Heh: "Tryon, for example, denounced musk, 'the dearest of stinks', as 'an excrementitious matter - or the fume or froth proceeding from a fierce, fiery, violent-natured creature'. Had it been scarce, he said, hog's dung would have been equally sought after; as it was, some people esteemed cows' dung as 'a good perfume'."
Monty Python nicely addressed this, over 50 years ago.
> Mr. Hilton: Oh, we use only the finest juicy chunks of fresh Cornish ram's bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds, whipped into a fondue, and garnished with lark's vomit.
> Inspector: LARK'S VOMIT?!?!?
> Mr. Hilton: Correct.
> Inspector: It doesn't say anything here about lark's vomit!
> Mr. Hilton: Ah, it does, on the bottom of the box, after 'monosodium glutamate'.
> Inspector: I hardly think that's good enough! I think it's be more appropriate if the box bore a great red label: 'WARNING: LARK'S VOMIT!!!'
Really, it should open every conversation with “by the way, I am a compulsive liar, and nothing I say can be trusted”. That _might_ get through to _some_ users.
Yes! Well admittedly, I have somewhat of a redneck past. [cue Ben Fold's Five music.] Having grown up in small-town Midwest and worked on Farms the smell of gasoline is linked to lots of boyhood memories and male-bonding experiences :)
His comment reminds me of a famous quip from David Lange about "I can smell the uranium on your breath", although in this case it's borscht and/or vodka.
It seems to have inspired an even better review, of the Golden Delicious:
> [...] with our collective distaste for the Red Delicious fully realized, this ill-fated adopted brother may as well be called the “Golden Bin Laden.”
I saw a badly written headline yesterday that combined the meat industry hack with something about colonial pipeline, and it briefly brought to mind a mental image of a liquefied meat slurry/pink goo pipeline.
Yeah, Professor Sharpless. I took Organic II from him, he was indeed "very nice and extremely bright" (I had no doubt he'd get a Nobel in due course, as he did), and I too am not surprised. Here's Wikipedia on Click chemistry, which says he coined the phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_chemistry
Anecdote: he dipped some absorbent paper in safrole and had us pass them around and smell them, and in the middle of this said something to the effect, "Oh, BTW, this is officially carcinogenic, but it's not truly dangerous, I wouldn't have you smelling it if it was". As a former fan of root beer before the FDA forced it's removal I appreciated that. As the son of a Cajun mother I'm really glad filé powder contains doesn't contain it, banning it would be even more criminal.
"Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billy goat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil?"
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