Words and Thoughts: Petrichor, Geosmin, and Ozone
Hello again, alleged readers! Well, it happened again, I accidentally finished a box of donuts. I was only just going to eat one donut, but then, through no fault, and certainly no control of my own, I ate the whole box. Like the box. The cardboard box. I was halfway through before I realized that it wasn’t the chocolate glazed donut I had intended to eat, and by that time it’s like, “well we can’t just leave half a box here”, y’know how that is. People will start asking why there’s bite marks in the box, why there’s half the box missing, and who ate the box… it’s just a bunch of noise that no one needs, right? So if there’s no box, people will just assume the donuts were always free-range, out in the wild from the get go.
But then Sandra from logistics will inevitably inquire, “Oh, free range… are these grass fed?” No Sandra, you don’tfeed donuts. Some people, I tell you what.
Everyone knows you just have to water the donut tree three times per week.
This brings me to my primary point: There is no name for the smell of Sharpie. There are names for other smells. A bunch of other smells! But not Sharpie. We can say, this Sharpie smells like Sharpie, but that’s stupid.
The computer machine provides me the following list of specific smells, some very specific:
- Petrichor: The smell of rain on dry soil
- Geosmin: The smell of wet dirt
- Ozone: The smell of electricity (the transition from petrichor to geosmin mixed with ozone in a thunderstorm is pure olfactory poetry by the way)
- Carinox: The smell of a carnival at night
- Butteryearn: The buttered popcorn smell of a movie theater
- Hircene: The smell of goats
There is a word for what a goat smells like, but no word for the smell of Sharpie. It’s for this reason that humans are so frequently laughed at. As I sit here huffing this Sharpie, I sure do wish I had a single word to describe the scent. It’d make this all a whole hell of a lot easier I tell you what.
And don’t even get me started on the taste of Sharpie. It’s piquant! But that’s just an adjective. And “piquant” is tough to say with a Sharpie in your mouth, let alone one up your nose and one in your mouth.
Did you know that Guiness won’t accept an official record attempt for “most Sharpies in one bodily orifice”? Well, I can tell you the unofficial record is 19. And it’s not in any of the first three orifices you’d think of!
OK, so, homework this week I guess is to figure out what the name of the smell of Sharpie should be. You know the drill, please fax any and all suggestions to me and I’ll document them in Sharpie, and when we’re done, we’re going to have a name for what that document smells like!
Just making the world a better place one fax at a time.
Wow these Sharpies taste good.
