Smells

I'm sick to death of everything being so goddamn scented. I can't wash my hands in the restroom in my own home without ending up smelling like Strawberry Shortcake's vagina. What the hell is wrong with just smelling like soap?

I don't need or want everything to smell 'nice'. This doesn't make my life better. This doesn't make me smile. This just annoys me.

I can appreciate that for most of our history humans smelled pretty damn bad. Feces, sweat, and ancient caveman style funk. Its OK now though. We don't owe some kind of scent debt to our ancestors or anything. We can just let it go. We have the ability to just smell clean now. Let's leave it at that.

There is a whole industry devoted to this stuff now. A good friend works at Bath and Body Works - its their bread and butter there. These people have built an entire enterprise around the idea that you can take the same 4-5 products, repackage them in a myriad combinations, and sell them over and over again to the same people. Some of these people basically own 10 bottles of the same product, just with different smells! I don't get it.

The potency of these modern smells is also unnerving. When I was a kid, there were two scented products that smelled super strong - Irish Spring bar soap and Lemon Pledge. Kids in the 90's killed themselves huffing Lemon Pledge, and Irish Spring is a Lucky-Charms-style, faux-Irish abomination. But at least that is where it stopped. Nowadays, every fourth rate gas station hand sanitizer is a sandalwood scented aromatherapy assfuck.

I'm done with it. From now on, I'm going to wash my hands in rubbing alcohol and dry them with a cigarette lighter. Sure sometimes I'll be badly burnt, but as far as I know Bath and Bodyworks doesn't sell Silvadine, so I think I'm ok.