Blogspot Mobile

Time for a whiff of fresh air,
I'm corresponding from the plush bucket seat of a luxury coach, somewhere between Hartford, Connecticut and Boston. Yes, friends, we can now coddle our laptops as we cross state lines at 55 mph, all for a paltry $10 thanks to the Bolt Bus!

I'm three hours into the trip, and we just took a break at a truck stop/Burger King for some stretching and snacks. I didn't buy anything, even after spacing out at an ad tacked above the urinal for "2 for $2 Cheez-Its or Meat Stix" Well, now I'm paying the price 'cause the whole bus smells like fries. Steve just called them "devil's fingers" to try and cheer me up but all I can do is sit here and miserably pine for BK while steeping in the smug self-satisfaction of having "will power."

Upstairs/Downstairs

1. Cigarette smoke wafting in from the downstairs fire escape
2. Fried chicken grease/MSG from the Take-Out Chinese Joint next door
3. Turmeric from the kitchen
4. Pot Smoke from under the door on the second floor
5. Fried chicken grease/MSG from under the door on the second floor
6. Home-grown cilantro!

Mashups

For all of my local readers, I present the New York City Subway Smell Map, courtesy of Gawker. Don't be fooled by the "no maps here" writing all over the image. Simply click out of "subway" mode and into "hybrid," then scroll over any subway stop to view reported odors at that station.

Pretty gross.

The Smell of Coffee Tables in the Morning?

Last night, while walking in circles on Powers Street, I had an idea for a Coffee Table Book. It will be about 12" x 12" and an inch and a half thick, with a posh leatherbound cover: something that Indiana Jones or Dumbledore could be proud to have on top of his coffee table. Inside the book, every page will be blank. They'll all be sprayed with a different fragrance, with a sheet of fancy wax paper separating each one (the same kind of wax paper that is unnecessarily inserted into wedding invitations). Fragrances will range from the ordinary such as glossy x-men cards and tile cleaner to rarities like historical colognes and out-of-production perfumes. Don't you wish you could smell Elizabeth Taylor in the 70s?

In the back, there will be the solutions, as a Magic Eye.



Preorder at half.com.

Pizza Signs

It has been approximately three years since I have enrolled in an English Literature course, and I sometimes find myself making up little assignment prompts in order to better understand language and meaning. As I was walking past Danny's Pizza II on the way home from the corner grocery today, the doughy smells coming out of the place were intoxicating as usual. I asked Alisha whether she thought the smell of pizza could be considered a symbol, which seems absurd until we agree on one key point:

the smell of pizza is not pizza-in-itself

Now lets throw some definitions up on the board (courtesy of cedarseed.com):

Sign: Signs are events or things that direct attention or are indicative of other events or things.

Symbol: A symbol represents something in a completely arbitrary relationship. The connection between signifier and signified depends entirely on the observer, or more exactly, what the observer was taught.

These are fairly close in meaning, but I'm sure as hell nobody taught me to love the smell of pizza. So it's official: pizza smell is a sign, which points to pizza. Please feel free to comment with supporting/debunking evidence.




Just so you don't think I'm taking credit for anything.