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About The Smell Survey
Sep. 1st, 2006 12:49 pmSo you might be wondering what the purpose of yesterday's smell survey was. Primarily it was to see how far off I was from the mainstream in my responses to certain distinctive smells. It appears I'm not as far off as I'd thought.
A odd quirk about me is that I sometimes "hallucinate" smells. Now and then I will smell something that simply isn't there. Other people will confirm that the smell isn't really there, and I'll know that it's my brain glitching and creating a response to absent sensory input. Some of the smells on the list are ones I've olfactorily hallucinated. I had 2 in one week this week, wherein I smelt a roasting turkey at 9:00 AM in our ovenless cube farm at work (and a thorough check around my neighboring cubes revealed no one eating turkey), and yesterday I smelled Windex where there was no Windex to be found. More frequently though the imagined smell is cat pee, and because I own 2 cats, I have to thoroughly check my clothing or ask a friend to smiff near me to make sure there isn't really any cat pee on me. There never is. It's kind of like having a song stuck in your head, but it's a smell stuck in your nose.
Other smells were on the list because I have either a strong like or dislike for it and wanted to see who else did. Skunk was one of those. I like the smell of skunk in the distance, because it carries a positive association for me. My neighborhood tends to have skunks (more some years than others), and I frequent my balcony a lot at night. Often I smell a skunk. Eventually I came to associate the smell with being at home, safe and cozy. I became aware that I liked it when on the road out of state, when a sniff of skunk at night produced a pleasent "Ahhh, home..." feeling. It was interesting to see that a good number of people aren't bothered by the smell if it's not at close range.
Fish markets, too. The initial blast of fishy odor is hard for a moment, but it carries a positive association with the good meal that will be forthcoming later.
The smell of buffalo wings makes me want to vomit, but not true for most people who answered. The thing with me and poultry is that I love white meat (the breast) but don't like the rest of the bird. I sit away from the wings when I can.
I like the smell of Windex, but anything with ammonia in it can be a cross-over to cat pee smell, so when I'm using the product it's in the luck of the dice whether I'll start "smelling" imaginary cat pee or not. Other items on the survey were just ones I was curious about.
So there's me and my tripped-out nose. I just wanted to see everybody else's take on good stinks and bad stinks.
A odd quirk about me is that I sometimes "hallucinate" smells. Now and then I will smell something that simply isn't there. Other people will confirm that the smell isn't really there, and I'll know that it's my brain glitching and creating a response to absent sensory input. Some of the smells on the list are ones I've olfactorily hallucinated. I had 2 in one week this week, wherein I smelt a roasting turkey at 9:00 AM in our ovenless cube farm at work (and a thorough check around my neighboring cubes revealed no one eating turkey), and yesterday I smelled Windex where there was no Windex to be found. More frequently though the imagined smell is cat pee, and because I own 2 cats, I have to thoroughly check my clothing or ask a friend to smiff near me to make sure there isn't really any cat pee on me. There never is. It's kind of like having a song stuck in your head, but it's a smell stuck in your nose.
Other smells were on the list because I have either a strong like or dislike for it and wanted to see who else did. Skunk was one of those. I like the smell of skunk in the distance, because it carries a positive association for me. My neighborhood tends to have skunks (more some years than others), and I frequent my balcony a lot at night. Often I smell a skunk. Eventually I came to associate the smell with being at home, safe and cozy. I became aware that I liked it when on the road out of state, when a sniff of skunk at night produced a pleasent "Ahhh, home..." feeling. It was interesting to see that a good number of people aren't bothered by the smell if it's not at close range.
Fish markets, too. The initial blast of fishy odor is hard for a moment, but it carries a positive association with the good meal that will be forthcoming later.
The smell of buffalo wings makes me want to vomit, but not true for most people who answered. The thing with me and poultry is that I love white meat (the breast) but don't like the rest of the bird. I sit away from the wings when I can.
I like the smell of Windex, but anything with ammonia in it can be a cross-over to cat pee smell, so when I'm using the product it's in the luck of the dice whether I'll start "smelling" imaginary cat pee or not. Other items on the survey were just ones I was curious about.
So there's me and my tripped-out nose. I just wanted to see everybody else's take on good stinks and bad stinks.