Obsession!
Ever notice how we work overtime on negating the best tools we were given to work with? Our sensory organs are better than the fanciest electronic gadgetry any science and technology lab can come up with, yet we constantly try to override them. Designed to alert us to danger, spur us into action and not just incidentally to put us into reproductive mode, we circumvent them at every opportunity. Can’t see that as anything but reely, reely stoopid... but I’m no Ph. D’d former drip under pressure (“expert” to you higher types).
Take smell, for instance. Oooh... wrinkled noses already? The Messrs Proctor & Gamble put the kibosh on that one, bigtime. Not that centuries- millennia- of perfumes and incense hadn’t gotten a pretty healthy start. But it was Duz & Dial that convinced us civilized folk we were not supposed to smell like folk at all. Else why would we be smart enough to invent Scope and Sure? And Arrid Extra Dry and Massengill’s “pure”- smelling douche? The “if it can, it must” rationale. (F’r the record, all brand names mentioned are Reg’d TMs... us writers have give them credit/blame every darn time).
Your more basic in-touch-with-the-earth people like Italians & Greeks, who just “let themselves go” and go on smelling like... well, humans, for God’s sake!... they obviously don’t know any better. After all, what earthly good can it do to be able to tell what every body nearby took in for lunch? And with the aid of lipstick and mustaches who needs a nose to tell you which is male, which female? On second thought, nowadays, that last part could use some help. Seriously though, if women went around over here smelling like women, like they do over there, I guess the rape rate would skyrocket. Or maybe not, since our women are supposed to be sexy-smelling only when giving off whiffs of mint, strawberry, peach and other edibles. “Edibles” is probably significant. Flowers are okay, too. But not “woman.”
Forget criminal acts, for the time being. We’re here to consider our best inborn senses, not our acquired worst nonsense. The minor nonsense we dream up is bad enough. No one can have any idea how much damage is done by women trying like crazy to keep their most female parts from smelling female. Like it’s some deadly sin to be a human female! What the hell else are we, guys? You want flowers? Go pick some and see how good your “equipment” will feel plunging into a bouquet of stickery long-stemmed roses. Make love to a bowl of real cherries, and be happy. Isn’t it insane to anyone but me, to want humans beings to be one thing, but smell, look, taste and feel like something else? There’s money to be made with illusions. That’s always the be-all and end-all of these nutty goings on. Magic tricks cost a lot to pull off. Ask any magician. You think David Copperfield’s & Doug Hemmings’ show-stoppers are really done with just a wave of the wand? To make your heart’s (or groin’s) desire smell like what it ain’t costs big bucks, too. But to get a guy to come close enough to grab, she’ll mortgage her soul. So we have. Oh boy, have we ever!
Now P & G ‘n their more upscale cohorts have our he-men on the ropes, too. Men’s cologne, perfumes & deodorants almost outsell women’s. It’s only fair, finally. But is it? Is any of it? No smell’s “bad” until the smeller is told it is and is brain- washed into believing it. Ask any mommy who’s had to de-kaka a baby who suddenly discovered how much fun the slimy stuff is to play with. She’ll tell you how quickly she can teach the tot what a “bad” smell is! A “Baad!” look on mama’s otherwise loving face, wrinkled nose held while saying “Yuck!” or “Pee-yew!” & bad-taste tongue-wags just for good measure- if the kid hasn’t already explored that far- & baby now knows a bad smell when he sniffs it. How we can expect something to be good-good when plopped in the potty, at the same time it smells bad-bad, is beyond me. Beyond any 18-month old, too, no doubt. But they’re under our control and so will “learn”... or else.
And so will we. All of us will learn that underarm sweat, garlic breath ‘n “love-juice”, despite its nickname, are bad-bad stinks. All will agree to eradicate same at every opportunity. Or else. The “else” is, of course, everybody else’s withdrawal from the rebel. If all around you are smelling like plants & you insist on being an unignorable animal you’ll lead a lonely existence. That’s made crystal clear on billboard & bench, bus & TV screen. You’re even given samples of how you ought to smell. As you shop in stores, making the fatal mistake of cutting through the perfume department, you’re attacked & sprayed. Whenever you open a magazine, you’re assailed to the point of needing a gas mask to get through a whole article. You can’t even pay your bills without getting 6 or 7 fixes of the most “IN” aromas of the moment from the envelope flaps. All non-animal, naturally.
The silliest part of all this rigmarole that’s intended to make you smell like anything but what you are, is the one exception. After doing it all... laundry soap, deodorizing soap, douche, mouthwash, etc. when it comes time to do what all us animals are made to do and meant to do- act like animals- what do you suppose most people buy to start things up? Musk! Yep, that’s right. The one smell we had all along. Nuts. Everybody’s stark, raving, nuttier’n fruitcakes. Take a whiff and see... I mean smell.
Ever notice how we work overtime on negating the best tools we were given to work with? Our sensory organs are better than the fanciest electronic gadgetry any science and technology lab can come up with, yet we constantly try to override them. Designed to alert us to danger, spur us into action and not just incidentally to put us into reproductive mode, we circumvent them at every opportunity. Can’t see that as anything but reely, reely stoopid... but I’m no Ph. D’d former drip under pressure (“expert” to you higher types).
Take smell, for instance. Oooh... wrinkled noses already? The Messrs Proctor & Gamble put the kibosh on that one, bigtime. Not that centuries- millennia- of perfumes and incense hadn’t gotten a pretty healthy start. But it was Duz & Dial that convinced us civilized folk we were not supposed to smell like folk at all. Else why would we be smart enough to invent Scope and Sure? And Arrid Extra Dry and Massengill’s “pure”- smelling douche? The “if it can, it must” rationale. (F’r the record, all brand names mentioned are Reg’d TMs... us writers have give them credit/blame every darn time).
Your more basic in-touch-with-the-earth people like Italians & Greeks, who just “let themselves go” and go on smelling like... well, humans, for God’s sake!... they obviously don’t know any better. After all, what earthly good can it do to be able to tell what every body nearby took in for lunch? And with the aid of lipstick and mustaches who needs a nose to tell you which is male, which female? On second thought, nowadays, that last part could use some help. Seriously though, if women went around over here smelling like women, like they do over there, I guess the rape rate would skyrocket. Or maybe not, since our women are supposed to be sexy-smelling only when giving off whiffs of mint, strawberry, peach and other edibles. “Edibles” is probably significant. Flowers are okay, too. But not “woman.”
Forget criminal acts, for the time being. We’re here to consider our best inborn senses, not our acquired worst nonsense. The minor nonsense we dream up is bad enough. No one can have any idea how much damage is done by women trying like crazy to keep their most female parts from smelling female. Like it’s some deadly sin to be a human female! What the hell else are we, guys? You want flowers? Go pick some and see how good your “equipment” will feel plunging into a bouquet of stickery long-stemmed roses. Make love to a bowl of real cherries, and be happy. Isn’t it insane to anyone but me, to want humans beings to be one thing, but smell, look, taste and feel like something else? There’s money to be made with illusions. That’s always the be-all and end-all of these nutty goings on. Magic tricks cost a lot to pull off. Ask any magician. You think David Copperfield’s & Doug Hemmings’ show-stoppers are really done with just a wave of the wand? To make your heart’s (or groin’s) desire smell like what it ain’t costs big bucks, too. But to get a guy to come close enough to grab, she’ll mortgage her soul. So we have. Oh boy, have we ever!
Now P & G ‘n their more upscale cohorts have our he-men on the ropes, too. Men’s cologne, perfumes & deodorants almost outsell women’s. It’s only fair, finally. But is it? Is any of it? No smell’s “bad” until the smeller is told it is and is brain- washed into believing it. Ask any mommy who’s had to de-kaka a baby who suddenly discovered how much fun the slimy stuff is to play with. She’ll tell you how quickly she can teach the tot what a “bad” smell is! A “Baad!” look on mama’s otherwise loving face, wrinkled nose held while saying “Yuck!” or “Pee-yew!” & bad-taste tongue-wags just for good measure- if the kid hasn’t already explored that far- & baby now knows a bad smell when he sniffs it. How we can expect something to be good-good when plopped in the potty, at the same time it smells bad-bad, is beyond me. Beyond any 18-month old, too, no doubt. But they’re under our control and so will “learn”... or else.
And so will we. All of us will learn that underarm sweat, garlic breath ‘n “love-juice”, despite its nickname, are bad-bad stinks. All will agree to eradicate same at every opportunity. Or else. The “else” is, of course, everybody else’s withdrawal from the rebel. If all around you are smelling like plants & you insist on being an unignorable animal you’ll lead a lonely existence. That’s made crystal clear on billboard & bench, bus & TV screen. You’re even given samples of how you ought to smell. As you shop in stores, making the fatal mistake of cutting through the perfume department, you’re attacked & sprayed. Whenever you open a magazine, you’re assailed to the point of needing a gas mask to get through a whole article. You can’t even pay your bills without getting 6 or 7 fixes of the most “IN” aromas of the moment from the envelope flaps. All non-animal, naturally.
The silliest part of all this rigmarole that’s intended to make you smell like anything but what you are, is the one exception. After doing it all... laundry soap, deodorizing soap, douche, mouthwash, etc. when it comes time to do what all us animals are made to do and meant to do- act like animals- what do you suppose most people buy to start things up? Musk! Yep, that’s right. The one smell we had all along. Nuts. Everybody’s stark, raving, nuttier’n fruitcakes. Take a whiff and see... I mean smell.