Primordial Soup makes Smelly Lab

If an article mentions Smelly - I read it. Here, the mention of a Smelly Lab and recent technology able to further the findings of Stanley Miller's famous 1953 experiment, his creation of primordial soup of organic molecules. New York Times article, 26 March 2011 click here

Re: hydrogen sulfide -

"It's very smelly," Hazen explained. "Just a trace of it will make your lab absolutely uninhabitable — and make you enemies up and down the hall for months."

 

An article of 27 October 2008 mentions that hydrogen sulfide, with its noticeable rotten egg smell, may actually regulate blood pressure ...  click here
... something soakers of sulfur mineral springs have long known!

Cheese Perfume

British television series Doc Martin 2004

Doc Martin/Doctor Martin Ellingham: What's that perfume?

Doctor Edith Montgomery: I can't remember the name of it, it was a gift from an infertile, and rather unattractive, couple.

Doc: It smells of cheese.

Edith: No more IVF for those two. 

IVF: in vitro fertilization

Cheese Perfume, easy to achieve: eat Cheetos and then smell your cologne/perfume.

Horse-shoe vetch
hippocrepis comosa 
has an odour like cheese click here




photo: Doc Martin
illustration: Horseshoe Vetch William Curtis 1798 The Botanical Magazine

Incense - Poetic Smoke

Gifted incense maker Nathaniel Musselman has unique offerings on his Etsy site Click here

I've tried many and hope to share them in workshops.

Part of my need in an incense is the ability to breathe well with the smoke, especially while practicing with any breath work: deep breathing, yoga, Tai Chi, meditations.

Musselman's work is superbly well-balanced, the odors divine - no cloying here; with deft touch, the burn is excellent - smoke spirals.

Knowing that traditionally, many medicines can be inhaled via smoke, I approach incense choices with these things in mind: 

Scent - do I enjoy the odor?

Physically - can I inhale it easily in the air space?

As a spiritual transportive, a room "freshener" or "cleanser" and, just for fun.

Nathaniel Musselman has whimsy, deep craft and a studious nature that serve us well via his gifts in the form of these beauties.

Transformative art ... poetic smoke.

photo: Nathaniel's Incense Lura Astor

Grapefruit & Muguet

Vedat Ozan, perfumer in Istanbul, now offers various scent accords click here.

These allow you to play not only with single notes but with accords, at a good price.

The other day, while looking for a spritz of grapefruit and unable to locate the effervescent Ananas Fizz, or Vedat's grapefruit, I found instead, Vedat's Muguet.

Over it I sprayed Pamplelune/Guerlain Aqua Allegoria, a grapefruit fantasy.

This instinct turned out to be true. 

Pamplelune, many agree, is a strange scent. For me, it has always had a scratchiness to it. There was only one fellow, I worked with in a fragrance boutique, where it really shone its colors, straight out of the bottle. On him, it is magic.

Learning long ago not to think it sacrilegious to mix fragrances, no offense to perfumers, but after all, I mix paints, and mix ingredients to create new recipes ...

This underlayering of Ozan's Muguet immediately rounds out the scratch in Pamplelune's sulphurous undertone. This blending brings up and rounds out the sparkle, soothes the sharp. It also gives me more opportunity to wear Pamplelune whereas previously I wore it only when I needed odd, or to try it on someone else's skin.

Perfumers still find Muguet/Lily of the Valley a tricky one to capture, and as with rose, you will find numerous variations-on-a-theme available for your smelling pleasure. 

photo: Grapefruit Lura Astor

When in Rome, Smell Like the Romans Do

From the 2005 television series Rome:

Ah, Victory,
smoke, sh*t,
and rotting flesh.


photo: Marcus Cyron