I had gangrene in my c section wound and that smell vacated the corridor beside my room on the postnatal ward. For 2 years I couldn't eat roast chicken because gram negative anoerbic bacteria smells just like well-seasoned rotten chicken.
A house where the fireplace is used frequently. That permeated smokiness. The earthy, mushroomy smell of a laurel thicket. Wet dog. Mothballs. Fresh leather. Jasmine and honeysuckle. New shoes. Rain on hot asphalt. White Shoulders. Freshly cut clover. Lightning. Cedar. Burning rubber. Urinal cakes. Horse sweat. Diesel fumes. Motorcycle exhaust. Old guitar cases.
Do those trigger specific memories? Those are all interesting smells but for me I didn't think it would trigger specific time and place memories. I actually can't think of anything that does.
I’ve got a bass I used on the road for about as long. I know your pain. No amount of beeswax will make that smell go away completely. I kinda like it, though.
Sure, it goes the opposite way, If I say, the smell of stale urine, the bleach that barely covers it, Brylcreem, polident, that old aqua velva that’s been evaporating in its bottle for ten years, I’m pretty sure you can pin down where we are. What does regret and resentment smell like?
Walking down the concrete concourses of Candlestick Park, (the old ballpark in San Francisco), the wind would whip and howl through the enclosed hallways and bring with it the smell of cigarette smoke. To this day, when walking up an alley or between tall building, if the funneled chill hits me in the face with that odor, it takes me back. I can't say I don't enjoy it.
Not specifically on point but as I've gotten older, certain smells such as a rancid garbage truck trigger the vomit response and I have to stop breathing and run away or risk vomiting
Recently a trainer told me that the smell of vomit prompts others to vomit because in caveman times it's likely they all would've eaten the same rancid food. Everyone vomits so everyone survives.
Nora Ephron once wrote of the black liquid that seeps from rotten potatoes. How just a few drops of that fluid fills the entire house with a choking stench. It's true! I've found that in stored potatoes, and it forever makes me wonder if that's how the Irish Potato Famine smelled.
When Ephron mentioned that scent she had me completely hooked.
The smell of horse shit on a Manhattan street takes me right back to the farm I grew up on, next to a harness-racing horse farm. The sickly-sweet smell of pig shit is an intense reminder of the neighbor that babysat (and abused) me when I was in kindergarten. Human shit makes me think of my last subway trip.
My very first time on the NYC subway, I got on a car with a homeless man who slept on the bench, and had recently shit himself. I also grew up near a horse farm.
The smell of linseed oil takes me back to the two years I spent on an arts foundation course. This was forty years ago, and yet those two years loom large in my life. I discovered I wasn’t alone in being a creative person, my mind was opened up to new ways of thinking and a curiosity about the world. We all of us had such a great time. And then my world and my life turned to shit and took a very dark turn. But linseed oil reeks of creativity and possibility.
I worked in a nickel refinery. For ten years I breathed in chlorine. Dangerous levels released into the air or saturated in the cobalt. After it closed I couldn't go swimming in a pool or walk by a fountain in a mall without gagging. Oh, and H2S, that rancid egg fart smell. You hoped for that smell. High enough concentration can dull your senses and you drop dead. You'd be sitting in the lunch room eating a sandwich with an alarm going off just outside letting you know gas levels are past the threshold level.
Thats what I reckoned, but Im no chemist. I grew up in a town called Sulphur. And I think that the chemical is spelled Sulfur, but can never keep them straight because of my old town.
During the final year of my prison sentence, I transferred to a facility for the criminally insane to work as a POA (Prisoner Observation Aid).
It was a voluntary work detail and supposedly greased the wheels for an easy parole hearing.
My job was to sit outside the cell door of a prisoner on suicide watch, document his movement every 15 minutes and alert the staff if he attempted to self harm.
The guy I was sitting on was a cutter, a biter and refused to bathe. His body was riddled with rotting flesh and open wounds. They couldn’t keep the guy clean.
The combination of his body odor and rotting flesh smelled like cumin… you know the spice used in chili, tacos, and such?
To this day the slightest whif of cumin transports me to his cell door.
The giddy smile of that sick fuck squirming in his restraints to get at his wounds.…
This makes me think of the musty, earthy smell that people get when they never bathe. Its nothing like the garlic and onions smell of sweaty armpits on a regular bather.
My great uncle never bathed. When he went into the nursing home, and got regular baths, his skin revolted. After a lifetime if no baths, every inch of the top layer of skin dried and peeled off.
When he first got there he excitedly said, "the women gives the baths here"
The first time I smelled microwave kettle corn, I said it smelled like Kmart. When I was a kid, our Kmart sold fresh (ish) popcorn and cotton candy up front, so, popcorn and sugar? Smells like Kmart.
“Smells and active verbs engage on a physical level”. There is this cologne I smell every now and then. It reminds me of so many guys I met in Vancouver that I can’t pinpoint which guy wore it. Every time I smell it, i think of rainy nights and small downtown apartments.
If I told you, you would never, ever again eat calamari.... And to Chuck, as a side note. I don't know if you have a sneaky account on any social media, but you've been very popular lately. Fans of the United Healthcare assassin have been "helping" police to identify him.... as Robert Paulson. And I just heard one creator suggest that, in light of current developments, we turn Project 2025 in Project Mayhem 2025. Thought you'd like to know!
Let me know if these work (tech savvy I am not). I highly suggest checking out the number of views/likes and the comments. Also, you could always hand-etch each bullet. Might take a while... Or you could try the guys who engrave wedding photo frames. They might enjoy a change of pace.
When it rains, my local supermarket scatters sawdust just inside the door to keep the floor from being slippery. Even though I'm in the middle of Manhattan, every time I walk in and smell that, I'm immediately back in the livestock barn at the county fair in rural Colorado that my grandparents used to take me to when I was a kid.
I had gangrene in my c section wound and that smell vacated the corridor beside my room on the postnatal ward. For 2 years I couldn't eat roast chicken because gram negative anoerbic bacteria smells just like well-seasoned rotten chicken.
But Dettol makes me hungry. Strange.
I wonxer if anyone who ate their placenta put it on the rotisserie to cook it?
Some people filet them like steaks.
oh. my. god. the horror!
thank god I didn't know this could happen back when i had to get one. two.
and thank god you lived to describe it so well!
i'm off of chicken as well now. 🥩🥩
A house where the fireplace is used frequently. That permeated smokiness. The earthy, mushroomy smell of a laurel thicket. Wet dog. Mothballs. Fresh leather. Jasmine and honeysuckle. New shoes. Rain on hot asphalt. White Shoulders. Freshly cut clover. Lightning. Cedar. Burning rubber. Urinal cakes. Horse sweat. Diesel fumes. Motorcycle exhaust. Old guitar cases.
Do those trigger specific memories? Those are all interesting smells but for me I didn't think it would trigger specific time and place memories. I actually can't think of anything that does.
Oh, definitely. I have a photographic memory, and it’s deeply attached to olfactory experiences. Sounds and tastes, as well.
Interesting
Same. I think in pictures and can 'scroll' through them for memories. Smells are often the most evocative.
Absolutely. They transport me to specific times and places in my life.
An acoustic guitar soaked with 20 years of cigarette smoke. My acoustic finally stopped smelling of cigarettes recently. Took 8 years.
I’ve got a bass I used on the road for about as long. I know your pain. No amount of beeswax will make that smell go away completely. I kinda like it, though.
I dont mind. It only smelled that way in the soundhole, because the inside is porous.
Brand new books. Gun oil. Burnt gunpowder.
I like the smell of gun oil, and axle grease.
Ooh, axle grease. Nice. And sweet, sweet WD-40.
WD40 is nice. I really love the smell of Bondo (car body filler).
What do you mean when you talk about grounding the reader in a scene? Like, getting them up-to-speed with what's going on? Getting them interested?
Like, 'locked into a scene' so that the reader can think only of this moment and nothing else.
Exactly. The reality of the scene becomes the reader's only reality.
Sure, it goes the opposite way, If I say, the smell of stale urine, the bleach that barely covers it, Brylcreem, polident, that old aqua velva that’s been evaporating in its bottle for ten years, I’m pretty sure you can pin down where we are. What does regret and resentment smell like?
Walking down the concrete concourses of Candlestick Park, (the old ballpark in San Francisco), the wind would whip and howl through the enclosed hallways and bring with it the smell of cigarette smoke. To this day, when walking up an alley or between tall building, if the funneled chill hits me in the face with that odor, it takes me back. I can't say I don't enjoy it.
Not specifically on point but as I've gotten older, certain smells such as a rancid garbage truck trigger the vomit response and I have to stop breathing and run away or risk vomiting
Recently a trainer told me that the smell of vomit prompts others to vomit because in caveman times it's likely they all would've eaten the same rancid food. Everyone vomits so everyone survives.
Rancid, wet garbage is the worst. It already smells like vomit.
Nora Ephron once wrote of the black liquid that seeps from rotten potatoes. How just a few drops of that fluid fills the entire house with a choking stench. It's true! I've found that in stored potatoes, and it forever makes me wonder if that's how the Irish Potato Famine smelled.
When Ephron mentioned that scent she had me completely hooked.
Rotten potatoes reminds me of a constantly drunk roommate, a very old bag of improperly stored potatoes, and a gnat infestation. Never again.
Did the potato crop rot? I thought something prevented them from growing?
I grew up down the hill from a landfill. When it was hot and humid, and the wind was right, the smell was everywhere.
It is gross but the thing that changed is me, I literally start gagging and have to get away or I'm going to puke in the street.
Shit.
The smell of horse shit on a Manhattan street takes me right back to the farm I grew up on, next to a harness-racing horse farm. The sickly-sweet smell of pig shit is an intense reminder of the neighbor that babysat (and abused) me when I was in kindergarten. Human shit makes me think of my last subway trip.
My very first time on the NYC subway, I got on a car with a homeless man who slept on the bench, and had recently shit himself. I also grew up near a horse farm.
The smell of linseed oil takes me back to the two years I spent on an arts foundation course. This was forty years ago, and yet those two years loom large in my life. I discovered I wasn’t alone in being a creative person, my mind was opened up to new ways of thinking and a curiosity about the world. We all of us had such a great time. And then my world and my life turned to shit and took a very dark turn. But linseed oil reeks of creativity and possibility.
I smell bullshit > That’s a lie
Is it piquant?
I worked in a nickel refinery. For ten years I breathed in chlorine. Dangerous levels released into the air or saturated in the cobalt. After it closed I couldn't go swimming in a pool or walk by a fountain in a mall without gagging. Oh, and H2S, that rancid egg fart smell. You hoped for that smell. High enough concentration can dull your senses and you drop dead. You'd be sitting in the lunch room eating a sandwich with an alarm going off just outside letting you know gas levels are past the threshold level.
Is H2S sulphur?
Hydrogen Sulfide
It's made up of 2 hydrogen and 1 Sulphur
Thats what I reckoned, but Im no chemist. I grew up in a town called Sulphur. And I think that the chemical is spelled Sulfur, but can never keep them straight because of my old town.
During the final year of my prison sentence, I transferred to a facility for the criminally insane to work as a POA (Prisoner Observation Aid).
It was a voluntary work detail and supposedly greased the wheels for an easy parole hearing.
My job was to sit outside the cell door of a prisoner on suicide watch, document his movement every 15 minutes and alert the staff if he attempted to self harm.
The guy I was sitting on was a cutter, a biter and refused to bathe. His body was riddled with rotting flesh and open wounds. They couldn’t keep the guy clean.
The combination of his body odor and rotting flesh smelled like cumin… you know the spice used in chili, tacos, and such?
To this day the slightest whif of cumin transports me to his cell door.
The giddy smile of that sick fuck squirming in his restraints to get at his wounds.…
… All of it comes flooding back
Life sucks without chilli.
Chili’s better without cumin 😉
No.
🤣
Its easy to overdo the cumin and ruin a pot
Wow!
This makes me think of the musty, earthy smell that people get when they never bathe. Its nothing like the garlic and onions smell of sweaty armpits on a regular bather.
My great uncle never bathed. When he went into the nursing home, and got regular baths, his skin revolted. After a lifetime if no baths, every inch of the top layer of skin dried and peeled off.
When he first got there he excitedly said, "the women gives the baths here"
Now we know what Unc’ was waiting for….Co-ed bathing
That's an odorific memory. Sorry you had to do time to get it.
The first time I smelled microwave kettle corn, I said it smelled like Kmart. When I was a kid, our Kmart sold fresh (ish) popcorn and cotton candy up front, so, popcorn and sugar? Smells like Kmart.
“Smells and active verbs engage on a physical level”. There is this cologne I smell every now and then. It reminds me of so many guys I met in Vancouver that I can’t pinpoint which guy wore it. Every time I smell it, i think of rainy nights and small downtown apartments.
If I told you, you would never, ever again eat calamari.... And to Chuck, as a side note. I don't know if you have a sneaky account on any social media, but you've been very popular lately. Fans of the United Healthcare assassin have been "helping" police to identify him.... as Robert Paulson. And I just heard one creator suggest that, in light of current developments, we turn Project 2025 in Project Mayhem 2025. Thought you'd like to know!
Are you serious? Can you send a link or something?
Where do you go to get the title of your book engraved on bullets? THAT was some guerilla marketing, dude.
You load your own marketing ammo
This has some of the social media highlights.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14164727/united-healthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-assassin-support.html
Ironically, Robert Paulson is a recruiter for United Health.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-paulson-6a97831/
Let me know if these work (tech savvy I am not). I highly suggest checking out the number of views/likes and the comments. Also, you could always hand-etch each bullet. Might take a while... Or you could try the guys who engrave wedding photo frames. They might enjoy a change of pace.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY5uUDE7/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY5udbbC/
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTY5u8VPA/
Thank you! Sitting here by the fire with the dog. Now waiting for the FBI. I hope they send Clarice Starling.
Geez, and you're right about the Likes and Comments.
I hope that it brought you some holiday cheer! Maybe Christmas really doesn't come from a store.
https://nypost.com/2024/12/07/us-news/new-yorkers-celebrate-assassination-of-unitedhealthcare-ceo-with-shooter-look-a-like-contest/
When it rains, my local supermarket scatters sawdust just inside the door to keep the floor from being slippery. Even though I'm in the middle of Manhattan, every time I walk in and smell that, I'm immediately back in the livestock barn at the county fair in rural Colorado that my grandparents used to take me to when I was a kid.