Smells Expensive Quotes

So, what do you do when you know you have two days to live? Eat an entire Bitter Chocolate Death cake all by myself. Reread my favorite novel. Buy eight dozen roses from the best florist in town--the super expensive ones, the ones that smell like roses rather than merely looking like them--and put them all over my apartment. Take a good long look at everyone I love.

Those of you who are more than casually familiar with books -- those of you who spend your free afternoons in fusty bookshops, who offer furtive, kindly strokes along the spines of familiar titles -- understand that page riffling is an essential element in the process of introducing oneself to a new book. It isn't about reading the words; it's about reading the smell, which wafts from the pages in a cloud of dust and wood pulp. It might smell expensive and well bound, or it might smell of tissue-thin paper and blurred two-colour prints, or of fifty years unread in the home of a tobacco-smoking old man. Books can smell of cheap thrills or painstaking scholarship, or literary weight or unsolved mysteries.

Damn, cher, you still smell like a blossom. Been so long since I've seen a flower that I'd nearly forgotten what they smelled like." He took a lock of my hair, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. "You're dressing up and using expensive perfume? Ole Jack senses a trap. Consider me snared.

You know, you would never have let those breasts so close to me if I weren’t in a wheelchair,’ he murmured. I looked back at him steadily. ‘You would never have looked at my breasts if you hadn’t been in a wheelchair.’ ‘What? Of course I would.’ ‘Nope. You would have been far too busy looking at the tall blonde girls with the endless legs and the big hair, the ones who can smell an expense account at forty paces. And anyway, I wouldn’t have been here. I would have been serving the drinks over there. One of the invisibles.’ He blinked. ‘Well? I’m right, aren’t I?’ Will glanced over at the bar, then back at me. ‘Yes. But in my defense, Clark, I was an arse.

I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there—but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs. I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.

…quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean "love" in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later—because I did not belong there, did not come from there

The porn films are not about sex. Sex is airbrushed and digitally washed out of the films. There is no acting because none of the women are permitted to have what amounts to a personality. The one emotion they are allowed to display is an unquenchable desire to satisfy men, especially if that desire involves the women’s physical and emotional degradation. The lightning in the films is harsh and clinical. Pubic hair is shaved off to give the women the look of young girls or rubber dolls. Porn, which advertises itself as sex, is a bizarre, bleached pantomime of sex. The acts onscreen are beyond human endurance. The scenarios are absurd. The manicured and groomed bodies, the huge artificial breasts, the pouting oversized lips, the erections that never go down, and the sculpted bodies are unreal. Makeup and production mask blemishes. There are no beads of sweat, no wrinkle lines, no human imperfections. Sex is reduced to a narrow spectrum of sterilized dimensions. It does not include the dank smell of human bodies, the thump of a pulse, taste, breath—or tenderness. Those in films are puppets, packaged female commodities. They have no honest emotion, are devoid of authentic human beauty, and resemble plastic. Pornography does not promote sex, if one defines sex as a shared act between two partners. It promotes masturbation. It promotes the solitary auto-arousal that precludes intimacy and love. Pornography is about getting yourself off at someone else’s expense.

I hover over the expensive Scotch and then the Armagnac, but finally settle on a glass of rich red claret. I put it near my nose and nearly pass out. It smells of old houses and aged wood and dark secrets, but also of hard, hot sunshine through ancient shutters and long, wicked afternoons in a four-poster bed. It's not a wine, it's a life, right there in the glass.

My aim here was much more straightforward and objective — just to see whether I could match income to expenses, as the truly poor attempt to do every day. Besides, I've had enough unchosen encounters with poverty in my lifetime to know it's not a place you would want to visit for touristic purposes; it just smells too much like fear.

A tall blonde entered the room, wearing a yellow sash that marked her as advocate. Two men followed her, carrying papers. She was lean and long-legged, with a graceful neck and nice ankles, and William took a minute to watch her come down the aisle. She looked high-strung and difficult. Still, good legs. Mmm, smelled of mimosa, too. Expensive scent. Cerise smelled better, when clean.

What a uniquely capitalist response to that gender inequality: women have been forced by convention for generations – millennia – to spend money on expensive clothes and agonising shoes, to daub themselves with reality-concealing slap, to smell expensively inhuman, to self-mutilate in pursuit of eternal youth; and this, quite rightly, has come to be deemed unfair. But how do we end this hell? We make men do it too. Well done everyone.

He kissed me. And it was the most Oliver kiss. His hands cupping my face gently to draw me to him, and his lips covering mine with a deliberate care that was its own kind of passion. The way you'd eat a really expensive chocolate... savoring it because you knew you might never get another. He smelled of familiarity, of homecoming. and of the night I'd spent wrapped in his arms. And he made me feel so ...fucking precious. I wasn't sure I could bear it.

...whenever I see a table of college “friends” sitting together they are inevitably texting with unseen others, searching, always searching, I guess, for something that might be better, a perpetual life hunt for digital greener grass, an attempt to smell roses that are elsewhere at the expense of the ones in front of you...

most cherished desires of present-day Westerners are shaped by romantic, nationalist, capitalist and humanist myths that have been around for centuries. Friends giving advice often tell each other, ‘Follow your heart.’ But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day, and the very recommendation to ‘follow your heart’ was implanted in our minds by a combination of nineteenth-century Romantic myths and twentieth-century consumerist myths. The Coca-Cola Company, for example, has marketed Diet Coke around the world under the slogan ‘Diet Coke. Do what feels good.’ Even what people take to be their most personal desires are usually programmed by the imagined order. Let’s consider, for example, the popular desire to take a holiday abroad. There is nothing natural or obvious about this. A chimpanzee alpha male would never think of using his power in order to go on holiday into the territory of a neighbouring chimpanzee band. The elite of ancient Egypt spent their fortunes building pyramids and having their corpses mummified, but none of them thought of going shopping in Babylon or taking a skiing holiday in Phoenicia. People today spend a great deal of money on holidays abroad because they are true believers in the myths of romantic consumerism. Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different experiences as we can. We must open ourselves to a wide spectrum of emotions; we must sample various kinds of relationships; we must try different cuisines; we must learn to appreciate different styles of music. One of the best ways to do all that is to break free from our daily routine, leave behind our familiar setting, and go travelling in distant lands, where we can ‘experience’ the culture, the smells, the tastes and the norms of other people. We hear again and again the romantic myths about ‘how a new experience opened my eyes and changed my life’. Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product (a car, new clothes, organic food) or a service (housekeeping, relationship therapy, yoga classes). Every television commercial is another little legend about how consuming some product or service will make life better. 18. The Great Pyramid of Giza. The kind of thing rich people in ancient Egypt did with their money. Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism. Their marriage has given birth to the infinite ‘market of experiences’, on which the modern tourism industry is founded. The tourism industry does not sell flight tickets and hotel bedrooms. It sells experiences. Paris is not a city, nor India a country – they are both experiences, the consumption of which is supposed to widen our horizons, fulfil our human potential, and make us happier. Consequently, when the relationship between a millionaire and his wife is going through a rocky patch, he takes her on an expensive trip to Paris. The trip is not a reflection of some independent desire, but rather of an ardent belief in the myths of romantic consumerism. A wealthy man in ancient Egypt would never have dreamed of solving a relationship crisis by taking his wife on holiday to Babylon. Instead, he might have built for her the sumptuous tomb she had always wanted. Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.

Girl, you are the epitome of spoiled. I can smell it in your expensive perfume, in the quality of your ridiculous clothing, in the bracelet wrapped ’round that delicate wrist.” He closed the gap between us and all the air sucked from the room. “You won’t last out here. You’ll stay blind to the environment that surrounds you. You’ll live in your clean, perfect bubble and return to your posh life come six months. You are....you. I know your kind. I’ve seen it all before. You will never wake up. Not really,” he explained away before backing up and leaving me to my room once again.

They that have power to hurt and will do none, That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, They rightly do inherit Heaven's graces, And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flow'r is to the summer sweet Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flow'r with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

Quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again. I remember walking across Sixty-second Street one twilight that first spring, or the second spring, they were all alike for a while. I was late to meet someone but I stopped at Lexington Avenue and bought a peach and stood on the corner eating it and knew that I had come out out of the West and reached the mirage. I could taste the peach and feel the soft air blowing from a subway grating on my legs and I could smell lilac and garbage and expensive perfume and I knew that it would cost something sooner or later – because I did not belong there, did not come from there – but when you are twenty-two or twenty-three, you figure that later you will have a high emotional balance, and be able to pay whatever it costs. I still believed in possibilities then, still had the sense, so peculiar to New York, that something extraordinary would happen any minute, any day, any month.

The first energy transition began in Britain in the thirteenth century with the shift from wood to coal. Rising populations and destruction of forests made wood scarce and expensive, and coal came to be used for heating in London, despite fumes and smell.

I’m face to face with Nash. His dark-chocolate eyes are full of concern and he smells lightly of expensive cologne, something musky. Dark. Sexy.

I like expensive men. They smell like money, confidence, and expensive hand lotion.

as she walked back to her husband, lola thought about lying on her expensive sheets and holding a baby - their baby - to her breast. to the baby, lola would smell like a mother, and the ridiculous chandelier would look like stars.

With this money I can get away from you. From you and your chickens and your pies and your kitchens and everything that smells of grease. I can get away from this shack with its cheap furniture, and this town and its dollar days, and its women that wear uniforms and its men that wear overalls. You think just because you've made a little money you can get a new hairdo and some expensive clothes and turn yourself into a lady. But you can't, because you'll never be anything but a common frump, whose father lived over a grocery store and whose mother took in washing. With this money, I can get away from every rotten, stinking thing that makes me think of this place or you!

Outside, I avoided the gazes of passersby and slid gratefully into the cavernous interior of Godric's car. I didn't like to say "This is yours?" because wherever I placed the stress in that sentence, it sounded faintly insulting. It felt as if I were sitting inside a very pricey black leather handbag. Things glittered at me, and the bits that weren't leather or glittering were sort of dull black. It all smelled wildly expensive.

New York in November really does have a special charm to it. The air is clear and crisp, and the leaves on the trees in Central Park are just beginning to turn golden. The sky is so clear you can see forever, and the skyscrapers lavishly reflect the sun’s rays. You feel you can keep on walking one block after another without end. Expensive cashmere coats fill the windows at Bergdorf Goodman, and the streets are filled with the delicious smell of roasted pretzels.

George dutifully dusted the marks from the expensive rug and retired to the kitchen to await a grave and disapproving Collins, wishing with all of his boyish heart that he had applied for the stables. Cleaning stalls had to be beneficial exercise, and surely one must become accustomed to the smells...eventually.

Oh, the joy of a shared life! The joy is not - as many people believe - building a future with someone, or opening your heart to another human being, or even the ability to gift each other money with limited tax consequences. The joy is in the dailiness. The joy is having someone who will stop you from hitting the snooze button on the alarm endlessly. The joy is in the smell of someone else's cooking. The joy is knowing that you can call someone and ask him to pick up a gallon of milk on his way over. The joy is having someone to watch "Kitchen Nightmares" with, because it is really no good when you watch it by yourself. The joy is hoping (however unrealistically) that someone else will unload the dishwasher. The joy is having someone listen to the weird cough your car has developed and reassure you that it doesn't sound expensive. The joy is saying how much you want a glass of wine and having someone tell you, "Go ahead, you deserve it!" (Although it's possible to achieve the last one with a pet and a little imagination.)

His attention was riveted by the shapely figure in front of him, the intricately pinned-up swirls of her hair, the voice dressed in silk and pearls. How good she smelled, like the kind of expensive soap that came wrapped in fancy paper. Keir and everyone he knew used common yellow rosin soap for everything: floors, dishes, hands, and body. But there was no sharpness to this scent. With every movement, hints of perfume seemed to rise from the rustling of her skirts and sleeves, as if she were a flower bouquet being gently shaken.

Private moments held not a candle to coitus, not even the expensive kind of candle that made the whole room smell of far off seasons.

Bring me a cup of wine that is dark red and smells of musk. Don’t bring me that expensive stuff that tastes like money and smells like lust.

On a crystalline fall day you can almost hear the tinkle of fine crystal, the rustle of silk and wool, almost smell the expensive cigars

Anything That Feels Good, Looks Good, Tastes Good, Smells Good, Sounds Good And Makes People Think It's Good, Can Be Sold Expensively Regardless Of Its Actual Worth.

Flower, one of  the Beautiful creation  of this world... It is colourful, smellful, has exceptional variations & expensive... Useful for mankind & others in numerous ways... But It's life is short... The fragrance can be utilised until It's alive... We humans have a long life, With same qualities as a flower... Utilise it in a way that life will be a fragrant one for all... Good Morning ! HAVE A FRAGRANT LIFE !!!

Answering the question 'How would you like to smell?' by saying 'I'd rather I didn't' is also no longer acceptable. It's not playing the game. Men are expected to put some cash into the cosmetic pot too - it's seen as almost un-feminist not to. What a uniquely capitalist response to that gender inequality: women have been forced by convention for generations - millennia - to spend money on expensive clothes and agonising shoes, to daub themselves with reality-concealing slap, to smell expensively inhuman, to self-mutilate in pursuit of eternal youth; and this, quite rightly, has come to be deemed unfair. But how do we end this hell? We make men do it too. Well done everyone.

They angle towards her, breathing her in: she smells of hair spray, nail polish, something artificial and too sweet. Cheap, Danny's mother would say. It's an enticing word. Most of the things in his life are expensive, and not very interesting.

He chuckled and brought his face closer to mine, almost close enough that it was hard to focus on his features, the smell of his cologne from this close was something expensive and delicious. “Or you’ll what, Kacea? Kick my ass like you did when we were kids? I dare you to try, sweetling. I’m not the chubby simpleton I was then.” He dragged his thumb across my lower lip and his dark gaze followed it. “I’ve learned a lot of things since then. And I’d love to share them with you…” ~ Alain Reece & Kacea Meade (Lunacy, Ragnarok Legacy #1)

My smell stays with you? I ruined you…for what?” “Your smell keeps me going all the time. I’m in a clutch game or at practice and it’s full count? Your cloves and vanilla scent calms me down. I spray it on the front of my uniform and rub my right hand across like this.” I demonstrate by rubbing my chest and she watches me in fascination like a starstruck teenager watches a rockstar play his bass. “I went to three different stores before I found the exact scent. Expensive. French perfume. Chamade by Guerlain.” She nods looking fascinated or charmed by me at least for a few seconds. “I got it in Paris when I was there a few years ago. I love it.” “I do too. So yes, you ruined me. For anyone else.” She’s smiling but then it slowly disappears like a countdown does as it goes from ten to zero. “What are you doing to me, Elvis?” she asks, looking troubled.

She reached into one of the cabinets and got out an old box filled with amber vials of isopropyl alcohol. Expensive. Hard to find. She emptied them out one by one over herself, even over her shorn hair, until she smelled like medicine. Until she was a sterile thing no more sexual than a pair of sanitized scissors. That sharp too.

More ideas surged through her head in one quarter of an hour than she had ever had since she came into the world. “Mamma,” she said, “my cousin will never bear the smell of a tallow candle; suppose we buy a wax one?” And she darted, swift as a bird, to get the five-franc piece which she had just received for her monthly expenses. “Here, Nanon,” she cried, “quick!

I knew what harbouring memories felt like. It felt like owning the most expensive item you could get your hands on and having it taken away and replaced with an inferior version of itself. You recognised the imitation, the smell, the texture, the design, but it was off. It was a replica of the expensive thing, but not the thing. Just a shitty version of what you wanted.

Probably no single event highlights the strength of Campbell’s argument (on peak oil) better than the rapid development of the Alberta tar sands. Bitumen, the world’s ugliest and most expensive hydrocarbon, can never be a reasonable substitute for light oil due to its extreme capital, energy, and carbon intensity. Bitumen looks, smells, and behaves like asphalt; running an economy on it is akin to digging up our existing road infrastructure, melting it down, and enriching the goop with hydrogen until it becomes a sulfur-rich but marketable oil.

Man, she loved the way Remy smelled. Male … warm. Expensive. Idly, she noticed the same scent was on her, now. It was the soap he used. She’d discovered that in the shower when she lathered up with it. The smell was borderline intoxicating on him, not so much on her. Absently, she stroked her hands up and down his sides. “Hope, you’re making it very hard for me to have a conversation here.” “Hmmm?” Tipping her head back, she glanced at him through her lashes, saw that he had a look on his face that was rapidly growing familiar. That lovely blue was heated, his lashes low over his eyes. And she found herself wanting to push up on her toes and tug his head down close enough to kiss him.

The air was steeped with the heady fragrance of roses, as if the entire hall had been rinsed with expensive perfume. "Good Lord!" she exclaimed, stopping short at the sight of massive bunches of flowers being brought in from a cart outside. Mountains of white roses, some of them tightly furled buds, some in glorious full bloom. Two footmen had been recruited to assist the driver of the cart, and the three of them kept going outside to fetch bouquet after bouquet wrapped in stiff white lace paper. "Fifteen dozen of them," Marcus said brusquely. "I doubt there's a single white rose left in London." Aline could not believe how fast her heart was beating. Slowly she moved forward and drew a single rose from one of the bouquets. Cupping the delicate bowl of the blossom with her fingers, she bent her head to inhale its lavish perfume. Its petals were a cool brush of silk against her cheek. "There's something else," Marcus said. Following his gaze, Aline saw the butler directing yet another footman to pry open a huge crate filled with brick-sized parcels wrapped in brown paper. "What are they, Salter?" "With your permission, my lady, I will find out." The elderly butler unwrapped one of the parcels with great care. He spread the waxed brown paper open to reveal a damply fragrant loaf of gingerbread, its spice adding a pungent note to the smell of the roses. Aline put her hand over her mouth to contain a bubbling laugh, while some undefinable emotion caused her entire body to tremble. The offering worried her terribly, and at the same time, she was insanely pleased by the extravagance of it. "Gingerbread?" Marcus asked incredulously. "Why the hell would McKenna send you an entire crate of gingerbread?" "Because I like it," came Aline's breathless reply. "How do you know this is from McKenna?" Marcus gave her a speaking look, as if only an imbecile would suppose otherwise. Fumbling a little with the envelope, Aline extracted a folded sheet of paper. It was covered in a bold scrawl, the penmanship serviceable and without flourishes. No miles of level desert, no jagged mountain heights, no sea of endless blue Neither words nor tears, nor silent fears will keep me from coming back to you. There was no signature... none was necessary. Aline closed her eyes, while her nose stung and hot tears squeezed from beneath her lashes. She pressed her lips briefly to the letter, not caring what Marcus thought. "It's a poem," she said unsteadily. "A terrible one." It was the loveliest thing she had ever read. She held it to her cheek, then used her sleeve to blot her eyes. "Let me see it." Immediately Aline tucked the poem into her bodice. "No, it's private." She swallowed against the tightness of her throat, willing the surge of unruly emotion to recede. "McKenna," she whispered, "how you devastate me.

There was another inspiring moment: a rough, choppy, moonlit night on the water, and the Dreadnaught's manager looked out the window suddenly to spy thousands of tiny baitfish breaking the surface, rushing frantically toward shore. He knew what that meant, as did everyone else in town with a boat, a gaff and a loaf of Wonder bread to use as bait: the stripers were running! Thousands of the highly prized, relatively expensive striped bass were, in a rare feeding frenzy, suddenly there for the taking. You had literally only to throw bread on the water, bash the tasty fish on the head with a gaff and then haul them in. They were taking them by the hundreds of pounds. Every restaurant in town was loading up on them, their parking lots, like ours, suddenly a Coleman-lit staging area for scaling, gutting and wrapping operations. The Dreadnaught lot, like every other lot in town, was suddenly filled with gore-covered cooks and dishwashers, laboring under flickering gaslamps and naked bulbs to clean, wrap and freeze the valuable white meat. We worked for hours with our knives, our hair sparkling with snowflake-like fish scales, scraping, tearing, filleting. At the end of the night's work, I took home a 35-pound monster, still twisted with rigor. My room-mates were smoking weed when I got back to our little place on the beach and, as often happens on such occasions, were hungry. We had only the bass, some butter and a lemon to work with, but we cooked that sucker up under the tiny home broiler and served it on aluminum foil, tearing at it with our fingers. It was a bright, moonlit sky now, a mean high tide was lapping at the edges of our house, and as the windows began to shake in their frames, a smell of white spindrift and salt saturated the air as we ate. It was the freshest piece of fish I'd ever eaten, and I don't know if it was due to the dramatic quality the weather was beginning to take on, but it hit me right in the brainpan, a meal that made me feel better about things, made me better for eating it, somehow even smarter, somehow . . . It was a protein rush to the cortex, a clean, three-ingredient ingredient high, eaten with the hands. Could anything be better than that?

You’re quick, but I’m an expert at hunting, Asia.” He steps closer, crowding me. My back hits the sharpness of the hedge, little branches dig into my back scratching at my skin. “Back off, Camden,” I whisper. “Why?” “Because I hate you. Because you’re an arsehole, ruling over a bunch of arseholes. Because you destroyed my friend’s life. Because we’re enemies. Because you hate me. Because you confuse me…” I admit. “How so?” he asks, the tenor of his voice lowering. He’s so close I can smell him and the deep musk of his cologne. It’s expensive and smacks of riches stolen not earned. Fakery. I wonder what his real smell is like beneath the heady aftershave he’s wearing. “Why do I confuse you, Asia?” he persists, crowding me more. Spikes of fear and… excitement run amok inside my chest. Fuck sake.

Well, I don’t know about you girls,” Patti called out, “but I’m starving. You wanna help me throw everything together before I go check on the chicken?” The twins shared uncertain expressions. “Sure, we’ll help,” I answered for them. “What do you need us to do?” “All right, how about you and Marna make the salad, and Ginger can help me bake this cake.” Their eyes filled with horror. “You mean like chopping things?” Marna whispered. “Yeah. It’s not hard. We’ll do it together.” At my prompting they stood but made no move toward the kitchen with me. “I’m not sure you ought to trust me with a knife,” Marna said. “Or me with baked goods,” Ginger added. I’d never seen her so unsure of herself. If it were just me making the request, she’d tell me to go screw myself, but neither girl seemed to know how to act around Patti. They fidgeted and glanced at the kitchen. Patti came over and took Ginger by the arm. “You’ll both be fine,” Patti insisted. “It’ll be fun!” The seriousness of the twins in the kitchen was comical. They took each step of their jobs with slow, attentive detail, checking and double-checking the measurements while Patti ran out to flip the chicken. Somewhere halfway through, the girls loosened up and we started chatting. Patti put Ginger at ease in a way I’d never seen her. At one point we were all laughing and I realized I’d never seen Ginger laugh in a carefree way, only the mean kind of amusement brought on at someone else’s expense. Usually mine. Ginger caught me looking and straightened, smile disappearing. Patti watched with her keen, wise eyes. She wasn’t missing the significance of any gesture here. When she returned from getting the chicken off the grill, Ginger said, “Oh, that smells divine, Miss Patti.” Who was this complimenting girl? Patti smiled and thanked her. Ginger was so proud of the cake when it was finished that she took several pictures of it with her phone. She even wanted a picture of her and Patti holding the cake together, which nearly made Patti burst with motherly affection. I couldn’t even manage to feel jealous as Patti heaped nurture on Ginger. It was so sweet it made my eyes sting. Marna kept sending fond glances at her sister. “I did that part right there all by myself,” Ginger said to Marna, pointing to the frosting trim. “Brilliant, isn’t it?” “Bang-up job, Gin.” Marna squeezed her sister around the shoulder.

Like other species, we evolved in wilderness and although we are now able to satisfy many of our physical needs outside it (at least in the short term), psychologically we still need the vital diversity, complexity, grandeur, and beauty of wild places. We need to feel connected to something tangible that can be seen, smelled, tasted, that is much greater than out own fleeting existence. Call it religion. There are untold millions who believe in this religion although they may not come out and say so, mostly because its tenets are so deeply ingrained as to be taken for granted. No organized faith is therefore necessary. To me and others of this religion a wilderness made by God and/or by the mechanism of evolution is at least as, if not more, holy than a cathedral made by man, and to harm it is a desecration. I see enough glimpses of this wilderness in my forest to feel inspired by a feeling of interconnectedness with the web of life. It gives me a dream. It is a realistic dream that is not destructive, and that all can take part in and enjoy the results. Preserving and fostering the fantastic life on earth grants infinitely more practical and intellectual rewards than the expensive but trivial knowledge of whether there are microbes on Mars.

Pure? What does it mean? The tongues of hell Are dull, dull as the triple Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable Of licking clean The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin. The tinder cries. The indelible smell Of a snuffed candle! Love, love, the low smokes roll From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel, Such yellow sullen smokes Make their own element. They will not rise, But trundle round the globe Choking the aged and the meek, The weak Hothouse baby in its crib, The ghastly orchid Hanging its hanging garden in the air, Devilish leopard! Radiation turned it white And killed it in an hour. Greasing the bodies of adulterers Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. The sin. The sin. Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher’s kiss. Three days. Three nights. Lemon water, chicken Water, water make me retch. I am too pure for you or anyone. Your body Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern—— My head a moon Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive. Does not my heat astound you! And my light! All by myself I am a huge camellia Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush. I think I am going up, I think I may rise—— The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I Am a pure acetylene Virgin Attended by roses, By kisses, by cherubim, By whatever these pink things mean! Not you, nor him Nor him, nor him (My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)—— To Paradise.

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in the Rogue River up in Oregon where he knows an abandoned mining camp, or for blattin around the desert roads, for suddenly reappearing in town to get drunk, and a marvelous poet himself, has that certain something that young hip teenagers probably wanta imitate–For one thing is one of the world's best talkers, and funny too–As I'll show–It was he and George Baso who hit on the fantastically simple truth that everybody in America was walking around with a dirty behind, but everybody, because the ancient ritual of washing with water after the toilet had not occurred in all the modern antisepticism–Says Dave "People in America have all these racks of drycleaned clothes like you say on their trips, they spatter Eau de Cologne all over themselves, they wear Ban and Aid or whatever it is under their armpits, they get aghast to see a spot on a shirt or a dress, they probably change underwear and socks maybe even twice a day, they go around all puffed up and insolent thinking themselves the cleanest people on earth and they're walkin around with dirty azzoles–Isnt that amazing?give me a little nip on that tit" he says reaching for my drink so I order two more, I've been engrossed, Dave can order all the drinks he wants anytime, "The President of the United States, the big ministers of state, the great bishops and shmishops and big shots everywhere, down to the lowest factory worker with all his fierce pride, movie stars, executives and great engineers and presidents of law firms and advertising firms with silk shirts and neckties and great expensive traveling cases in which they place these various expensive English imported hair brushes and shaving gear and pomades and perfumes are all walkin around with dirty azzoles! All you gotta do is simply wash yourself with soap and water! it hasn't occurred to anybody in America at all! it's one of the funniest things I've ever heard of! dont you think it's marvelous that we're being called filthy unwashed beatniks but we're the only ones walkin around with clean azzoles?"–The whole azzole shot in fact had spread swiftly and everybody I knew and Dave knew from coast to coast had embarked on this great crusade which I must say is a good one–In fact in Big Sur I'd instituted a shelf in Monsanto's outhouse where the soap must be kept and everyone had to bring a can of water there on each trip–Monsanto hadnt heard about it yet, "Do you realize that until we tell poor Lorenzo Monsanto the famous writer that he is walking around with a dirty azzole he will be doing just that?"–"Let's go tell him right now!"–"Why of course if we wait another minute...and besides do you know what it does to people to walk around with a dirty azzole? it leaves a great yawning guilt that they cant understand all day, they go to work all cleaned up in the morning and you can smell all that freshly laundered clothes and Eau de Cologne in the commute train yet there's something gnawing at them, something's wrong, they know something's wrong they dont know just what!"–We rush to tell Monsanto at once in the book store around the corner. (Big Sur, Chap. 11)

So now I was a beauty editor. In some ways, I looked the part of Condé Nast hotshot—or at least I tried to. I wore fab Dior slap bracelets and yellow plastic Marni dresses, and I carried a three-thousand-dollar black patent leather Lanvin tote that Jean had plunked down on my desk one afternoon. (“This is . . . too shiny for me,” she’d explained.) My highlights were by Marie Robinson at Sally Hershberger Salon in the Meatpacking District; I had a chic lavender pedicure—Versace Heat Nail Lacquer V2008—and I smelled obscure and expensive, like Susanne Lang Midnight Orchid and Colette Black Musk Oil. But look closer. I was five-four and ninety-seven pounds. The aforementioned Lanvin tote was full of orange plastic bottles from Rite Aid; if you looked at my hands digging for them, you’d see that my fingernails were dirty, and that the knuckle on my right hand was split from scraping against my front teeth. My chin was broken out from the vomiting. My self-tanner was uneven because I always applied it when I was strung out and exhausted—to conceal the exhaustion, you see—and my skin underneath the faux-glow was full-on Corpse Bride. A stylist had snipped out golf-ball-size knots that had formed at the back of my neck when I was blotto on tranquilizers for months and stopped combing my hair. My under-eye bags were big enough to send down the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week: I hadn’t slept in days. I hadn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time in months. And I hadn’t slept without pills in years. So even though I wrote articles about how to take care of yourself—your hair, your skin, your nails—I was falling apart.

I had to drive through a very poor and largely Hispanic section of Miami to get to the apartment complex where Casey Martin had died. There were a lot of beautiful women on the sidewalks and at the outdoor cafés, a lot of tough guys and a lot of guys who weren’t tough but trying to look like they were. The streets were alive with what criminally passed for music nowadays, and there were smells of cooking in the air that suggested savory tastes. Small, hole-in-the-wall shops marked one end, and some more upscale stores the other. The dividing line between the two was discernible not just by the stores, but the women. The women and even younger girls at the lower income end seemed softer, friendlier, quicker with a genuine smile. The ones walking into the trendy places were just as pretty, more expensively dressed, but more apt to express scorn than produce a spontaneous smile. The upscale women appeared to be from a different planet. For them, everything was sexist, everything a slight. They were eternal victims, even though the entire world was in their favor. The women at the poor end fell in love, watched out for their men, while the more affluent were stand-offish and demanding, making certain any man “lucky” enough to be with them lived in the right zip code, had the right amount of bling to give them, and above all, had been properly neutered. The balls of their boyfriends and husbands — sometimes they had both — were always in their handbag, somewhere between the trendy lip liner and eye shadow. A kiss from one of the poor girls was a sweet gift, filled with passion and tenderness, even if it could only last a night. A kiss from an uptown girl meant you’d checked off all her right boxes, and she needed to fulfill her duty. Girls without money were from Venus, girls with money were from Mars.

Again she heard that crackling hiss, and her nose filled with the smell of burning sugar. It was stronger this time, a sweet, dense cloud of perfume. Suddenly, she was back at the Menagerie, a thick hand grasping her wrist, demanding. Inej had gotten good at anticipating when a memory might seize her, bracing for it, but this time she wasn’t prepared. It came at her, more insistent than the wind on the wire, sending her mind sprawling. Though he smelled of vanilla, beneath it, she could smell garlic. She felt the slither of silk all around her as if the bed itself were a living thing. Inej didn’t remember all of them. As the nights at the Menagerie had strung together, she had become better at numbing herself, vanishing so completely that she almost didn’t care what was done to the body she left behind. She learned that the men who came to the house never looked too closely, never asked too many questions. They wanted an illusion, and they were willing to ignore anything to preserve that illusion. Tears, of course, were forbidden. She had cried the first night. Tante Heleen had used the switch on her, then the cane, then choked her until she’d passed out. The next time, Inej’s fear was greater than her sorrow. She learned to smile, to whisper, to arch her back and make the sounds Tante Heleen’s customers required. She still wept, but the tears were never shed. They filled the empty place inside her, a well of sadness where, each night, she sank like a stone. The Menagerie was one of the most expensive pleasure houses in the Barrel, but its customers were no kinder than those who frequented the dollar houses and alley girls. In some ways, Inej came to understand, they were worse. When a man spends that much coin, said the Kaelish girl, Caera, he thinks he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants. There were young men, old men, handsome men, ugly men. There was the man who cried and struck her when he could not perform. The man who wanted her to pretend it was their wedding night and tell him that she loved him. The man with sharp teeth like a kitten who had bitten at her breasts until she’d bled. Tante Heleen added the price of the blood-speckled sheets and the days of work Inej missed to her indenture. But he hadn’t been the worst.

They could not speak. To be in Alexander’s arms, to smell him, to hear his breathing, his voice again… Shh, shh, he was still whispering and holding her, pulling off her hat, her hairnet, her hairpins, letting her black hair fall down. His hands were in it. His eyes were closed. Perhaps he was imagining her hair was not black but blonde again. The way Alexander was touching her now, she could tell that he was blind and had not yet learned to see—he was holding her in that impossible choke that had to do not quite with love or passion, but somehow with both and with neither. The embrace wasn’t an alloy, it was a conflagration of anguish and bitter relief and fear. Tatiana could tell Alexander would like to have spoken more, but he couldn’t, and so he sat on the hay with his legs open, while she kneeled in front of him, folded into his arms, and every once in a while from his shuddering body would come a Shh, shh… Not for her. Not for Tatiana. For himself. Continuing to hold her, Alexander lowered her onto the straw. His trembling limbs surrounded her. Tatiana was barely breathing, her own body convulsing. To rage, to quell— They didn’t know what to do—to undress? To stay clothed? She couldn’t move, nor want to. His lips were on her neck, her clavicles, he was clawing at her, ripping open her tunic, baring her breasts to his desperate gasping mouth. She wanted to whisper his name, to moan maybe. Tears kept trickling down her temples. He removed from himself and her only what was necessary. He didn’t so much enter her as break her open. Her mouth remained in a mute screaming O, her hands clutched him, not close enough, and through the whisper of grief, through the cry of desire, Tatiana felt that Alexander, in his complete abandon, was making love to her as if he were being pulled from the cross to which he was still attached by nails. His gripping her, his ferocious, unremitting movement was so intense that Tatiana felt consciousness yield to— Oh my God, Shura, please…she mouthed inaudibly. But it could not be any other way. Violent release came for Alexander at the expense of Tatiana’s momentary lapse of reason, as she cried out, her pleas carrying through the barn, to the basin, to the river, to the sky. He remained on top of her without moving, without pulling away. His body was shaking. He couldn’t be any closer. She held him closer still…And then… Shh, shh. That wasn’t Alexander. That was Tatiana. They both fell asleep. Still they hadn’t spoken.

- Yeah, this is it. This is war... it takes you away from your loved ones, takes you to places you had no idea about, takes you through suffering and deprivation, hunger, thirst, sickness and wounds. It forces you to see, do and live through terrible experiences that you wish you had never known, and once you have, to forget them as soon as possible. It takes your friends and comrades and, if it doesn't kill them, then it turns them into something they don't even know what they are. And in the end, if you get to live those moments, when peace is announced and you begin to believe that you will return home, to your life, to the family and community you left behind, to the state of normality you dreamed of when it was harder on the front, you will find that it is not like that at all. - Why, Sarge? College Boy asked... - Because, you see, College Boy, after the end of the war not only you changed, but also those back home. They too had their struggles, their deprivations, sufferings, illnesses, injuries. Whether you got hot food today depends only on the conditions at the front and how much the quartermaster and subsistence services cared. But, back home, they have to search, they have to struggle without being guaranteed that they will succeed in finding something to put on the table for their children, or their elders. And so, they can go for days on end, starving. You, if you are sick or wounded, the military hospital will treat you as best they can. But they, at home, a visit to the family doctor is an expense that most can't afford and so they end up in the hospital, which is overcrowded, when it's too late, often. So they are changed too, not just you. You, however, have something more than them. You, you've known the chaos of frontline combat, the cruelty of taking the lives of others like yourself. And, like the sheepdog who fights the wolf, when it returns to the fold it carries both it's own blood and the wolf's. And the sheep, they don't see the wolf anymore, but they don't see the dog that was guarding them either. They only see the fangs showing through the open, blood-stained snout. They smell the scent of the wolf that has been impregnated into the dog's fur in battle and then, at that very moment, they no longer recognize the one who stood by them, no matter what the weather. It's the same with you. They fear you, and no matter how much they smile at you or say words that make you think you are welcome, you actually see fear and distrust in their eyes.

I’ll exhale hot breath into my palm before touching you, because I have cold hands, and also because your hands smell like bubblegum.

She smells expensive, so when I fuck her …it feels a little bit like shoplifting.

earth are you doing here?” He came to tower above her, looking fresh and clean and smelling of expensive cologne. Though intimidating in his power suit, his face was grave and worry glittered in his eyes. “I came as soon as I heard. Where’s Hannah? Is she going to be all right?” “They don’t know yet,” she

I drove to the bar Theodosha had called from and parked on the street. The bar was a gray, dismal place, ensconced like a broken matchbox under a dying oak tree, its only indication of gaiety a neon beer sign that flickered in one window. She was at a table in back, the glow of the jukebox lighting her face and the deep blackness of her hair. She tipped a collins glass to her mouth, her eyes locked on mine. “Let me take you home,” I said. “No, thanks,” she replied. “Getting swacked?” “Merchie and I had another fight. He says he can’t take my pretensions anymore. I love the word ‘pretensions.’” “That doesn’t mean you have to get drunk,” I said. “You’re right. I can get drunk for any reason I choose,” she replied, and took another hit from the glass. Then she added incongruously, “You once asked Merchie what he was doing in Afghanistan. The answer is he wasn’t in Afghanistan. He was in one of those other God-forsaken Stone Age countries to the north, helping build American airbases to protect American oil interests. Merchie says they’re going to make a fortune. All for the red, white, and blue.” “Who is they?” But her eyes were empty now, her concentration and anger temporarily spent. I glanced at the surroundings, the dour men sitting at the bar, a black woman sleeping with her head on a table, a parolee putting moves on a twenty-year-old junkie and mother of two children who was waiting for her connection. These were the people we cycled in and out of the system for decades, without beneficial influence or purpose of any kind that was detectable. “Let’s clear up one thing. Your old man came looking for trouble at the club today. I didn’t start it,” I said. “Go to a meeting, Dave. You’re a drag,” she said. “Give your guff to Merchie,” I said, and got up to leave. “I would. Except he’s probably banging his newest flop in the hay. And the saddest thing is I can’t blame him.” “I think I’m going to ease on out of this. Take care of yourself, kiddo,” I said. “Fuck that ‘kiddo’ stuff. I loved you and you were too stupid to know it.” I walked back outside into a misting rain and the clean smell of the night. I walked past a house where people were fighting behind the shades. I heard doors slamming, the sound of either a car backfiring or gunshots on another street, a siren wailing in the distance. On the corner I saw an expensive automobile pull to the curb and a black kid emerge from the darkness, wearing a skintight bandanna on his head. The driver of the car, a white man, exchanged money for something in the black kid’s hand. Welcome to the twenty-first century, I thought. I opened my truck door, then noticed the sag on the frame and glanced at the right rear tire. It was totally flat, the steel rim buried deep in the folds of collapsed rubber. I dropped the tailgate, pulled the jack and lug wrench out of the toolbox that was arc-welded to the bed of the truck, and fitted the jack under the frame. Just as I had pumped the flat tire clear of the puddle it rested in, I heard footsteps crunch on the gravel behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a short, thick billy club whip through the air. Just before it exploded across the side of my head, my eyes seemed to close like a camera lens on a haystack that smelled of damp-rot and unwashed hair and old shoes. I was sure as I slipped into unconsciousness that I was inside an ephemeral dream from which I would soon awake.

I slice fresh garlic, rub it into the meat with olive oil, then insert the thin wafers into tiny slits I cut along the grain. After rinsing my hands, I hold them to my face, inhale the garlic perfume still on my skin. I could easily wipe it away on the faucet, a spoon, any piece of stainless steel, but I've never understood why people find it offensive. It's the smell of anticipation, the promise of a wonderful meal in the offing. Opening the spice cabinet, I breathe in the fragrance of all those jars I left behind: saffron threads, cardamom pods, star anise, Tahitian vanilla. I almost weep at the sight of my Fleur de Sel. No one ever gets my obsession with sea salt, especially expensive sea salt. They don't understand that it brightens the flavor of food, wakes it up, like a condiment. Regular table salt just makes food salty.

As I unbutton him, I kiss his skin— warm, fragrant, smelling of soap, his expensive cologne and him. Done, I slip him out of the garment and lay over his heart which thuds heavy and deep beneath my breast. Except for my gossamer-thin robe, we're almost skin to skin.

They walk into the hop field. Carefully. There is an enveloping smell, a resiny odor not unlike marijuana, the sharp smell that comes off an expensive beer.

You can’t live off your big events because after you savor them for a moment, God will birth a new dream in your heart, something new to look forward to. I’ve talked to many people who have made it to the very top in their fields. The one common regret I hear is that they succeeded, but at the expense of their families. They say, “If I could do it over again, I would take time to stop and smell the roses. I would be there for my children’s Little League games. I wouldn’t live so stressed and uptight, thinking, ‘If I could just get to the next level, then I’ll slow down and enjoy my life.’” Slow down and enjoy the journey right now. Take time for the people God has put in your life. They won’t always be there. The Scripture says in James 4:14 that our lives are like a mist. We’re here for a moment and then we’re gone.

A few thousand years later, scientists finally put saffron to the test in a head-to-head trial against the antidepressant drug Prozac for the treatment of clinical depression. Both the spice and the drug worked equally well in reducing depression symptoms.44 As you can see in the box here, this may not be saying much, but at the very least, the saffron was safer in terms of side effects. For example, 20 percent of people in the Prozac group suffered sexual dysfunction, a common occurrence with many antidepressant medications, whereas no one in the saffron group did. However, saffron may be one of those rare cases in which the natural remedy is more expensive than the drug. Saffron is the world’s most expensive spice. It is harvested from crocus flowers, specifically the dried stigmas (the threadlike tips inside the flower), which are ground up to make the spice. You need more than fifty thousand crocuses—enough to cover a football field—to produce just a single pound of saffron.45 A Prozac-equivalent dose of saffron may cost more than twice as much as the drug, but a subsequent study found that even just smelling saffron appeared to have psychological benefits. Though researchers diluted the spice so much that the study subjects couldn’t detect its odor, they still noted a significant drop in stress hormones measured in women who sniffed the saffron for twenty minutes compared with those who spent twenty minutes smelling a placebo, along with significant improvement in the women’s symptoms of anxiety.

She possessed that odd blousy quality that is independent of good clothes and well-dressed hair and skilful maquillage. Her figure was full but good and she held herself well; her dress was probably expensive, her thick, dark hair looked as though it had spent the past two hours in the hands of a hairdresser. Yet she remained, unmistakably and irrevocably, a slattern. There was something temporary, an air of suspended animation, about her. It seemed as if at any moment the hair should begin to straggle, the dress slip down negligently over one soft, creamy shoulder, the hand with the diamond cluster ring which now hung loosely at her side reach up to pluck at pink shoulder straps and pat abstractly at the hair. You saw it in her dark eyes. The mouth was firm and good-humoured in the loose, raddled flesh about it; but the eyes were humid with sleep and of the carelessness of sleep. They made you think of things you had forgotten, of clumsy gilt hotel chairs strewn with discarded clothes and of grey dawn light slanting through closed shutters, of attar of roses and the musty smell of heavy curtains on brass rings, of the sound of the warm, slow breathing of a sleeper against the ticking of a clock in the darkness. Yet now the eyes were open and watchful, moving about while the mouth smiled a greeting here and there. Latimer watched her turn suddenly and go towards the bar.

It's always the same with relationships: As if they were a fancy sheepskin jacket, you get yourself one to stay warm on cold winter nights and show it off a bit. At first, it fits you perfectly until suddenly it becomes too loose, too tight, too long, too wide and from then on you don't look after it anymore. You stop taking care of it, throw up all over it on the next binge, and when you wake up in the morning the whole house smells of wet sheep and stomach acid. That's how, sooner rather than later, it ends up in the old clothes container and even though you promise yourself that next time you'll buy the expensive care product that the saleswoman with the fake smile has tried to sell you, you still won't do it, because it sounds like effort and who would put any into something they'll end up losing anyway?

To see the screen Jeremiah had to keep craning his neck to the right and lean toward me. His hair smelled like Asian pears, this expensive shampoo Susannah used. It was funny. He was this big tall football guy now, and he smelled so sweet. Every time he leaned in, I breathed in the sweet smell of his hair. I wished my hair smelled like that.

And then his arms were suddenly around her. For a split second, time stood still for Laurel, and what was more, she wished it to. She wanted to preserve that moment, the moment just before, when everything was still possible and perfect. When the night was bright with anticipation and the promise of a kiss hung in the air between them, filling the room with a hair-raising charge like the feeling just before a bolt of lightning strikes during a terrific thunderstorm. He stepped closer and she breathed in deeply. The scent of a clean masculine soap, the rich spice of an expensive cologne, and beneath it all, the duke himself, earthy, woodsy, and so very male. Laurel’s eyes closed as his body pressed against hers. It was very firm and hard, just as she had imagined it would be. The sensation was intriguing. She could feel his breath on her face. Smell the rich caramel notes of the whisky he had been drinking. He was very close now. Then the moment was over and a new one began, and things would never, ever be the same.

Within one day of training, Alli was showing exceptional skill at identification. She quickly learned to recognize 300 individual samples in an exercise that asked the dogs to distinguish individual bears by their scat, ignoring the 20 or so samples that weren't correct and signaling to the one that was. Though identifications can be verified with genetics, DNA testing was much more expensive at the time Smith began work with Alli than rescuing a dog and taking a day to teach it what to do. The training is simple: Give the dog a sample of scat to smell. Then, continue to move it farther away until it is hidden or mixed in with other samples. When the dog Identifies it correctly, throw a ball as a reward, Repeat.

To bring home the centrality of consciousness to life, consider a devil’s bargain in which you gain unlimited wealth at the expense of your conscious experiences. You get all the money you want but must relinquish all subjective feeling, turning into a zombie. From the outside, everything appears normal—you speak, act, dispose of your vast riches, engage in a vigorous social life, and so on. Yet your inner life is gone; no more seeing, hearing, smelling, loving, hating, suffering, remembering, thinking, planning, imagining, dreaming, regretting, wanting, hoping, dreading. From your point of view, you might as well be dead, for it would feel the same—like nothing.

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 Ding-dong! --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances. Idiot! I hate strawberries! The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! She took another whiff and yet another. She sniffed him up and down like a dog before realizing what it was: the aroma of a woman’s cunt --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 Ding-dong! --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines, 1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances. Idiot! I hate strawberries! The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! And then.. She took another whiff and yet another. She sniffed him up and down like a dog before realizing what it was: the aroma of a woman’s cunt. --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 Ding-dong! --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines, 1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances. Idiot! I hate strawberries! The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! And then.. She took another whiff and yet another. She sniffed him up and down like a dog before realizing what it was: the aroma of a woman’s cunt. --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 Ding-dong! --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines, 1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances. Idiot! I hate strawberries! --Seraphima Vasilievna Karchevskaya Pavlova, Mrs, My Husband and I – Memoirs The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! And then.. She took another whiff and yet another. She sniffed him up and down like a dog before realizing what it was: the aroma of a woman’s cunt. --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines,1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances. Idiot! I hate strawberries! The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid!

Lily Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 Ding-dong! --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines, 1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances: Idiot! I hate strawberries! --Seraphima Vasilievna Karchevskaya Pavlova, Mrs, My Husband and I – Memoirs The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! And then.. She took another whiff and yet another. She sniffed him up and down like a dog before realizing what it was: the aroma of a woman’s cunt. --Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Gratuitous use of one particular French vulgarism nested in the English language since the Norman conquest of 1066 is well demonstrated by this Milan Kundera translation. One has to wonder if the original 1984 edition contained the word “pizda”? It is one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock. --Scholar Germaine Greer But of course a cunt, in French, as much as el coño in Spanish does not carry near enough as much uncouth weight as in English. The English language doesn’t exist. It’s just badly pronounced French. --Bernard Cerquiglini Quelle conne! Un con reste un con! --William Shakespeare, Last Words, Holy Trinity Church, Gropecunt Lane, Stratford upon Avon, April 23rd 1616

A perfume ought to punch you right on the nose ... I'm not going to sniff for three days to see if it smell or not? it has to have body, and what gives perfume body is the most expensive thing there is.

Frown deepening, Jared bounces a hand off the chair arm. 'You know you're different, Princess. And it's not just because you're some fancy, spoiled rich girl. Hell, you don't smell like anyone else. Money can't buy that smell.' I assume he wasn't talking about my expensive perfume, which money did in fact buy.

There is nothing more romantic than candles and flowers, except candles that smell like flowers and flowers that can be burned, as they flicker light while you dine alone and ponder how much of a romantic you are.

I have two mustaches, one over each eye. They smell like tits and ass, because that’s all I enjoy drinking.

The writer encountered a Muslim woman once in a narrow street of a predominantly Hindu town, in the quarter inhabited by moneylenders. The feeling he had was that she was coming in search of a loan. She wore the burkha, that unhygienic head-to-toe covering that turns a woman into a walking symbol of inefficient civic refuse collection and leaves you without even an impression of her eyes behind the slits she watches the gay world through, tempted but not tempting; a garment in all probability inflaming to her passions but chilling to her expectations of having them satisfied. Pity her for the titillation she must suffer. After she had passed there was a smell of Chanel No. 5, which suggested that she needed money because she liked expensive things. Perhaps she had a rebellious spirit, or laboured under a confusion of ideas and intentions. On the other hand she may merely have been submissive to her husband, drenching herself for his private delight with a scent she did not realize was also one of public invitation – and passed that day through the street of the moneylenders only because it was a short cut to the mosque. It was a Friday, and it is written in the Koran: ‘Believers, when the call is made for prayer on Friday, hasten to the remembrance of Allah and leave off all business. That would be best for you, if you but knew it. Then, when the prayers are ended, disperse and go in quest of Allah’s bounty.’ Perhaps, when the service was over, it was her intention to return by the way she had come.

hunt for digital greener grass, an attempt to smell roses that are elsewhere at the expense of the ones in front of you,

Kryptonite. I love their smell, their taste, the sounds they make when they come inside of me. But between a full-time job, law school, hours of reading cases, and study groups, I barely have time to sleep, much less date. Which is why I gave them up. “Which floor?” His upper crust Brit accent curls around my spine, making mush out of me. “Uh, nine.” I reach across to press the ‘9’ button, and a whiff of his scent reaches me—expensive cologne, clean soap, and a base note I suspect is just him. My legs, already wobbly from the mad dash from the Metro, turn to Jell-O. Damn! No wonder women stuff panties in his pockets. The man is pure sex on a stick. If anybody could tempt me to break my no-screwing-men vow, yeah, it would be Gabriel Storm. The door closes and someone coughs, alerting me to the other people in the elevator. Hoping no one noticed my temporary lapse of sanity, I look behind me. Only blank expressions greet me. Thank God. It won’t do for a rumor to spread around the office that I’ve been caught drooling over the COO of the company we are negotiating against. No one would take me seriously after that. I do the polite thing and wish good morning all around, get back a couple of nods before the car reaches the second floor, site of my law firm’s cafeteria. As soon as the door opens, the smell of cinnamon drifts into the car. Stuffed French toast day. Knowing what’s coming, I step to the side to avoid the stampede. Not that I blame them. With a limited supply of the delicious treat, it’s every employee for himself. When the doors slide shut, Gabriel Storm and I are the sole occupants in the car. For seven floors,

PICTURE A CREAM-COLORED couch. Now visualize one brooding dark-haired sex machine (I’m assuming, but I have a strong feeling about this) sitting on one end and one golden being of near perfection on the other. Then there’s me, in the middle, literally squished between two yummy smelling men, and…I just want to escape. The pizzas have been demolished (I ate half of one myself) and now an awkward silence has descended. It doesn't help that I keep thinking of pornos and threesomes. I am honestly waiting for corny seventies music to start. I was here first. I don’t feel like I should have to be the one to move. But I’m awfully uncomfortable. There are other places to sit in the room; a recliner even. Ya know, super comfy, so comfy you can recline. So one of them could move to that. I almost think they’re enjoying this. Like, they’re having fun at my expense because they know I think they’re hot. Why did I blurt that out? “So, what’s with the name Kennedy?” Blake wonders in his deep timbre that doesn’t really sound like Graham’s, but reminds me of him all the same. I turn my head to the right, careful not to move any other body part, and meet his challenging gray eyes. He’s, like, two inches away. So close I can see green flecks in his eyes. I think he’s a little too amused by my predicament, if the upward curve of his mouth is anything to go by. One inky black eyebrow lifts as he waits. “It’s my name.” I raise a single eyebrow back. I can do that too, the look says. His smile deepens. “Yeah, but, what were your parents thinking? Kennedy? For a girl? And technically it’s a last name.” My eyes narrow. Oh, so it’s to be like that, is it? “So is Blake,” I retort and give myself an imaginary pat on the back. “And Graham,” I add triumphantly. “Leave me out of this,” Graham states from my left... “Did your parents have a thing for the Kennedys?” Two eyebrows go up this time. I get my mental pistols ready—it’s obvious there’s going to be a showdown. I straighten my spine. “What do you mean by a thing?” My, totally in this moment one hundred and forty-nine percent resented, roommate groans. He shrugs one broad shoulder. “You know. An infatuation. An unhealthy obsession. Fanaticism. A thing.” “You really shouldn’t have started this,” Graham intercedes, leaning around me to give his brother a look. My face is on fire and my hands are in tight fists in my lap. I stare at the television, which is on and no one’s paying attention to, and say very softly, “I’ll have you know, the Kennedys were, and are, an iconic family. I feel it an honor to be named after them.” Blake grunts. “Do you deny it?” I ask the TV. “Nope. I just wondered about your family.” I jerk my head around and give him a look full of venom. “We will not discuss my family.” He holds his hands up in surrender, but there's a gleam in his eyes. What is wrong with this guy? “Easy there, Ken.” I growl. Graham sighs beside me. “Don’t call me that,” I state through gritted teeth. He looks over the top of my head. “Touchy, isn’t she?” Graham’s head slumps against the back of the couch. “So, Blake,” I begin in a sweet voice, “what’s up with you and red?” I go still, holding my breath. Did I really just say that? That was so not nice. I wait with anticipation and dread. Graham stops moving on the other side of the couch. Blake stares at me, his lips parted. Then he looks at his brother. “What’s she talking about?” My about to be annihilated roomie makes a sound of dismay. I twist around to glare at him. He looks like a young boy who just had his hand caught in the cookie jar; guilty and disappointed that his fun has been halted. “Don’t say the word red, huh?” I jump to my feet and back away until both men are within my line of vision. “You know what?” They both look at me, obviously not knowing what. “This means war!

Now, I regarded my opponent carefully, as if we were sitting across from each other over a chessboard. Zagaev had a round head, a double chin that his beard obscured pretty well and bristly hair that couldn’t decide to be gray or less gray. His age, duBois had reported, was only forty-three. His head was large, his pallor anemic. He nervously gripped and ungripped his hands every few seconds. I knew this only because I heard the tinkle of cuffs behind his back. He wore a thick gold chain around his neck and an amulet on which was an unlikely icon. I was pretty sure it was Tsar Alexander II, who I knew from my studies was a moderate reformer—by absolute-ruler standards—in mid-nineteenth-century Russia. Still, it was curious that a Chechnyan would choose this particular image. Zagaev’s clothes were expensive, more than I could afford, more than I wanted to. His suit was cut from vibrant blue silk, the color of the sky in a child’s fantasy book. His snakeskin shoes glittered in the jarring overhead light. His sweat was repulsive; I could smell body odor and onions from across the table. I

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines,1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances. Idiot! I hate strawberries! The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” * * * Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! WORDCUNT: 397

Lilly Samson, The Switch, Outtakes & Quotes, shameless manipulation of. A one minute reading test I am dog --Dog, Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans, 2007 Allergies disclaimer: One must stress that this book is not intended for the unwashed masses: I delayed showering after the last switch. I’ve created a Pavlovian response: he must associate its floral sweetness with sexual fulfilment. Adam has a “Pavlovian” reaction to Elena’s BO? Bribes her with cake to lessen the wrath when asking Elena to wash? He frowns, seeing that I’m silent and trembling. ‘My perfume was weak; hers much stronger.’ I say, my temper flaring. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the usual wasteman chatting up yours truly in Sarf London would probably assume that a big phat slice of Marks & Spencer’s Strawberry Pavlova will get him into the lady’s knickers. Nope, she’s allergic to stupid. A merengue dessert will hardly cause a rash, but a moron makes her skin crawl. A female of the human species displayed an unconditioned response: shoved cream cake into the courting male’s face. Requested a substantial meal of Shchavel Borscht with hard boiled egg --Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian Cookbook for Love, Romance, and mating behaviours: Humans, 1904 --Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, Neutral Triggers & Conditioned Responses: Canines,1907 It is I! I make the best Byzantine shchi to entice a female. --Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls, Notebook (1841-1844), The Nose and other short stories Right! She turned her nose up at his advances. Idiot! I hate strawberries! The lady did not have a sweet tooth. Man didn’t do his research. This is a cleverly written book. So some of you, keen aspiring readers, please have your Oxford fictionary handy. Just saying! In the words of our hero: Bloody pricey...But God, it is a nice smell. Don’t you like it? And then he “squirts onto her wrist, playfully.” * * * Shhhh.. Doctors Pavlov & Chekhov are not amused. Shall we shuffle the deck with these random quotes? One minute! Plenty of time is a full minute for a skilled bullshit dealer to shuffle themselves out of a gloomy Russian medical clerical predicament. Not tricky when Lily Samson gives treats: All around us are dog walkers, their expensive breeds racing about, barking and sniffing each other’s genitals. ..thinking it all through those awful dog ornaments she hated... feisty feminist...she simply hates them. Men are so stupid! WORDCUNT: 397

The Did-You-Come-Yets of the Western World When he says to you: You look so beautiful you smell so nice – how I've missed you – and did you come yet? It means nothing, and he is smaller than a mouse's fart. Don't listen to him... Go to Annaghdown Pier with your father's rod. Don't necessarily hold out for the biggest one; oftentimes the biggest ones are the smallest in the end. Bring them all home, but not together. One by one is the trick; avoid red herrings and scandal. Maybe you could take two on the shortest day of the year. Time is the cheater here not you, so don't worry. Many will bite the usual bait; they will talk their slippery way through fine clothes and expensive perfume, fishing up your independence. These are the did-you-come-yets of the western world, the feather and fin rufflers. Pity for them they have no wisdom. Others will bite at any bait. Maggot, suspender, or dead worm. Throw them to the sharks. In time one will crawl out from under thigh-land. Although drowning he will say, ‘Woman I am terrified, why is this house shaking? And you’ll know he’s the one.

The clacks?” said Moist. “I daresay the clacks is wonderful if you wish to know the prawn market figures from Genua. But can you write S.W.A.L.K. on a clacks? Can you seal it with a loving kiss? Can you cry tears onto a clacks, can you smell it, can you enclose a pressed flower? A letter is more than just a message. And a clacks is so expensive in any case that the average man in the street can just about afford it in a time of crisis: GRANDADS DEAD FUNERAL TUES. A day’s wages to send a message as warm and human as a thrown knife? But a letter is real.

Besides being a nasty habit that made her hair smell and stained her fingers, it was an expensive one.

I reached inside the bag. It was a small jar of grayish-red crystals. "Is this..." "I had a friend pick it up for me in New York." "Come in. I want to take a closer look at this stuff." I made a beeline for the kitchen, and Nico followed behind. Under the bright kitchen lights, I examined the contents of the jar. Inside there was Amethyst Bamboo Salt, one of the rarest, most expensive salts in the world. The crystals were shaped irregularly and smelled both sweet and smoky, like a campfire for s'mores.

Amazon’s Leadership Principles6 Customer Obsession. Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Ownership. Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say, “that’s not my job.” Invent and Simplify. Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time. Are Right, A Lot. Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs. Learn and Be Curious. Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them. Hire and Develop the Best. Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice. Insist on the Highest Standards. Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Think Big. Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers. Bias for Action. Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking. Frugality. Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense. Earn Trust. Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

When I have pictorially captured smell, the most palpable of the senses, the next thing will be to imprison sound- vulgarly speaking, to bottle it. Just think a moment. Force is as imperishable as matter; indeed, as I have been somewhat successful in showing, it is matter. Now, when a sound wave is once started, it is only lost through an indefinite extension of its circumference. Catch that sound wave, sir! Catch it in a bottle, then its circumference cannot extend. You may keep the sound wave forever if you will only keep it corked up tight. The only difficulty is in bottling it in the first place. I shall attend to the details of that operation just as soon as I have managed to photograph the confounded rotten-egg smell of sulphydric acid." The professor stirred up the offensive mixture with a glass rod, and continued: "While my object in bottling sound is mainly scientific, I must confess that I see in success in that direction a prospect of considerable pecuniary profit. I shall be prepared at no distant day to put operas in quart bottles, labeled and assorted, and contemplate a series of light and popular airs in ounce vials at prices to suit the times. You know very well that it costs a ten-dollar bill now to take a lady to hear Martha or Mignon, rendered in first-class style. By the bottle system, the same notes may be heard in one's own parlor at a comparatively trifling expense. I could put the operas into the market at from eighty cents to a dollar a bottle. For oratorios and symphonies I should use demijohns, and the cost would of course be greater. I don't think that ordinary bottles would hold Wagner's music. It might be necessary to employ carboys. Sir, if I were of the sanguine habit of you Americans, I should say that there were millions in it. Being a phlegmatic Teuton, accustomed to the precision and moderation of scientific language, I will merely say that in the success of my experiments with sound I see a comfortable income, as well as great renown. A SCIENTIFIC MARVEL By this time the professor had another negative, but an eager examination of it yielded nothing more satisfactory than before. He sighed and continued: "Having photographed smell and bottled sound, I shall proceed to a project as much higher than this as the reflective faculties are higher than the perceptive, as the brain is more exalted than the ear or nose. "I am perfectly satisfied that elements of mind are just as susceptible of detection and analysis as elements of matter. Why, mind is matter. "The soul spectroscope, or, as it will better be known, Dummkopf's duplex self-registering soul spectroscope, is based on the broad fact that whatever is material may be analyzed and determined by the position of the Frauenhofer lines upon the spectrum. If soul is matter, soul may thus be analyzed and determined. Place a subject under the light, and the minute exhalations or

He smells pleasantly of English cigarettes, expensive perfume, honey, his skin has taken on the scent of silk, the fruity smell of silk tussore, the smell of gold . . .

It's always the same with relationships: like a fancy sheepskin jacket you would get yourself some to stay warm on cold winter nights and show them off a bit. At first, they would fit you perfectly until they would suddenly become too loose, too tight, too long, too short and from then on you would just not look after them any more. You would stop taking care of them, throw up all over them on the next binge and when you would wake up in the morning, the whole house would smell like wet sheep and stomach acid. Sooner rather than later, they would end up in the old clothes container and although you would promise yourself that next time you'd buy the expensive care product that the saleswoman with the fake smile has tried to sell you, you still won't do it, as it sounds like a lot effort and who would put any into something they end up losing, anyway?

She'd make all the ingredients individually for her kimchi-jjigae," he went on. "Anchovy stock. Her own kimchi, which made the cellar smell like garlic and red pepper all the time. The pork shoulder simmering away. And when she'd mix it all together..." He trailed off, tipping his head back against the seat. It was the first movement he'd made over the course of his speaking; his hands rested still by his sides. "It was everything. Salty, sour, briny, rich, and just a tiny bit sweet from the sesame oil. I've been trying to make it for years, and mine has never turned out like hers." My anxiety manifestation popped up out of nowhere, hovering invisibly over one off Luke's shoulders. The boy doesn't know that the secret ingredient in every grandma's dish is love. He needs some more love in his life, said Grandma Ruth, eyeing me beadily. Maybe yours. Is he Jewish? I shook my head, banishing her back to the ether. "I get the feeling," I said. "I can make a mean matzah ball soup, with truffles and homemade broth boiled for hours from the most expensive free-range chickens, and somehow it never tastes as good as the soup my grandma would whip up out of canned broth and frozen vegetables." Damn straight, Grandma Ruth said smugly. Didn't I just banish you? I thought, but it was no use. "So is that the best thing you've ever eaten?" Luke asked. "Your grandma's matzah ball soup?" I shook my head. I opened my mouth, about to tell him about Julie Chee's grilled cheese with kimchi and bacon and how it hadn't just tasted of tart, sour kimchi and crunchy, smoky bacon and rich, melted cheese but also belonging and bedazzlement and all these feelings that didn't have names, like the dizzy, accomplished feeling you'd get after a Saturday night dinner rush when you were a little drunk but not a lot drunk because you had to wake up in time for Sunday brunch service, but then everything that happened with Derek and the Green Onion kind of changed how I felt about it. Painted over it with colors just a tiny bit off. So instead I told him about a meal I'd had in Lima, Peru, after backpacking up and down Machu Picchu. "Olive tofu with octopus, which you wouldn't think to put together, or at least I wouldn't have," I said. The olive tofu had been soft and almost impossibly creamy, tasting cleanly of olives, and the octopus had been meaty and crispy charred on the outside, soft on the inside.

Her hair smelled like soap and almonds and cigarettes. His chest smelled of damp wool and an expensive cologne she recognized, tobacco sweetened with vanilla.

Buy a used car. It could be really depressing to have to do this. But when it’s your decision, to reach your goals, that’s another story. And it will save you thousands of dollars. That “new-car smell” is the most expensive fragrance in the world.

In Xenophon's summary of the allegory [Prodicus' "Choice of Heracles'' ] the young Heracles has sat down at a crossroads, not knowing which path to follow through life. As he sits deliberating, two women appear to him. Their physical appearance is a study in contrasts, and they are clearly villainness and heroine. Evil (Kakia) is overfed, plump, rouged, and all powdered up. She wears revealing clothes and is vain, viewing herself in a mirror and turning around to see if she is being admired. Virtue (Arete), on the other hand, wears simple white; her only adornments are purity, modesty, and temperance. These apparitions proceed to give speeches in praise of the life that they can give Heracles. Evil speaks first-an ominous choice, since in such debates, the first speaker typically loses. She offers Heracles a life of free, effortless pleasure. There will be no delights that he will not taste, no difficulties that he will not avoid. He need never worry about wars and affairs. All he need trouble himself about will be what food or drink to take; what to look at, hear, smell or touch for his pleasure; what partner he might enjoy, how he might sleep softest, and how he can obtain all these with the least toil (aponOtata). If ever there are shortages, he will not suffer ponos or hardship either in body or soul. Rather "you will enjoy those things that others work to produce, and you will not hold back from profiting everywhere." Evil tells Heracles her name, but adds confidentially that to her friends she is known as Happiness (Eudaimonia). Very different is the tone and substance of Virtue's argument. For while Evil would have Heracles live for himself alone and treat others as means to his self-gratification, Virtue begins by saying that she knows Heracles' parents and nature: Heracles must live up to his Olympian heritage. Therefore she will not deceive him with "hymns to pleasure." Evil's enticements are in fact contrary to the divine ordering, "for the gods have given men nothing good without ponos and diligence." There follows a series of emphatic verbal nouns to hammer home this truth: if you want divine favor, you must worship the gods; if you want to be admired, you must do good works for your friends; if you want to be honored, you must benefit your city and Greece; if you want the earth to bear crops, you must cultivate the land. Flocks require tending, war demands practice. And if you want strength (Heracles' trademark), you must accustom your body to serve your will, and you must train "with ponoi and sweat:' At this point, Evil bursts in to deplore such a harsh lifestyle. She is immediately silenced, however, as Virtue argues that duality is essential to a sense of fulfillment and even to pleasure itself. For paradoxically, ponos (pain, struggle) makes pleasure pleasurable. Evil's vision of happiness is one of continual and languid orgy-food without hunger, drink without thirst, sex without desire, sleep without weariness. But as experience shows, continual partying soon loses its zest, even if one goes so far as to cool expensive drinks "with snow" in summertime. By contrast, Virtue's own followers have no real trouble in satisfying their desires. They do so not by committing violence against others or living off others' labor, but by simply "holding off until they actually do desire" food or drink. Hunger is the best sauce, and it is free. Furthermore, Virtue appeals to Heracles' native idealism. What hedonists have ever accomplished any "fine work" (ergon kalon)? None, for no beautiful or divine deed is ever done "without me [Virtue] ." Therefore, wherever there are energetic, effective people, Virtue is present: she is a helper to craftsmen, a guard of the household, a partner in peacetime ponoi, an ally for the works (erga) of war, the best support of friendship. To choose Evil would be shameful and not even extremely pleasurable, while with Virtue one will lead the most varied and honorable life.

It's always the same with relationships: As if they were a fancy sheepskin jacket, you get yourself one to stay warm on cold winter nights and show it off a bit. At first, it fits you perfectly until suddenly it becomes too loose, too tight, too long, too wide and from then on you just don't look after it anymore. You stop taking care of it, throw up all over it on the next binge, and when you wake up in the morning the whole house smells of wet sheep and stomach acid. That's how, sooner rather than later, it ends up in the old clothes container and even though you promise yourself that next you'll buy the expensive care product that the saleswoman with the fake smile has tried to sell you, you still won't do it, as it sounds like effort and who would put any work into something they end up losing, anyway?

He smelled of her lavender soap—her expensive lavender soap that she’d once warned him to never use again.

His burgundy sweater was so soft it might as well have been made of angel kisses. I breathed in, deep and reflexively, and then immediately wished I hadn't because, god, he smelled good. Beyond good. I had no idea if it was some sort of expensive cologne, or the soap he used--- or if all vampires smelled this amazing if you breathed them in right at the source. All I knew was that the scent of him made me want to crawl inside his soft, fitted shirt and wrap myself up in it. Right there, on the crowded Red Line train, all the other passengers be damned.