Nearly out of my standby weird perfumes (Gingerale and Laundromat), but I’ve found a new supplier and ordered a sampler. Will report back on such delights as Seagull Eating a Starfish (“with a spike of gingery terror”) and Baby Gorgon Birthday Party. Unless you smell me first.
August 28, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Perfume samples came! Tried this one, must bathe. Gingery spike of terror was sweet but short-lived; headshop-meets-baitshop lingers.
September 3, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Onward w/the crazy perfume reviews: Sugar Dragon! Goes on with a juicy burst of grenadine & marzipan, then fades to lightly smoky sweetness. Not too incensey, but a candied, faded sense-memory of the sacristy for you altar-girls.
September 7, 2010 at 8:54 am
Today’s perfume review: The Large Hadron Collider Produces a Strangelet. Clinically hygienic, sciencey, alert, w/a soapy fade. Cleanest and most earnest postdoc in the lab.
September 8, 2010 at 8:15 am
This one still smells clean & nice thirteen hours later! But the strangeness of the strangelet only lasted briefly. (I know you’re all riveted.)
September 8, 2010 at 9:32 pm
Frivolous perfume review 4: Candy Mechanic. Dark chocolate fudge with undertones of blue-collar boyfriend. Or, um, something like that.
September 10, 2010 at 7:55 am
Today’s bizarro perfume review: Tom Kha: ginger, coconut milk, lime, & spices. Crazy delicious! but more like I spilled Thai soup on myself. As this is A) not an irregular occurrence; B) involving too much umami for a perfume — I cannot wholeheartedly recommend.
September 11, 2010 at 9:36 am
Perfume review #6: “Four Seasons in Mighty Contention on Trivial Matters.” This mix of springsummerfallwinter notes may in fact be the distilled essence of Goldengrove unleaving. I’m pleased to report that it’s quite beautiful — especially since it went on like Pine-Sol at first & made me wonder if they were contending over who’d clean my bathroom.
September 12, 2010 at 11:32 am
Today’s perfume sample: “Baby Unicorn Birthday Party.” Powder, frosting, & — I don’t know — rainbows & love. Shut up.
September 13, 2010 at 7:42 am
Perfume today (variation on a theme): Baby Gorgon Birthday Party. ‘Nilla frosting + snaky sandalwood smells frankly, unpredictably dangerous. Not kidding: this one’s weird. I feel like I should flee my own deliciousness, and yet I am frozen.
September 14, 2010 at 8:00 am
My 9th perfume review: Coronal Mass Ejection: a balsamy, boyish zapped satellite. Which is okay, because I like men AND impending telecommunications doom.
September 15, 2010 at 8:19 am
Today’s perfume: “Root Beer Float.” As advertised, but I think I smell play-doh, too. Combined: license to act especially juvenile all day. More importantly, I neglected to post yesterday’s tragic & uplifting review: “Space Bat,” in memoriam a little one last sighted clinging to the Discovery on lift-off. Stone, myrrh, & leather, lightly crisped.
September 17, 2010 at 7:53 am
Today’s perfume review: “Sparkle Receptors.” Fizzy, candied strawberry-orange mood-enhancing scent. Spirit-lifting in a flat-out manipulative way. You’re not fooling me.
September 21, 2010 at 7:32 am
Yeah, basically, it’s all, “Sparkle receptors!” and I’m all, “F*ck off, happiness.”
September 21, 2010 at 8:21 am
Today’s scent: Vory v Zakony. Amber, tobacco. I suppose I do smell like I’ve been pawed by a Russian mobster. With a tender hint of vanilla. I can change him.
September 22, 2010 at 8:04 am
Frivolous perfume review the 15th: “Up Quark.” 1st time since “Seagull Eating a Starfish” that I had to bathe immediately. Do not wish to discuss.
September 28, 2010 at 8:06 am
Today’s perfume: “Dastardly Banyan.” Incense + cocounts. Didn’t really earn its homoerotic upstairs/downstairs blurb: “This scent isn’t that of an evil tree, precisely, it’s more the rakish-gentleman sort of tree that comes to call at uncivilized hours and does that smile that makes the butler wish he were younger.”
October 5, 2010 at 6:49 pm
I have another handful of crazy @zomgsmells perfume samples to review! Therefore we continue with Review the 17th: “Zeppelin to the Moon.” It’s a teaky, aethery, manly scent — if you derive your notions of manhood entirely from Rider Haggard, by way of Wells & Verne. (I sure do.)
October 26, 2010 at 8:31 am
At least, it goes on that way. Within five minutes, he’s buffing his nails in the captain’s cabin & becoming tedious on the subject of the Boers.
October 26, 2010 at 8:35 am
Here’s my shortest perfume review ever: “Theopatra.” Chocolate and beer. That’s right, boys.
October 30, 2010 at 10:39 am
Today’s perfume review: “Nuee Ardente” — apparently French for a pyroclastic flow. Pompeii as a rose-hot memory in cinnamon and smoke.
November 4, 2010 at 6:52am
I’m behind on posting perfume reviews! “Rose in Amber.” This is one just for you Browncoats. Two words: Inara’s pillowcases.
November 6, 2010 at 8:17 am
Today’s perfume sample: “Doc Holliday.” Not your standard huckleberry; rather, tubercular camphor, horehound, & an unhealthy bit of smoke.
November 11, 2010 at 7:39 pm
Scent review: Trial of St. Urho, who surely didn’t drive grasshoppers from Finland. Mighty deeds evoke dirt & cheap wine?
November 27, 2010 at 8:18am
Okay, St. Urho — sorry I doubted you. This last perfume is miraculously nasty on my left wrist, & quite nice on my right.
November 27, 2010 at 8:22am
Cherry cola & an atomic fireball or two. Also my cinnamon perfume is called Nueé Ardente (“pyroclastic flow”). Today I am the hotness.
May 30, 2011 at 9:17 am
Quick-change act before the #dh11 keynote & banquet. This evening’s perfume is called “The Large Hadron Collider Produces a Strangelet.” If you think you smell soap, serendipity, and the end of the world, it’s just me.
June 22, 2011 at 6:44pm
inexplicable hiatus!
Perfume review the 24th: Sadly, the hottest poem in the English language has become this. It doesn’t say, “I’m yr dream succubus.” It says, “Candy & flowers for Valentine’s Day every year until the sweet release of death.”
March 6, 2014 at 2:39pm
Frivolous Perfume Review 25: Superlative Polytonic Mira-balm. Bright, sweet cola fizz becomes a deep rush of cinnamon-herbal warmth. Delish.
March 7, 2014 at 6:02am
Weird perfume the 26th: @zomgsmells Green Knight. There’s snow on the ground, but we’re in the hall; wassail, warm anise, & garlands of fir.
March 10, 2014 at 5:48am
Perfume sample the 28th: Morgause. She comes on all purple-velvet stars, like one bad babe — but devolves quickly into fabric softener. In either guise, Morgan la Fay has no business chairing today’s General Faculty Council meeting. Verdict? Scrub.
March 12, 2014 at 6:05am
Perfume 29: Embalming Fluid. Awful name; must be what it takes to get Goth girls to wear green tea. Bright, clean. My tidy Tokyo hotel room.