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According to Hofmann: Scents and Sensibility

By Mark Hofmann mhofmann@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read
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After careful consideration, I decided that I have to issue a retraction for a previous column where I criticized the multiple scents and aromas that candle companies and fragrance companies have been pushing on the consumer.

Turns out, after some deep thinking and deeper breathing, I was totally wrong in my criticism because I didn’t factor in what I call “scent corruption”.

Scent corruption is basically when a scent is used to mask and eliminate another scent, but, as you grow accustomed to the scent-eliminating scent, your mind associates the scent-eliminating scent with the scent you wanted to eliminate in the first place; therefore, corrupting the scent-eliminating scent forever.

And thatĢƵ my two cents…or 10 scents, according to the previous paragraph.

A perfect example of scent corruption is when my dog, Oreo, goes outside and partakes in his favorite activity, which is rubbing his head on the dead bodies and/or exposed entrails of animals that have died in our yard.

Of course, I’ve also noticed Oreo rubbing his head with the same amount of joy and vigor on our dirty clothes in the basement, so I couldn’t help feeling a bit self conscious after seeing that.

Anyway, needless to say, Oreo smells a bit ripe when he returns from his all-you-can-rub-animal-guts buffet.

The first time it happened, my wife went out and purchased pre-moistened doggy wipes. The wipes were vanilla and coconut scented and, normally, those two aromas are pleasant to me, but I found them repulsive after 20 minutes of scrubbing OreoĢƵ head with wipe after wipe.

ItĢƵ truly the monkey wrench thrown into the gears and sprockets of someoneĢƵ olfactory.

The experience also reminded me of the old saying that when you mix five pounds of ice cream with five pounds of manure, you end up with 10 pound of manure; if you add whipped cream and cherries, you end up with manure sundaes.

Of course, my example involving Oreo is pretty extreme where foul odors are concerned, but chances are mostly everyone has had a similar experience of scent corruption.

LetĢƵ say a husband enjoys a cigar every once in a while during the course of an hour, and he enjoys said cigar at home in their wet bar because he needs a stiff drink along with his stogie.

Anyway, the wife of the house frowns upon the activity, so she plugs one of those fragranced oil cartridges into the wall, releasing the aroma of berry cotton candy.

So, you have cigar smoke with cotton candy and scotch mixing together in one area, and they’re not exactly a complementary mix of scents.

Now the husband has to throw away his box of “ItĢƵ A Boy” Montecristos because cigar smoke makes him think heĢƵ inside a cotton-candy stand thatĢƵ on fire.

Turns out, there are two solutions to that problem.

The first happens to be designating one — and only one — scent to combat odors.

The issue with that is we’d have have an election to determine the scent, but then you get into the politics of the thing. The Lavender Loyalists will have issues with the Pine Party, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

The other solution is to allow the fragrance companies go wild and constantly come up with new and different scents so the consumer can move to another aroma that will eventually be corrupted and replaced and so on and so forth.

So take this retraction, which may be the longest retraction in journalism history, with my sincere apologies. If you want to read the column in question, please feel free to do so.

However, I have to warn you that reading it after reading this may bring a corruption to your senses.

According to Hofmann is written by staff reporter Mark Hofmann of Rostraver Township. His books, “Good Mourning! A Guide to Biting the Big One…and Dying, Too” and “Stupid Brain,” are available on Amazon.com. He co-hosts the “Locally Yours” radio show on WMBS 590 AM every Friday.

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