I’ve noticed my desk area smells like spices, specifically like fresh ground black pepper.
At first I thought it was leftover perfume from the temp who worked here while I was away. Then I thought it was coming from one of my plants. Now I think maybe I’m going insane, or experiencing a quiet bout of epilepsy.
Can anyone who has been close enough to sniff me tell me if they think I smell like a spice box? Is this black pepper thing my pheromones finally making themselves obvious to my olfactory senses, or am I going loopy?
You’re not in trouble until you smell burnt toast.
I was walking down the street one evening when I actually did smell burn toast and thought a seizure was imminent — turned out to actually be the smell of burnt toast wafting out someone’s kitchen window.
But the real question is, did you cry out “Doctor Penfield! I smell burnt toast!”
Man. When I get CanCult.com online, there’s going to be a whole SECTION about the cult phenomenon that is the Canadian Heritage Minutes
I want to know what I smell like on a daily basis, not get a history lesson in Canadian brain surgery!
Aargh!
Do I smell like pepper, or what? You can tell me. I’m tough. I can handle it. So I’m spicy – there are worse things I could smell like. Just TELL ME.
ps – Chrissy, maybe you should leave burnt toast in the hallway in front of your noisy neighbor’s apartment; it’s subtle, it’s anonymous, it’s kind of funny and relatively harmless. It brings a touch of Sicilian mafia style to your protest, without requiring any equine fatalities.
I honestly can’t say I remember what you smell like (other than bellinis, but I think that *might* have been occasion-specific. Um. I hope. Dude. Don’t be a girl drink drunk, hiding in the closet at work with your blender and your coconut and little paper umbrellas…)
I promise next time I see you I will be sure to take note of your scent and report on it in great detail.
Speaking of which, when will such an opportunity arise…?
You’re spicy, I’ll give you that. But no, you do not smell like freshly ground black pepper. Happy?
I think maybe I have a unique take on the world via my nose – my Mum always jokes about me having an eerie sense of smell, but I thought that was just her poking fun.
Perhaps it’s the insidious CanCult influence, with me having read and re-read Ondaatje’s poem “The Cinnamon Peeler’s Wife” one too many times. I *always* notice what people smell like.
Perfume can throw me off, especially if it’s a signature scent, because I really get the fleeting impression that someone’s in the room with me. used to wear ‘Joop!’ and I caught a whiff of it in duty-free in the Pearson Airport as I was leaving for England and almost had a heart attack because I thought he was standing behind me. My old flame Gustavo used to wear ‘Bulgari’ and to this day when I smell it, I can see his face, remember his voice, etc.
I’m too proud of my umbrellas to hide them in the closet.
*flipping through calendar* Hmm… Chrissy time, Chrissy time… Things are looking pretty good this week, actually. We could shoot for the regular Thursday night date, or get wacky and break out of our routine, maybe seeing one another on Tuesday! or even the shiny new Friday evening!
Fridays not spent at work are a treat I’ve not enjoyed since before Christmas. I think it’s sad that my first instinct is to do laundry. *sigh* I’ve lost my party edge.
You didn’t smell like much of anything last night, but then again, my nose boogers were frozen solidlike.
Thanks to you guys and your cancult references, I now have a disturbing image of Dave Foley idly stirring a giant blue drink in a pineapple half while having brain surgery. Yar.
Bwa! He always swears that bottle of Joop! was never his, but a roomie’s. SO BUSTED.
Thanks to you guys and your cancult references, I now have a disturbing image of Dave Foley idly stirring a giant blue drink in a pineapple half while having brain surgery.
Beautiful. That’s the best realization of cancult fusion ever!
Well, there are worse things you could smell like. Freshly ground pepper isn’t so bad. I was going to post the Canadian Heritage Moment, but Chrissy beat me to it. *alas*
-caellum
Thursday is Vince-night, and Friday is Melly-time, so I’m thinking Tuesday? Iffin that’s ok with you?
What would you like to do?
Trying to… restrain myself from… mentioning… Tuesday is 7th Heaven night…
Ha-HA!
You may have better Web-fu than me, but you cannot outdraw me when it comes to Canadian Heritage Minutes. I know them all backwards and forwards. And I have the website bookmarked. I may also have purchased them on videotape – something probably previously only done by schools, and even then, very sad, underfunded schools – for my sister, for her birthday, and we actually sat down and watched all 60 in one sitting. But perhaps I’ve admitted far, far too much…
Um. I’m going to go crawl into the geek hole of shame now…
“I *always* notice what people smell like.”
Oh really…? So what do *I* smell like, eh?
P.S. You smell of Guava, with a slight hint of dutch bacon.
I loved the Canadian Heritage minutes! I wish we had something like that here so much. All the fish, and the big stone person thing, and the chinese being blown up (that’s not an endorsement folks) – they’re so cool!
Wait a minute… how would you know of the Canadian Heritage Moment? I’m not going to swallow some bogus story about how they used to air them on DenverTV when you were a kid, because let’s face it, those video clips *never* made it south of our borders. Was it used as an A/V aid in a history class you took?
…OR ARE YOU SECRETLY CANADIAN?
ps – I’ve been assured off-post that I smell more like vanilla ice cream than pepper. But you’re right, pepper is a pleasant enough scent; I rather like it, I just wish I knew why my workstation smells like it.
Wait a minute, wait one doggone minute…
ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME CANADIAN HERITAGE MOMENTS HAVE MADE IT OVERSEAS?@$?!#
This is throwing my whole world-view out of whack. Everything I have ever known or believed about my culture is a lie, if it’s possible that our little cast-off, culturally-annexed, post-colonial country has produced educational media about its history that people have watched outside of grade nine classrooms in the Greater Toronto Area.
Whoa. *shaking head vigorously*
I mean, there weren’t even any sex scenes or car chases or excessive violence. Except in the one with the Chinese being blown up – that was pretty excessively violent. And I guess the one with the Halifax Explosion was pretty gory. And, well, open brain surgery has that kind of nasty sci-fi mad scientist edge to it.
But still!
You didn’t realise this? Of course the Canadian Heritage minutes have made it overseas!! They were a cult hit of stupendous proportions in Europe, first of all in France, Belgium and Switzerland, where they were propogated on public television networks subsidised by the French government, but then they took off in the rest of Europe when Sudden Impact, a German rave conglomerate promoted interest by promulgating them as part of their audio-visual panorama, as they called it. Soon after they caught the attention of newsmakers across the continent, and then that was it, really, the cultural phenomenon had taken hold. They’re everywhere now, even used to sell holidays to Canada, Chinese food and brain surgery.
Sell outs.
Possibly I’m imagining things and Chrissy and Kate played me the video collection.
I prefer my version.
Clearly, you smell like poutine, with a high note of Strongbow, a subtle undertone of cue chalk and just a hint of insouciance.
Alas, we’ve only met in smoky bars and on freezing nights, so I’ve been at a disadvantage.
And yet you didn’t let that stop you getting it exactly right!
Uncanny…
*sigh* It never even occurred to me to make up a long labourious and bogus story about Denver airing Heritage Moments. No, Chrissy subjected me and Mary to the Dr. Penfield one. I played the clip over and over until my roommates popped in to ask me what the hell was wrong with me.
Hey, I grew up in Vermont. We’re practically Canadian, right? 🙂
-caellum
I really like how you made sure to use “u” when spelling ‘colour’ and even ‘labourious’. A subtle but surefire declaration of being Canadian at heart is the doggedly excessive use of silent vowels.
I’ve never been to Vermont, so I cannot speak to its Canadianness. There’s no doubt that I’ll make it down there one day (a friend’s parents have a lodge in the mountains that I’ve been invited to *repeatedly*).
Once I have visited your part of the world, the first thing on my to do list will be, “write Caellum and let him know how much like home this is”.
I do not! The JOOP! is definately (sadly?) mine. It’s the numerous knock-off Stetson bottles that I rightly make NO CLAIM to.
I bought the JOOP! in Victoria because I am easily-lead, and the cute girl said that’s what she bought her husband. It was 1998! What was I to do?
But now, thanks to you, I will definately smell much better:
Yes, I spell with excessive vowels as a subtle way of declaring my Canadian intentions, while still throwing off the FBI who just assume I am another American who cannot spell. Sixth grade state spelling champ, babee. I intentionally use extra u’s! Well, I guess Ijust blew that one, eh?
As for visiting my part of the world, actually, Dao and I are probably road-tripping around ye olde Canadian Coastline in May. So we will bring our world to yours.
-caellum