Non-sensical considerations on smells and their implications

Take a closer look at the label, will you? I can assure you, it’s as old as it looks: ten years or so, I think, glaring at me from its shelf in the bathroom, touched last when we moved to this house approximately three years ago (merely in order for it to be moved, of course)… Which, come to think of it, isn’t entirely true: My daughter asked me to put some on about a year ago, I seem to remember, and daddy complied.

Still, given the fact that it’s been standing there for the duration of a decade, one should’ve thought I’d managed to empty the bottle by now, but noooo… The bottle (is that the right term for fragrance containers, by the way?) to the right gives an accurate impression of last decade’s consumption of D&G’s men’s perfume (or any other brand, for that matter). “Ah,” you think: “Which isn’t to say that he’s avoided female fragrances, is it,” but again I have to dissapoint you. Not that I’m deterred by metrosexuality at all, far from it (although I definitely do not subscribe to it), it’s just that I’ve lapsed into a state of indifference in matters of fragrance. My odours are all mine: No fragrances added, none subtracted. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you pure stench.

So there you have it: One’s vanity is restricted to the intellectual kind, standing on higher ground, mocking the shallownes du monde, as it were. Speaking of le monde, they are all rather mondain, aren’t they, our posessions and everyday essentials. Which makes it all the more easy for the anti-mundane to distance himself from it’s every aspect, such as the ultimate symbol of shallownes: artificially added fragrances.

Don’t ask how I came to ponder these things, just by laying eyes on the perfume packaging in the bathroom, for I tell you: I most definitely have better things to do, such as interviewing a source I’ve been trying to get hold of for the better of the day. As luck has it: so I just did (how’s that for multitasking), only to discover she’s en route to Milan or Barcelona (dunno, some of those fashion capitals, other than Paris, that is), but she promised to have a colleague call me back.

That’s right, that’s what we’re reduced to these days: Interviewing people in all walks of corporate and business life. “You know, things that reeeeally matter,” he said, in a rather sardonic, yet bitingly sarcastic tone of voice.

If it’d only be possible to work full-time on my favourite project, developing civic journalism as it really should be, I’d be the happiest Christmas tree ever, I think, but we all have to make a living, don’t we?

Is it just me, or did I just stray off topic? Never mind, it was irrelevant, anyway — as always.