the Go' and I am the exact opposite -a 'Guy On The Couch': I associate that ringtone with needing to throw some ring into Mount Doom, or visiting yet another relative that doesn't watch football.

#1 Taste Dislike: Cigarette Lit at Wrong End

Yes you Health Nazis, I smoke. In fact I compile spreadsheets of where you people live, and at night sneak into your house to smoke cigars under your newborn baby's cribs!

Ah just kidding. I just made up the part about the spreadsheets. But cigarette smokers know what I mean here. There are four stages to inhaling the wrong end of a filtered cigarette:

1) Denial: At this stage, the smoke in your lungs "feels" kinda funny. You look at your hand and confirm your worst fear: the filter is indeed lit, and the wrong end is between your fingers. "That doesn't mean anything" you tell yourself. "It's all circumstantial!" But inevitably you arrive at

2) Acceptance: For what is likely less than a second, you seemingly have an eternity of anticipating the horrible taste of whatever they make those things out of. "What is that awful taste, anyway?" you'll be thinking. "Is it fiberglass with a dash of pulverized fish bones?" Seriously. "I remember last time it tasted like a dehydrated peanut putter and sardine sandwich melting in my mouth-"

3) Bargaining: This usually takes the form of a thought like, "Maybe if I stuck a pencil through my eye, the pain would drown out the taste of it-"

4) Fruition: Boom! The taste hits, and all your friends laugh as your entire face collapses into a singularity of utter disgust. In fact, that's how they spot your dumbass backwards-lit cigarette: before you're even tasting "normal" again, you're the butt (pardon my pun) of about twelve minutes of public amusement and shaming.
In Conclusion (or "Swift and Lethal Meme-Slash-Tag Payback")
Here's the part where I'm supposed to "hand off" the tag to five other people. But for the various reasons I explained, this post took me more time than any other post this year.

With that in mind, I've decided to make this more egalitarian and fair. So consider my 'comments' a sort of a 'Do Not Call' list like the government has for telemarketers ... except it's a 'Do Not Tag' list.

-Anyone who doesn't comment remains eligible.

(Sneaky 'lil bastard, ain't I? heehee)