Today's bug of the day report

It was one of those autumn yardwork days today, the first big one after the oppressive heat & humidity of summer are safely in the past.

Little blister between my thumb and forefinger -- check. Scratches on my forearm -- check. Inhaling enough dirt to leave some on the tissue after blowing my nose -- check.

(Yeah, I wore leather gloves most of the time, and long sleeves, but it gets warm enough to have to take them off, and that's when they get ya. I'll never wear a mask outdoors ever again after the covid hysteria.)

Cleaning out the small toolshed after a season's worth of soil and leaves have blown under the door, I knew Gawr "the Nose" Gura would've absolutely died to be there, sniffer to the ground like an animal, from all the wonderful earthy aromas wafting on the crisp fall wind.

Is there "terroir" for toolshed aroma-scapes? "Mmmmm, this must be a Midwestern 2022, one of the few summers they didn't suffer from a tropical rainforest heat wave..."

Anyway, toward the end of several hours, I was squatting down picking up weeds. Does touching weeds count as touching grass? While pulling up handful after handful, I saw something just lying there on top of the dirt -- a bumblebee. Well, the exoskeleton of one, anyway, lying face-up.

He must've been a good bumblebee -- helping pollinate flowers, not terrorizing the nice creatures like wasps do. I wonder if he got killed in the line of duty, so to speak. But it might've been old age / natural causes, since he wasn't partly devoured or anything like that. It was just his time.

What else was I supposed to do but give him a proper burial? I was already next to a bunch of soil, might as well dig him a little final resting place. I tamped the dirt down on top of his admittedly shallow grave. Then for a grave marker, I found a stone about 3 inches long and set that into the dirt on top, along with six smaller stones about 1 inch long, three on each side of the big one. A proper insect memorial.

I said a little prayer for him in Jesus' name, and made sure the area around it was all cleared away of debris. Swept all the dirt off the bricks and stones, etc.

That way, when archaeologists discover the site in 10,000 years, they'll know he was a good bee, and well appreciated by the people who knew him (if only too late). We don't just throw bees in the yard waste dumpster, y'know? We're more noble savage than that.

RIP bumblebee, you lived a good life, and you won't be forgotten.

Spicy out, sour in: Lemon / citrus mania, as the 2020s revive mellow vibe of the '90s / y2k

Last week I had the most intense craving for something with a fatty richness and tangy / sour / tart kick to it as well. And then it hit me that I've been indulging in sour and citrus tastes since 2020. I was never a big sour cream person, but I've made it a staple since that year, along with tortilla chips "with a lime kick," lemon-lime seltzer, and so on and so forth.

Was it just me?

I looked around the supermarket, and there was lemon-flavored EVERYTHING, even expanding into orange-flavored versions as well. I don't ever remember seeing orange cake / loaf, but there it was -- right next to the lemon one, of course. "Lemon cake batter" cookies, "glazed lemon loaf" herbal tea, "lemon cheesecake" ice cream, Moroccan preserved lemons in the imported section (never saw them before), and on and on and on.

Thinking back on it, the "lime kick" tortilla chips were always more sold out, compared to the regular white or yellow ones. And the lemon-lime seltzer was more sold out than the other flavors. Someone noticed this huge demand for citrus, and started putting it in everything else -- and now those items are flying off the shelves as well.

It's gotten so bad that I'm going to start making my own tzatziki sauce at home, since I'm craving it like crazy in a way I never used to, and the pre-made stuff is too expensive. I'm going to be making some ground beef and rice in the crock pot, and that citrusy dairy sauce is exactly what I need for it. Just a couple years ago, it would've been more cumin-y and spicy, but now I'm leaning more on a lemon pepper spice mix, a seasoning I first bought last year and would never have considered in the 2010s.

I'm already a zealous convert of Stash's meyer lemon herbal tea (really a blend of rosehip & hibiscus with lemongrass, orange peel, citric acid and lemon oil, but the bright lemon really stands out). I'll be trying out lemon yoghurt, or maybe just add some lemon to inexpensive plain yoghurt.

And by far my favorite new go-to cologne is the '60s chypre Aramis. I was not a fan of citrus when I was buying up all sorts of late '70s and '80s colognes during the early 2010s. My fave back then would've been Kouros. But I've found myself drawn to the chypre profile now, with its citrusy top notes and mossy base notes.

Who else is on board the lemon train? Mumei mentioned buying a lemon loaf during a meet-up with her fellow Hololive streamers a few weeks ago. Thotton Mather on Twitter (now privated) has been making lemon meringue, maybe lemon curd, and even lemon & thyme ice cream! From 2020, I distinctly remember Heather Habsburg (deactivated), the 6' tall anti-woke left cottagecore lesbian aspiring tradwife, having an entire tree full of lemons that she didn't know what to do with, getting tons of eager recommendations on what to make. I don't remember hearing so many off-hand references to lemon items during the 2010s.

Now we're all on a quest -- a quest for zest.

* * *

So what's with the abrupt change? Well, first we also have to look at what is fading out, as well as what's coming in, in order to characterize the changes. The main flavor profile that used to be everywhere in the late 2000s and 2010s, but has been going out lately, is spicy. Not long ago, it was like a status contest -- who could handle the spiciest pepper, the most death-defying hot sauce, etc. It was about spiciness, and intensity.

Now, it's about tartness, but also mellowness -- we're not competing over who can handle the most mouth-puckering sour raw wild citrons. It's just, "Mmmm, I feel like a little tart in my dessert, so why not make it a lemon loaf this summer?"

What changed in 2020 was the shift from a high-energy 15-year excitement cycle (2005-'19) to a low-energy cycle (2020-'34). The 2005-'19 period was one of the most intense zeitgeists in world history, certainly since the last high-energy cycle in 1975-'89 ("the Eighties"). We're going to be dialing down the intensity for our baseline, even as the 15-year excitement cycle moves through its three phases (restless, manic, and vulnerable).

Spicy intensity easily dovetails with a high-energy period, just as a mellow tartness goes with a more laid-back period. It doesn't overload your senses, and if anything puts just a slight downer note on things -- while still making a bright and refreshing impression as well, without becoming sweet or saccharine.

You might think bitter or pungent tastes would be more up to the task, but they're too niche. Sour / tart / tangy is perfectly able to appeal to the masses, though. I'm not even sure that bitter and pungent are appropriate now, since they're pretty intense, making them more suited to a high-energy cycle -- and indeed, the late 2000s and 2010s saw a new fascination with stinky cheeses and darker and darker levels of dark chocolate.

* * *

This suggests we ought to see a similar pattern during other low-energy cycles, such as 1990-2004, 1960-'74, 1930-'44, and perhaps 1900-'14.

I'll mainly focus on the '90s and y2k period, since that is undergoing a revival right now, and is the easiest reference point for anyone reading this. But first, I noticed when browsing around that the Orange Crush drink was introduced in 1911, during a low-energy cycle. Key lime pie was invented / caught on during the '30s, a low-energy cycle. And Sunny Delight was released in the '60s, also a low-energy cycle.

Chypre perfumes and colognes were also most popular during the '60-'74 cycle, although they have existed before and since.

Looking back, there was quite a citrus craze during the '90s and y2k.

First, there was a renewed fascination with Sunny Delight / Sunny D, which was just not there during the '80s. The company officially rebranded the product as SunnyD in 2000, riding the hype train.

Then there was the revival of citrus notes in perfumes and colognes. The '90s / y2k is most known for the aquatic trend (itself part of the low-energy mellow vibe of the period), but it was just as citrus-infused. The decade-defining unisex scent, cK One, is loaded with citrus, and somewhat of a spin on the chypre concept. Acqua di Gio, notable mainly for its aquatic profile, also has a citrus-heavy opening. And the ubiquitous Dolce & Gabbana Pour Homme (the first cologne I ever bought, in college during the early 2000s), is somewhat like the aromatic fougeres of the late '70s and '80s -- except it has a huge citrus blast at the outset, which did not exist in the heavier, stinkier, more animalic predecessors (other than Drakkar Noir).

U2 had a hit song / music video in 1993 called "Lemon", and there was a popular alternative band called the Lemonheads.

The pen name Lemony Snicket was used to write a popular series of children's books, A Series of Unfortunate Events, almost all of which were published from '99 to '04 (the movie adaptation was also part of the y2k era, in '04).

I'm sure there are other pop culture references to lemons from this period, and I'll add them in the comments if I come across more (or leave your own examples).

As for food, I remember eating the lemonheads candy most during the '90s, not the '80s, although it had been out for decades (beginning in the mellow cycle of the '60s). Same with Sour Patch Kids (originally called Mars Men when they debuted during a mellow cycle, in the early '70s). I have a million memories of kids junk food from the '80s, and none of them are sour.

I don't know about every food fad of the '90s and early 2000s, but by far the most trendy ethnic cuisines that took over were Eastern Mediterranean -- Greek nationwide, and Lebanese / Levantine where there were diaspora communities.

There had been Italian dressing, suddenly there had to be Greek dressing as well. Gyros, tzatziki sauce, dolmas in cans in the supermarket, mini spanakopita in the frozen section of Trader Joe's, Wendy's even debuting a line of pita / wrap sandwiches with feta cheese, and so on and so forth.

I think a key component of those flavors was citrus -- especially in the sauces, like tzatziki and hummus (which we had not tasted before the '90s), but also dolmas, since the meat and grains themselves were not novel to us. Beef / lamb, and rice? Had it already. What's special about this dish? A tangy citrusy sauce? Hmmm, not like ketchup, mustard, BBQ, hot sauce, or mayo, let's give it a try. Just what we needed during a tart-craving mellow cycle.

I also remember my mother putting lemon slices over fish in the oven, something I don't remember from the '80s, or anytime since when she has cooked.

Sprite was my junk drink of choice in the '90s, though I've never been a big sugar-water drinker, and can't really compare to what I've had in the late 2000s and 2010s. I only wanted plain carbonated water during the high-energy cycle, not one with a citrus twist. Oh, that reminds me of the iconic scene in L.A. Story (from '91), where all the yuppies are ordering their drinks "with a lemon twist".

I was not of drinking age for most of that cycle, although I do know that the mojito, with its lime kick, exploded during the early 2000s. And I remember everyone, including me, asking for a lime or lemon wedge to put in the top of a bottle of Corona beer, before turning it upside down to get some citrus into the alcohol. Perhaps that tradition goes back farther in Mexico, but it's something that American kids only started doing in the '90s / y2k.

That reminds me of another rider on the citrus train right now, Marina (@shamshi_adad on Twitter), who favors a negroni. And the OG groyper (@groyper on Gab) enjoys citrus herbal tea, as well as Earl Grey black tea (bergamot).

* * *

As the late 2000s shifted into a high-energy cycle, these mellow and citrusy tastes got left behind, in favor of more intense flavors, especially those that were spicy, pungent, and bitter. From sticking a lemon wedge in your Corona bottle, to ordering "hoppy" IPAs (still never tasted one, can't stand beer, but from reading around, it looks like it refers to a bitter, or perhaps fruity / floral taste of the hops, not necessarily a sour or citrusy one).

But now that the high-energy cycle is over, it's back to the sour and citrusy tastes of the mellow cycle that we last saw during the '90s and early 2000s.

I still prefer earthy, pungent, no-acidity coffees to the bright and citrusy ones. Still love dark chocolate. And stinky cheeses, paired with berries rather than citrus. And seasoning beef with cumin, among other things.

But it's hard to ignore how much tart, sour, and citrus has crept into my meals over the past couple years -- and into everyone else's as well.

NPC gripes about "burnt Starbucks"

Why do only white people whine about Starbucks tasting burnt etc? Just searched Twitter for reviews of their Sumatra line, which is supposed to be earthy, herbal, and dark-roasted. The black & Hispanic people never bring up the standard gripe about Starbucks tasting burnt, over-roasted, etc. (So far, haven't found Asians reviewing it). And it's not as though those groups are averse to leaving bad reviews of things.

Is it the cerebral vs. corporeal orientation? The overly civilized and cerebralized fraction of white people don't like all sorts of smells and tastes. The normal fraction of white people are fine with them, or actively seek them out. Same thing with perfume and cologne.

You'll never see a MENA person whining about burnt Starbucks -- they were one of the most reliable demographics, back when coffee houses were the place to be, in the 2010s.

What the weirdos describe as burnt, ash, and shoe-bottom -- a normal brain would interpret as warm, smoky, earthy, with animalic notes of leather. It's a heady cologne, but drinkable! The cerebrals can't stand any drink that doesn't taste like fruit juice or milkshakes. Kiddie tastes, at most rising to the level of sweet & sour -- but nothing pungent and earthy, like grown-ups can appreciate. They also don't like anything heavy or thick -- light and wispy only, like skim milk instead of whole milk!

It's a simple way to disqualify a reviewer of food and drink -- any view they have stems from their underformed senses of smell-and-taste, so why take it seriously? It's exactly like critics of music who are tone-deaf, can't dance, and have no rhythm. Or color-blind critics of painting.

Who cares what sensory deficient people think about the realm of the senses?

It's possible this is just counter-signaling the specific brand of Starbucks, since I didn't read as much hate (or any hate at all) for Peet's -- another West Coast style, dark-roasted, Indo-Pacific-heavy origin brand. But they didn't exactly love them either (e.g., Major Dickason's Blend, which I just finished a bag of, and really enjoyed).

The more I looked into the tastes of coffee snobs, the more they seem to despise the entire Indonesian area -- too earthy, not acidic enough, not fruity or floral enough, to the extent that those beans would be thrown out if they had come from any other region, as defective. Oh no, anything but drinks that don't taste like wine and fruity-floral perfumes!

And as usual, I don't get the sense that the normal brains find those Latin American or African types disgusting, let alone whining about "it tastes like drinking Herbal Essences shampoo" or something faggy like that. Normal brains appreciate the full spectrum of things, while stunted cerebral brains only narrowly fixate on one range, and get hysterical about anything outside of it.

This is yet another example of how hard it is to go by verbal reviews of physical things, given that reviewers are biased toward being wordcels and cerebrals, who can't appreciate the full spectrum of things. Who showed up to lounge around Starbucks, and savor their favorite drink every day -- much more reliable. But you can't look that up using a verbal algorithm like Google or Yelp or Twitter. You have to actually go there and see for yourself what others feel about it.

And of course these days no one hangs out in coffee shops anymore, but that's for another post...

Manic Pixie Dream Girl spotting in the wild (since a dying culture can no longer produce fictional examples)

Shifting gears from the wild-child cohort of 2005-'09 (restless phase), and the sad-girl cohort of 2000-'04 (vulnerable phase), yesterday I was compelled to reflect once again on the free-spirit cohort of 1995-'99 (manic phase), who I covered off-and-on last year during the series on Manic Pixie Dream Girls (who are born during a manic phase, such as the late '90s).

I'd been checking in on pop culture for fictional examples, but cultural production more or less ground to a halt in 2020 and will never resume, as we sink further into national and imperial decline and outright disintegration. So there are very few memorable examples of any kind of character type these days.

The closest I managed to find was girl-gamer Pokimane from Twitch, who I highlighted in a post on Manic Pixie Stream Girls, since so much of current pop culture is being directed toward the live-streaming format (and relying heavily on video games), rather than movies, TV, and the like. I did tune in to her streams during the height of the Among Us craze last year, and thought she met most of the criteria personality-wise, except that she doesn't play a role in relation to some guy who needs coaxing out of his shell, for whom she acts as an earthly nursing guardian angel.

Even when streamers interact with their chat, respond to Q&A, or have guests on their channel, there is no medium-term follow-up where a relationship of any kind develops. At best, they might play group games with a recurring cast of characters, but as in the rest of the entertainment industry these days, 99% of the guys are gay (whether closeted or out). And neither the guys nor girls are professional actors, so their bearding fauxmances are not convincing or entertaining at all.

With no fictional narrative arc, and no organic social relations between straight guys and girls, there is no way for any kind of guy-girl roles to emerge (other than fag-hag and gay bff, if he's out). The entertainers are static, atomized personas or personalities, not characters playing certain roles in relation to others, and changing due to those interactions. At most, their persona gets a re-branding, which is not caused by their relations with others.

Perhaps the newer VTuber format -- where girls stream behind a CGI anime avatar -- will allow for greater fictional narrative arcs and relationships among the characters, but I haven't watched any of that. None of the characters are male, though, so their MPDG role would have to be a bi-curious one, and I don't think they're up for that. (They may be the "I find hot girls hot, too" type of bi-girl, but not one who would get into a relationship with another girl.)

* * *

Update: I set this post aside for a day in order to dip my toe into the VTuber waters, and of the very popular ones, the one with the most MPDG personality is Gawr Gura (the most popular of the entire format, like the Pokimane of VTubers). She's not a sad-girl, not an in-your-face off-the-wall chaos agent, but friendly, caring, and girlishly scatterbrained.

Although she does not interact with a sad sack male character specifically, she pushes her audience (many of whom must be guys who are stuck in a rut) to pick themselves up after failing, have confidence, and do the best they can. A little vulgar humor, to remind them that she's an earthly guardian angel, not a pure pristine one, but nowhere near the pandering-to-coomers level of other popular personas.

Her voice actress was born in the late '90s, confirming my hunch. Also supporting my physical profile of the MPDG type, she's a corporeal rather than cerebral person (good at rhythm games and singing, bad at arithmetic), and a butt girl (her flat chest being a running in-joke).

However, as with real-life streamers, her persona goes through its existence disconnected from others, rather than play a particular role within a social ecosystem of characters. She may belong to a talent roster of VTubers (signed with Hololive English) who occasionally interact with each other, but not often, and not in a narrative fashion. They mainly stream alone and have their own distinct chat / fandom who they interact with.

They wouldn't even have to write the role within a fictional narrative. They could simply throw a bunch of strangers into the same interactive space for awhile, a la MTV's the Real World, and let the relationships develop. One of those roles to emerge just might be a MPDG. But as societal trust plummets off a cliff, people seem unwilling to enter into that kind of environment. When you don't trust anyone else, keep to yourself.

It occurs to me that the "social ecosystem" genre of reality TV -- the Real World, the Surreal Life, Survivor, etc. -- was another victim of the post-2008 destruction of the economy for good, and with it, any trust in institutions, collectives, or collaborative endeavors with strangers. It belonged to the '90s and 2000s, waned during the 2010s, and does not exist anymore. During reality TV's final decade, it shifted entirely to a "desperate aspiring elite" genre for the permanent economic depression -- Shark Tank, American Idol, Chopped, Bar Rescue, etc.

Even the contest-driven reality shows of the 2000s -- the Apprentice, Project Runway, Top Chef, etc. -- focused just as much on the characters and their interactions outside of the contest itself. And the characters were recurring, so that relationships and roles could emerge over the season -- not a whole new bunch with every episode. The 2010s genre was more like a standard game show, a yuppie reboot of The Gong Show, where you didn't feel anything when the contestants were eliminated because you had not invested more than a half-hour in them by the time they were sent home.

* * *

If there are no more major examples forthcoming from the culture industry, you can still spot examples out in the wild, even if it's only a vignette rather than a full narrative.

The other day at the thrift store there was an alt-girl who I assumed was, like the others, a sad-girl of college age. Rich wavy pink hair of bi- bob length, strapless mini-dress in black with a large purple floral pattern (very '90s revival -- only needed some oversized teal brushstrokes), and combat boots (probably Docs). A couple small tattoos on her olive skin. Only off-putting element was the surgical mask. From afar, nothing out of the ordinary for the "I'm outside the ordinary" set.

And yet she did not have the standard alt-girl shape, or the scene girls before them, who were all skinny and large-breasted. She was voluptuous and hourglass-shaped, more of a butt girl. Curious.

Then I heard her talking on her phone, which she was carrying on for the better part of a half-hour. Hardly anyone uses their phone for talking anymore, and it's just a nerdy handheld computer for online opium on-the-go. The rare times that someone is talking, it's a quick business-like exchange -- "Hey babe, do we need more paper towels yet? I'm in the grocery store now..." Conversing out loud with your friends about whatever-at-all is not part of online, and not part of the daily public sphere.

She definitely did not have a sad-girl voice, but warm, bubbly, reassuring, engaging / probing, and youthful without being an affected "i'm baby" pitch. She was following me around most of the time, and few others were there, so it was easy to hear, aside from her speaking a bit louder than normal just to make sure I heard her.

She was mainly playing therapist to her girl friend, while occasionally sharing her own situation in return. More of an informal, back-and-forth, give-and-take, mutual therapy (though she was more naturally made for that role, and her friend was going through a bit more of a rut). It reminded me of how my teenage girl peers used to chat on the phone at length back in the late '90s, or from '80s movies and TV. She felt like a visitor from another planet.

At one point I overheard something about, "Well you know how many kids I'm responsible for..." So she must be a primary school teacher, babysitter, daycare worker, or some other substitute mother. Nursing and maternal, not only toward her peers and friends, but children as well.

When she got to the checkout line, a suburban normie mom in front of her turned around and inquired about her hair dye, because her own daughter had tried dying it pink but it washed right out. The alt-girl naturally adopted a caring, helpful tone and suggested the brand she'd used (Iroiro), as though she were tending to her own child's needs. So empathetic. Not like the annoying and tiresome brand of whip-smart, "I'm the cool / gay aunt" types who would've made a big status-striving display of it.

She was Tumblr's most wholesome ambassador to the normies -- not a Trojan Horse, a la trad-clad Democrat Party functionaries, but someone who looked like she'd just stepped through the screen of an alt TikTok addicted teen.

While she was following me around, she was not nervous like the sad-girls usually are, or eager and homing in like a missile as the wild-child types do. She was just carefree, moving closer, seeing if I ran away, and when I didn't, just settling in close by. Sometimes almost within my personal space, when I was browsing the DVDs and CDs, while she was browsing the books right behind me in a narrow aisle. Not a nervous wreck, not a vampy man-eater. Just being at home with physical closeness, touchy-feely, lovey-dovey.

And she didn't scurry away from my cologne either, like nervous or non-corporeal people might have while standing nearly back-to-back for 5-10 minutes. That day it was 5 sprays of Hugo Boss, Number One, which has a prominent semi-pissy honey note that could unsettle the wimpy. I didn't smell anything on her, but she could be into unusual perfumes herself. At the least, she was totally cool with earthy, funky scents that you don't smell on people anymore.

But what about the most crucial aspect of her background, to check if she could be a certified MPDG -- when was she born? Well, fortunately she steered her conversation toward her age. First she asked her friend how old her boyfriend was, and then said that her own boyfriend was a year or so older than she was, and that he was about 24 or 25. In other words, letting me know she's 23 or 24 -- which places her birth smack dab in the middle of a manic phase (late '90s). Bullseye! I just knew it.

Does letting me know she has a boyfriend disqualify her from the wholesome, charming role of the MPDG? Hardly -- Julia Roberts plays a literal streetwalker in Pretty Woman, and SanDeE* from L.A. Story not only lets the sad-sack male protag know that she's already seeing someone, but shows him the apartment that they both live in, and even points him out when he's hanging out inside the same restaurant as them during their dinner date!

It's not that the MPDG is looking to cuckold her existing boyfriend, or turn them all into some gross polycule, or even neg the protagonist through jealousy into fighting all the harder for her love. She's just a free spirit, wending her way from one of life's many adventures to the next, and making company with whatever interesting characters she happens to meet along the way. If she has two lovers at once, it's purely coincidental, and she will wind up with whoever she winds up with by the end of the narrative (typically, not with the protag).

You can tell when a girl's keeping you at arm's length with the "I have a bf" claim. It's usually curt, with a fake apologetic tone, eager to get you away ASAP. She was just casually mentioning him while getting closer and lingering longer near me. More of a head's-up courtesy so I knew what I'd be getting myself into, if I accepted her invitation.

But not being a sad-sack in need of an earthly guardian angel to lift me up out of my rut, I didn't send her any overt signals in return. Did what I was going to do there already, just not withdrawing when she got close. It felt more like hanging out with one of the cool alternative girls from high school, only as young adults starting to figure out grown-up life together, comparing notes. I never had that experience, since I hardly ever saw my high school peers after graduating.

So, while you may not be able to enjoy examples of the MPDG from a moribund pop culture industry anymore, you can still cross literal paths with them IRL. This is the time -- the restless phase of the excitement cycle -- and there are millions of free-spirited girls born in the late '90s out there somewhere. The only problem is that Zoomers are so online that they might not venture outside the home often, so you'll have to focus on places where they're bound to visit when they do go out, like thrift stores, coffee shops, used media stores, and other browsing and hanging-out places.

Bijan Men: the psychotropic cologne for dominating others while keeping calm

I thought this might have been an idiosyncratic reaction that only I have, and only to this one cologne. But after listening to the Perfume Nationalist episode on Bijan Men, I'm inclined to think it's general, though perhaps I have an extreme version of the reaction.

I wouldn't describe any other cologne as psychotropic, but this one just instantly alters my mood, cognition, and behavior, and it remains changed for the rest of the day. It feels somewhat like a hijacking, but also like an unlocking or disinhibition of what's already there. So that may be why the reaction is not universal -- you may need a certain degree of these traits to already be present, and it will jack them up to 11.

To describe it in more detail, I lose any degree of nervousness, uncertainty, indecisiveness, etc. Not that I'm those things normally, just that they are totally gone. I can focus like a laser, stay locked on a target, and pursue it until the goal is accomplished. And although I feel invincible, it's not a manic shade of invincible -- more like unflappable, cool and collected, able to withstand whatever deluge is directed my way without blinking.

I am normally bullheaded, but on Bijan I'm nearly sociopathic. If somebody else gets in my way, they're just some subhuman barrier to be pushed aside. Not to be toyed with or tortured in a sadistic way -- just like robotically, mechanically moving them aside to make way, not registering any of their feelings, needs, etc.

I remember when I first got it back in the summer of 2013, one of the other regulars at Starbucks and I used to shoot the bull for hours on end, sometimes debating, sometimes chewing the fat, though always on good friendly terms. But one time I had loaded up on Bijan before leaving the house, and I was just shutting him down one sentence after the other, like playing 4-D whack-a-mole. Even though I could see that he was taken aback and puzzled by my change in tone away from our usual camaraderie, I couldn't really help myself.

And again, not sadistic, not deriving joy or pleasure from it, just bam bam bam bam, unflinchingly and remorselessly, as though he weren't a person or my longstanding conversation partner.

It also steers your behavior almost exclusively toward dominating your same-sex rivals, and ignoring the courting of opposite-sex potential mates. Doesn't keep you from getting hard or anything, it just shifts you 100% into fighter, not lover, mode. And I normally enjoy flirting, checking girls out, letting them follow me around, etc. This aspect does feel like a hijacking by something external to me, intrinsic to the cologne itself.

I'll never forget, also during that summer of 2013, walking over to Starbucks loaded up with it. There was a 100+ degree heat wave, so I was going around with my shirt entirely unbuttoned (and though wiry, I was shredded). Coming my way on the sidewalk are a high-school guy and girl, he being your standard Millennial (or Zoomer?) NPC, and she being the typical super-horny teenager of the early 2010s, pre-wokeness and pre-#MeToo. She could not have looked more ripe, and glistening on top of it all due to the heat wave.

As they approach, she starts raising her voice to complain about him "to his face" (actually she's checking me out), ending with "Sometimes [Zoomer name], you're just such a... such a CHILD," as she passes random hot early 30s guy (looking early 20s). Letting me know you're not into children, are you? You want an older hot guy, do you? Under any other circumstance, it would've felt like the hottest taboo-bending signal in the world -- but I just strutted right by the both of them without giving her more than some brief eye contact (smoldering like the clove-y drydown of the cologne).

Not sadistic, not misogynistic, not disgusted or frustrated or anything like that toward girls. More like they're just not important to interact with, other than a brief once-over with my eyes. It's not dismissive of them, more like, "Sorry baby, I'll catch up with you later, have to go crush some rivals first."

I would never wear this in a danceclub where I'm looking to get grinded on and felt up by as many babes as possible. I simply wouldn't enjoy it in that moment. It's for situations where you have to be confrontational and win no matter what, while keeping totally calm.

I had sprayed it on earlier this spring, before the mask mandate was lifted, but while I had decided to pull the mask down once inside. I was wearing it the one day that some soyboy Redditor type kept following me around, pestering me about pulling it back up. I said they don't do anything, it's on, gimme a break. "Well then I'm going to have to ask you to leave the store". You're not going to do that, I bluntly told him. And he said nothing and did nothing afterward.

Perfect cologne for calling the bluff of these wannabe fucking hall monitors and substitute teachers who are in way over their head with a crowd that does not recognize their authority.

I don't know how else to drive home what it feels like, other than it's the Terminator cologne. It turns me into someone who can't be bargained or reasoned with, who doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and who will not stop until I complete my mission.

I could be driving 100 miles an hour around a tight curve on a mountain road with no rails, while blasting "Riding on the Wind" until the speakers burst -- as long as I had loaded up on Bijan, I would execute the maneuver flawlessly, and without batting an eyelash. Call it the Drive cologne, if you want to feel more like the hero than the villain.

And yes, in case you couldn't already tell, I got hopped up on five sprays of this psycho-stuff earlier this afternoon, and I'm still in that altered state after midnight, when I'm writing this post.

It's not any particular ingredient, it's the holistic synergistic gestalt of them all. There is literally nothing else like this, and it's insanely cheap. Back in 2013, I picked it up in TJ Maxx, Ross, or Marshalls, but they haven't carried anything awesome in years. There's barely anything at all, in fact, in the fragrance section. Just blind-buy it online, and if possible get an older bottle from the early 2010s. They say the newer ones are not as intense, but I haven't tried them (still have the same bottle from nearly 10 years ago).

Just be wise about what situations you wear it in! But especially if your job requires you to dominate others and stay steely cool while doing so, this is an absolute must-own. You might want to keep your distance somewhat, though, otherwise your rivals might get a whiff or two and become turbo-charged themselves!

Aimee Terese, perfume muse (and the decline of fragrance during the 2010s)

I've been looking back on the recent history of perfumes and colognes, to see if there's confirmation for the broader pattern of cultural stagnation and decline after circa 2010. Related to this post on the death of the fashion industry during that time. It's hard to remember the last time there was a major popular awareness, let alone irresistible buzz, about fragrances.

That's true even of their ads, once a mainstay of "have you seen it?" cultural excitement. I remember Keira Knightley in the bowler hat for Chanel, along with her appearance with ScarJo and Tom Ford on the cover of Vanity Fair, way back in 2006. Ford was primarily a fashion figure, but had also gotten involved in fragrances, and it just looked like a perfume ad — heavily stylized, dramatic poses, and the female nudity. It was iconic enough to provoke parodies — similar to the parodies of the equally iconic Calvin Klein TV ads in the '90s — and when was the last time anything perfume-related has accomplished that level of cultural awareness?

In any case, some of the big trends of the 2000s reminded me immediately of Aimee Terese. "That's such a MENA baddie scent!" The heavy, dark, masculine aspect combined with a lighter, brighter, feminine nature. The in-your-face extraverted sillage. The tenacious longevity. Just an all-around libidinal, heady, and intoxicating experience.

It was an abrupt departure from the usual low-energy, reserved, tranquil scents of the aquatic-to-spicy Nineties. And, since mainstream participation in the fragrance culture seems to have totally collapsed during the 2010s, that was the last time we'll ever know of women confidently announcing their presence in public so sensually yet tactfully, when every other 20 to 30-something urbanite woman was an edgy minimalist fun-loving badass chick.

On a hunch, I checked to see if Aimee had appeared on the Perfume Nationalist podcast, and why of course she had. Naturally she said she disliked the fruity, floral, sweet, overly feminine stuff, preferring the heavy and heady scents instead. (Note to her suitors: send gardenias, not roses.) Anna Khachiyan made similar remarks in her appearance on the show.

As an aside, this is yet another reason why passionate women find liberal soyboys unappealing as dates and mates. How can they enjoy wearing their favorite perfume, if the reaction is going to be about having allergies, or sensory overload of their autism? Recall that infamous DSA conference not only had a rule against loud noises, but also against strong or aggressive scents — flagrant anti-MENA discrimination from the professed allies of the Palestinians and Iranians.

Nope, if intense women want to find a man who can handle their intensity, he'll have to be a cultural moderate or conservative. Not some flinch-nerd who's going to suffer an anxiety attack if she smells like anything other than the interior of an Apple Store.

* * *

What particular examples do I have in mind? I'm not a frag-head, but here are a few I know of.

Scent Intense by Costume National (2002). The only one I own myself, it's listed as unisex but is more on the masculine side, and suitable only for the baddie crew among women, as well as men with a strong romantic streak.

I have the same bottle from when it came out while I was in college. I had to travel to the Barneys CO-OP outside of Boston (the Mall at Chestnut Hill), first by express bus for an hour, then a 30-minute metro ride, and finally walking for 15-30 minutes. Quite the excursion for a fragrance, but I wanted it bad, and didn't want to have to wait until my next day-trip to New York. (Costume National has a boutique on Wooster St. in SoHo if you're nearby.)

But still, that gave me a greater experience than just placing an order online and opening a package left on the doorstep. It was a journey, a commitment.

For Her by Narciso Rodriguez (2004). I never toured the women's fragrance sections, but could not avoid this one when it debuted. During the summer of 2004 in Barcelona, I always walked through the El Corte Ingles department store downtown, to catch a break from the heat and humidity. Knowing this behavior of the pedestrians, the store put in place an entire gauntlet of displays and models who were all but pulling you into their personal space to smell the test strips.

Mediterranean babes offering a heady, dark, intense aroma to test out? Hmmm, yes, I think I can stop by for awhile and chat them up about what ingredients are in it, what kind of woman I might buy it for, etc. Come to think of it, the last time I was stopped by a perfume babe standing in a heavy-traffic path inside a department store was the summer of 2013 — more confirmation that fragrance culture died out during the 2010s.

Black Orchid by Tom Ford (2006). I haven't actually smelled this one, but it sounds like a fellow traveler of the others. And in college, I did used to have a deodorant stick of the newly released M7 by YSL, which Ford was in creative control of at the time, so I trust his judgment in making an equally heady-and-heavy scent for women. Unlike the others in this trend, though, there's a cornucopia of ingredients, more of an homage to the symphonic arrangements of the 1980s than the minimalist 2000s.

* * *

I was trying to think of what celebs would've been most likely to wear these scents, but came up empty-handed. The main examples did not use them in their ads — just the anonymous and alluring fashion models, who have been steadily replaced by actresses, singers, and other celebs as fashion figures.

The typical wearer was also a type that hardly exists anymore — they were not girlboss careerists choosing a perfume as though it were a weapon for battle, nor were they hipsters who would've found perfume categorically pretentious and unsuitable to ironic usage. Not pop culture strivers / junkies either, a type that didn't really exist back then.

They were urbanite professionals who were not yuppies — those whose primary interest was in living an exciting lifestyle, creating a mysterious persona, and so on. Working to live, not living to work. Their job — not even necessarily in a very creative field — was just a means of paying for parties, drinks, clothes, perfumes, and the rest of the good life.

So, she was akin to a hipster, but not part of an identifiable sub-culture. She could have been the only woman in her social circle who dressed that way and wore that kind of perfume. A cultural lone wolf (or rather she-wolf, as MENA baddie Shakira would popularize in 2008 with her sleek and sensual disco-rock song of that name).

However, the American-led economy blew up for good in 2008, with the top 20% only prospering thereafter from central bank bailouts (quantitative easing). Elite over-production kicked into hyperdrive, and then there was no more "work to live" spirit left. The economy, and with it the rest of the culture, became palpably more and more fake over the 2010s, whereas the free-wheeling spirit of the mid-to-late 2000s could not have thrived under such conditions of nihilism and cynicism.

And again, these new attitudes are not just a psychological problem that may be undone, but the inevitable consequence of the entire economy becoming openly, unmistakably fake. The QE handout recipients of the 2010s through today can only feel like spoiled rich kids who don't deserve their wealth, and are just getting paid to party. That's more of a degenerate socialite's situation, not the "work to live" professional whose mind was not weighed down by unavoidable doubts of being an over-glorified welfare queen.

In fact, independence and confidence were central to their lifestyle, and once the economy blew up, they began obsessing over their basic material security. "Is the next QE check from the central bank going to clear this month?" "Does my new boss have a line of credit with the central bank, or are we going to go under without getting bailed out?" This ceaseless anxiety is also that of the degenerate socialite, who has to worry each time they run their daddy's credit card — have they been put in financial time-out this weekend, or cut off altogether?

Professional gals of the 2000s did not have these ongoing anxiety attacks, and could enjoy their "work to live" lifestyle in blissful ignorance of what was to come during the next decade.

Tfw no perfume-detonating MENA baddie goth gf

The cute little olive-skinned alt-girl sending me that "I'm lost, help me" stare from behind eyeliner winged all the way out to her hairline must've been a MENA baddie, such a perfume explosion all over the sections of the thrift store where she was browsing. No clue what it was, but loaded with amber, other intoxicating wonders, and a distinct base note of ovulation pheromones (yes, you can tell).

Why are they always so skinny, too? Such a heady, overpowering aroma exuding from the hardly-there-at-all body of a waif. It makes the experience all the more disorienting because she's not a vampy voluptuous sex bomb who you'd expect from the strength of the scent.

I guess it's one of the few ways they have to overwhelm your senses, when you otherwise might not even notice their presence. Like they're wearing a dynamite vest for self-defense, being too weak to throw punches, wield a knife, or pull a trigger. Just push a tiny little button, and BOOM.

Just a few delicate spritzie-spritzies from their perfume bottle, and BOOM.

* * *

The only other alt / goth girl I've known who always wore a comet of perfume trailing behind her was also an eastern Meddie -- my Turkish co-worker at the checkout desk of the library in college.

When we had to re-shelve books, I could always tell she had been on that floor before me, by the dizzying cloud of amber that wobbled my knees without warning.

Aside from being a cool chick who was easy to get along with, her overwhelming scent eventually made me lose self-control, and I broke down and wrote her a poem in a style I knew she'd like, that was apropos (the Oyster Boy book by Tim Burton). Something like "The Girl With Whirlpools For Eyes," about an alluring but eternally lovelorn girl whose hapless suitors never quite make it out of the infatuation and courtship stage alive -- I know! But I couldn't come to my senses after they'd been so thoroughly overloaded by her perfume.

Carefully hand-wrote it in a streamlined Medieval font, drew a Burtonesque illustration to accompany it, and even learned how say "for you" in her language -- "senin için" -- from another Turkish friend, for when I presented it to her. I'd never seen that demure little gothette smile so wide and bright before, bubbling over into carefree ecstasy as all her insecurities evaporated in an instant. "Desirability status: official. Awesome." She was a different person after that.

I asked out and hit on a lot of girls in college, but never her. She was just as cute, and definitely cooler than, the typical one I'd asked out -- but she was meant to play the role of mind-possessing muse. And I don't know how others are, but I never fall in love with any muse whose presence I wander into. Falling for someone is meant to further along processes that are sublunary -- dating, mating, pair-bonding, family-raising, and so on. Being possessed is meant to serve some higher purpose and not include yourself in the reward.

I recently got curious and googled what she's up to these days, and of all the metro areas in the world, she's found her way into mine, over 15 years after we graduated. And she's already raising at least one child, who she absolutely adores. She must have shed the goth get-up just after college, since the only "old" picture of her shows a smiling free spirit.

You never know when those bold moves that feel so cringe to outside parties are actually going to end up saving someone from themselves, from their miserablism. It will help them break out of their doom-and-gloom shell, and before long they're confident and comfortable out in the real world.

"I can save her," but only to ultimately set her free. I think that also means not getting in contact again -- we've already played the roles in each other's lives that we needed to. Trying to force a reunion, even just to "touch base," would be superfluous and threaten to ruin the completeness of our relationship.

Lifestyle strivers compete in domains where stuff is still "made in America"

People who compete for status in the lifestyle arena, as opposed to the career arena, have settled on two main battlegrounds -- food, and leisure activities. (See earlier posts on the career vs. lifestyle vs. persona contests here and here.)

In practice, "leisure activities" nowadays means what kind of entertainment you consume in your free time. Only a minority of lifestyle strivers are very into competing over rock-climbing, yoga, skiing, and other physical activities outside the home. All lifestyle strivers, though, are heavily invested in contests over the kinds of entertainment they consume, mostly while relaxing at home.

Food works as a status contest in the lifestyle domain because it's part of a person's regular routine, and there's enough innate interest in it already for the pleasure that it gives, rather than some boring part of a person's routine that would not energize a competition. The same goes for entertainment.

And yet for all of the exotic novelty that lifestyle strivers aim for -- to distinguish their lifestyles as beyond the familiar, pedestrian norm -- the actual objects of their competition are still made right here in America (or other culturally familiar first-world countries).

It's one thing to show your Facebook friends that you had beef cooked in a Mexican style -- carne asada -- but it's quite another to eat beef that is from Mexico. You want the raw materials to be American (or first-world), and only the style of preparing them into a final meal to be exotic. You wouldn't want to risk food poisoning at every meal and cut short your lifetime career of uploading food pictures to your social media accounts.

It's also telling how little the entertainment strivers consume of foreign media. Remember -- one of their goals is to show how their tastes are beyond the familiar norm, e.g. by eating carne asada and drinking horchata. Why don't they brag about their consumption of Mexican TV shows or movies? The language barrier is not the answer, since they can be watched with subtitles, and again they otherwise prefer the status boost from exotic and hard-to-pronounce stuff.

The simplest explanation seems to be that they recognize how crappy the production of Mexican entertainment is, especially compared to first-world standards. The quality of acting, the cameras, the lighting, the sound recording, editing, directing, etc. -- some or all of these elements are just not up to snuff.

Yes, there's a tiny niche of film dorks who compete over who has seen the most obscure hits of foreign cinema, but that's been going on for a long time, and has not grown as a phenomenon. On the other hand, 40 years ago nobody held contests over who was a bigger fan of The Bionic Woman, or who could micro-analyze the social world of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or who had boosted their status in a single day by binge-watching an entire season of The Waltons. These days, TV shows are so obsessed over and fought over, it's pathetic. But they're all made right here in America, or England.

It's not just due to the greater supply of higher-quality TV shows now vs. the '70s, because it isn't only Mad Men and the like that are obsessed over. Lifestyle strivers hold contests over utterly pedestrian crap like The Big Bang Theory, Law & Order: SVU, Orphan Black, and whatever other gay-vampire-detective junk they're running in primetime.

Perhaps the clearest comparison can be drawn between the appeal to lifestyle strivers of clothing and accessories on the one hand, and grooming items on the other. Both clothing and grooming are part of your regular routine, and there's an existing interest in seeing what other people look like. And they're part of the same lifestyle domain -- your daily presentation to other people.

However, most clothing, shoes, hats, etc. are made in third-world sweatshops, whereas most grooming items are made right here in America. Even the $2 shampoo from a big box store says "Made in USA," whereas even a higher-end clothing item like a merino wool sweater from Banana Republic says "Made in China".

So which one do the lifestyle strivers do the most battle over? Just go to any retail store, and notice how much grooming stuff there is. Aisles and endless aisles of striver-oriented grooming products.

Clothing is subject to fashion cycles, but lifestyle strivers don't seem to make use of it in their battles over who is cooler than who else. Competing over clothing is more of a niche thing, and even then it's over clothing made in the first world. Competing over grooming products couldn't be more widespread, when any given supermarket offers men dozens of hairstyling materials, deodorant scents, and vitamin-supplemented moisturizers.

On YouTube, the most popular female lifestyle strivers are part of the contests over hair products, makeup, and the like -- not so much clothing, shoes, or bags. Ditto for male strivers -- they're not as obsessed over either one or the other, but they're still more likely to obsess over hair products, beard oils, shaving cream, cologne, and so on, rather than apparel.

The one possible exception is technology products that are made in the third world, but that play a key role in lifestyle status contests -- iPhone / MacBook, Skullcandy headphones, Nintendo DS, etc. Toting these devices around and showing them off to others is part of their regular routine, and there's interest in who has what. Why don't people mind that they're all Chinese crud?

But that misses the difference between the device and the media that it's used to access. Strivers obsess over TV shows -- all of which are made in America -- but not really over the television sets themselves. Whatever will do, will do, as long as they stream the shows that the strivers have to stay on top of in order to be part of the coolness competition.

It's no different with desktop or laptop computers, smartphones, headphones, or video game consoles -- the media that they provide to the user are all designed and produced in the first world. Internet sites, smartphone apps, pop music, video games -- all made in the first world.

So, even in the world of lifestyle competition, where the point is to move away from competing over career, wealth, and materialism, there is still a vexing concern about how high-quality the materials and labor process were that went into making the stuff needed to carry out their lifestyle contests.

This gives insight into why folks back East are more in favor of Trump's campaign to "Make America Great Again" by bringing back manufacturing to the US (darker colors mean greater support for Trump):

People are more career-striving back East, and are more concerned with the quality of material possessions -- TVs, cars, clothing, furniture, and so on. What is made now is crap, and hardly worth bragging about in a status contest. Imagine trying to preen over some crappy IKEA coffee table made out of Chinese frankenlumber (albeit "assembled in America" -- by you).

Out West, the focus is more on lifestyle contests, and the raw materials and labor that go into the relevant products are already made here in America. They're not really what we think of as possessions, though, but more like the material or immaterial stuff that greases our daily lifestyle routines. They don't see what the big deal is, when it's American or first-world materials and labor that produce their pumpkin spice granola, craft beer, tea tree oil shampoo, TV shows, movies, smartphone apps, and even video games.

To the out-West mind, it's "Why so gloom and doom about the state of the economy?" Hence the focus instead on social and cultural values rather than matters of the economy and government, whether that's in the blue-state or red-state flavor of out-West values orientation.

All you beard-oiling, Walking Dead binge-watchers out West of the Mississippi should be throwing your support to Trump rather than the regional favorite Cruz, or just stay out of the way altogether. You can continue jerking yourselves off about who's the bigger craft beer aficionado, while the materialists back East are busy bringing back quality-made stuff to our country, and in the process restoring dignity, prosperity, and freedom to the working and middle classes who will be powering those formerly long-gone sectors of the economy.

Color and light vs. line and volume in painting: Intro to the conflict

In painting there is an age-old tension between drawing (the use of line to define contours and enclose volume) and coloring (the use of hue and, in practice, light to bring surfaces to life). This intro post will review much of what has already been noticed and theorized about this opposition, though I'd say about 10-20% is my own thinking.

What I really want to get to, in the follow-up post, is why one style or the other appeals to people with different personalities (no matter if they're the artist, critic, or viewer), and why the cultural zeitgeist seems to go through cycles favoring one, then the other, then back again, and so on. That will be more original. But I'm guessing most readers haven't encountered this great, never-ending artistic tug-of-war, so even this intro should be stimulating. (At least the ideas, if not the writing.)

Perhaps the most famous historical case of the battle between drawing and coloring took place in Renaissance Italy between the Venetians, who favored colorito, and the Tuscans, who favored disegno. Read more here and here. Below you see the Creation of Adam by Michelangelo for the Sistine Chapel, compared to the Assumption of the Virgin by Titian, both from the 1510s.

Notice how Michelangelo's use of color and lighting contrasts is pretty subdued. He focuses more on line, reaching sculptural precision in carving the volumes out of space. This is needed to emphasize the mechanical influence of one volume on the other -- namely, the creative act that will occur when one of the statues makes physical contact with the other statue. That sense of "almost, but not quite touching" requires a very clear rendering of volume -- otherwise, their fingertips could be seen hazily melting into one another, and we wouldn't have a clear sense of this being the moment just before contact.

Titian instead relies more on color and especially on light-dark contrasts to achieve dramatic effect. Without even appreciating who they belong to, a triangle of red robes leaps out at you and focuses you right away on the peak, where the Virgin stands. You don't have to be able to discern their exact forms for this attention-directing technique to work. Ditto for the striking emphasis on God in the heavens -- you can hardly make out his form at all. It's enough that he's in dark shadow with deep blue robes just below, standing out against an intensely bright and yellow background. God and Mary are also wearing contrasting colors, blue and red, which makes them areas of immediate interest.

The masterful control of light and color -- particularly that strong backlighting that pushes the action forward toward the viewer -- make this scene come to life in a way that's lacking in Michelangelo. What could be more momentous than the very creation of Man? -- and yet we don't feel the same charge of the sublime when looking at Michelangelo as we get from looking at Titian. Is it the lighting? In Michelangelo's painting, the brightness is basically the same in the human and in the divine areas alike, weakening the sense that God is about to transfer life from his realm to the human realm. God's realm doesn't appear so different or special. In Titian's, the bright heavens contrast with the darkened mundane level below, heightening the dramatic transition of Mary from the one to the other.

Generally, drawing and coloring work against each other because the larger goal of drawing is to mimic 3-D reality, and our strongest depth cues rely on fairly clearly rendered volumes or forms. Interposition, where objects farther away are partly hidden by objects that are closer, relative size of objects, relative height of objects in the visual field, and linear perspective (similarly spaced objects appear to move closer together as they get farther away) -- those have to do with shape and distance, which monochromatic line drawings by themselves can tell us all about.

Coloring impairs the vivid 3-D mimicry of drawing because there's no simple mapping from colors to depths. It's not as though colder (blue-like) colors tend to be farther away, and hotter (red-like) colors closer. (See here and here for experimental evidence.) If there is any way to recover depth from color cues, it must be pretty complicated and weak. Hence, color, and especially the use of contrasting colors, confuses the eye regarding depth.

For the same reason, varying colors makes it harder to "model" a figure, or create the illusion of volume by shading the parts of it that are farther away from the light source. "Mere shading" assumes that the underlying hue is the same across the object. But if the object changes color as you look from closer to farther from the light source, this assumption of the shading technique no longer holds.

However, coloring breathes life into surfaces that would otherwise appear like inanimate slabs of stone -- maybe not the worst thing if you're painting an ordinary stone building. But not if you were painting people, animals, plants, or even inanimate things from the natural environment that still seem to have a life of their own -- fire, water, "earth" (in the broad sense, including sand, banks of dirt or mud, snow cover, etc.), or air-like presences (smoke, fog, clouds, etc.).

And although typically thought of as superfluous and superficial ornament, in fact color reveals the hidden inner life of an object, radiating through the otherwise impenetrable surface rendered by line drawing. This could be its enduring essence -- raspberries are red, blackberries are purple; safe caterpillars are this color, dangerous ones that color -- useful for distinguishing types of objects that are highly similar in form.

And its hidden inner state could be transient -- like, is this specific clump of raspberries fit to eat or not? Is that person over there sick or healthy? Is this female ovulating or not? Shape and volume will tell you little or nothing as they don't change much, or at all, across these fluctuating states. Color sends a much louder message.

Homo sapiens has largely swapped its sense of smell-and-taste for an improved sense of color perception. But odor-and-taste has the same advantages that color has over perception of volume and depth. Raspberries smell like this, blackberries smell like that. Safe caterpillars smell this way, dangerous ones that way. Ripe raspberries smell and taste different from immature ones, and both different from rotten ones. A sick person gives off different odors than a healthy person. A female in heat gives off this pheromone, instead of that ordinary one. And so on.

Color, taste, and smell join with music in not being representational -- you can use them to evoke an object or activity, but not to represent it. Even there, you can only evoke a generic class or type of object, and not a specific member of the class -- e.g., the smell or taste of rotten almonds, but not the smell or taste of any particular rotten almond(s), whose form you could, however, copy very faithfully in a line drawing.

Crucially, there are no general rules mapping the color spectrum onto the spectrums for any inner-state. Green doesn't generally mean healthy and thriving -- it does for plant leaves, but not for their berries, and not for a human face. Red means ripe for some berries (not others), but angry or febrile for a human face (do not approach). Etc. What color reveals about the inner state of an object is far more object-specific. And of course sometimes the color has no mechanically necessary relationship to the type of object or the transient state it's in -- like clothing colors. It's suggestive, evocative, and mysterious.

That contrasts with the universal principles of depth perception that drawing supports. No matter what type of object, or which individual example of a given type, the farther away it is, the smaller it will appear, the higher-up it will appear, the more likely it will be to be partly hidden by other objects, and so on.

These observations all support the long-held belief that line, volume, and depth are more objective and rational, while color and light are more subjective and emotional.

Why does light tag along with color? Blue looks darker, and yellow looks brighter. Primitive color terms in human languages are more like brightness and darkness words, only later being pressed into service to refer to hues. And like the use of contrasting colors, the strong use of contrasting light and dark impairs depth perception -- there's one area in full light, and everything else is so shadowy that the forms are hard to discern. With only a small focal region being illuminated, you can't use the strongest depth cues, which would require seeing the forms in the shadows -- what's their relative size, height in the visual field, are any partly occluding others, do they appear to converge in the distance, etc.?

Paintings with strong chiaroscuro lighting, such as those of Caravaggio, rarely (never?) give a vivid sense of 3-D immersion. They look more like bas-relief friezes, or actors occupying a thin strip of a stage while set against a flat zero-depth wall, in this case a curtain of shadow.

That should be enough of an overview for now. In the follow-up post, a look at what drives individuals and entire societies more toward the drawing or the coloring end of the spectrum.

Scented candles have such bland or saccharine scents

Now that I've gotten back into olfactory entertainment (i.e. cologne), I thought it might be worthwhile to have something diffusing throughout my room, rather than just radiating from my neck.

I remember burning incense into the mid-'90s without it seeming like an affectation, along with turning on the black light -- to illuminate the black light poster -- and putting questions to the magic 8-ball. All in a social setting, of course. But now, I don't know, it would seem like more of a juggalo stoner thing. Burning incense would feel self-conscious.

So why not try out one of those scented candles that I've seen on display for awhile but never bothered to inspect?

Jesus, I should have known from the types of perfumes that are popular these days (to the extent that females wear it at all, which is far less than in the '80s). They're obviously geared toward women only. I tried the local hypermarket and some home goods stores, and this list from Bath and Body Works is pretty representative.

There are only three categories available, all off-putting or just not very appealing.

First is the non-scent scent. No, nothing ironic or John Cage-y here, but things like cotton, linen, fresh laundry, boardwalk breeze, rain water, mist, de-salinated beach water, and so on. Totally ordinary, not stimulating at all.

Then there are the citrus and "clean green" kind of scents -- bamboo, fresh leaves, etc., and single or combined citrus fruits. These do a little something, but they're too fresh and clean to make it feel like an enjoyably out-of-the-ordinary olfactory experience. And it has nothing to do with using "plant" scents -- they stick only to the light ones, and not more bracing ones like pine and fir needles, or heavier ones like moss and bark.

I didn't even see that many floral scents. Want to stop and smell the roses? T.S., man. Lavender is about the only one you can find, at that does at least have a slighty heavy / smoky feel to it. Still, it's shocking how uninterested women shoppers are in floral scents these days -- too heady for the emotion-minimizing OCD majority.

Finally, what makes up the vast bulk of these shelves are dessert candles. It's insane how deeply they've rummaged into the dessert cookbook to find ideas. Caramel apple, creme brulee, French vanilla ice cream, sugar cookie, pumpkin pie, mulled cider, blue velvet cheesecake (I don't even know what that is), cupcake frosting, cinnamon buns.... no joke, think of any sugar-bomb that a lardass housewife would get an insatiable craving for in between episodes of Glee, and there's a candle for it.

At least these dessert candles have a rich, fatty, spicy smell to them, which does give them something of a heady quality. But that overdose of sugar just kills the pleasure and satiety, and makes you feel like a junkie aching desperately to score a fix... and then just one more... and then just one more. You don't feel transported to some exciting new olfactory world -- you feel trapped in the edgy, twitchy present, compelled to go buy some cinnamon buns to stop feeling so edgy.

You wouldn't believe how rare it was to see milk & honey, supposedly a classic combination of rich and sweet. I only found that among hand soaps, and it was hard to find even there. Honey isn't just a heap of table sugar like you'd find in the dessert scents. It's viscous and sticky and cannot be scarfed down by the spoonful like sugar can. It's warm, glowing, and sensual. The sensuality makes you linger on it and enjoy it, rather than just blow through it to feed some fix without appreciating it. Also, milk & honey doesn't have any grain or dough like a typical dessert does. These women want to imagine shoving pastries in particular down their piehole.

I was also expecting to see some other non-pastry dessert that would still be trendy, like yoghurt and berries or something. Dude, how cool would it be to burn a candle that smelled like blue cheese and strawberries? Get something pungent in there for those who like high-contrast. But nope. The only non-pastry stuff was the odd creme brulee or almond & vanilla or almond & honey concoction. And plain vanilla, too, but it's not very exciting all by itself.

There were a few with "sandalwood" on the label, though it smelled way too sweet and adulterated by other sweet or citrus-y things. Like one said that it was sandalwood "lightened" with mandarin orange and rosemary -- yeah, so much so, that I couldn't smell the sensual wood, but only bright kitchen smells. I even found two out of many dozen that had "amber" listed, though again it was either so muted or drowned out by being paired with a loud citrus. (Ditto patchouli.) No other resin-smelling candles to be had.

I couldn't believe how almost nothing was made from spices, except for cinnamon in a dessert combination. Why breathe in a heady aroma when you can pretend you're in the middle of a pumpkin pie eating contest?

Scents today, whether it's perfume or candles, are either dull and nearly non-existent, or they are palpable but ruin any sense of enjoyment and fulfillment by inducing an addictive craving rather than satiety. Both are the same in preventing any kind of emotional attachment to the place and time, to the atmosphere in which you're smelling them. The dull ones leave no strong impression in the first place, and the sugar-bomb ones take you out of the moment because you're so focused on hoovering another bowl of creme brulee, oblivious to your surroundings, and angry if they intruded on you for even a moment, distracting you from devouring your dessert.

If scented candles had been this popular back in the '80s, you can bet they would've smelled different. Perfume back then was heavy on spices, amber, woods, the headier kinds of flowers, and even animal musks. None of these non-scent scents or candy-and-dessert indulgences. But in general I think women opted to wear their fragrances while going out, rather than air them only around the home. It was part of the more share-in-the-fun attitude back then -- don't keep that aroma all to yourself. Now nobody but those in your own little domestic sphere will smell it, because it's a candle rather than a perfume.

It's like how no one plays music in public anymore, aside from the odd ghetto trash or wigger in your neighborhood. Kids don't go out with a boom box, or leave the car stereo on in the parking lot, playing catchy music for others to hear, as an invitation to join in the fun. It's all coming through earbuds or through some crappy laptop speaker if they're at home / in their dorm room, in private.

Impaired sense of smell by race / ethnicity?

I've been trying to find out how racial groups differ in their sense of smell. Anosmia is lack of smell, hyposmia an underdeveloped sense. Nothing leaps out at me from googling around, or looking through books on olfaction.

There are cross-cultural Smell Identification Tests, but they seem to give conflicting stories about which groups have a better overall sense of smell, i.e. if you tested every odor possible, and not only those that one group has lots of experience with and other groups little.

But, I haven't devoted research-project time to sifting through everything here. Anyone who wants to find out and broadcast something exciting and new in the world of human biodiversity should look into it and write it up.

I have this vague hunch that modernizing is causing us to lose our sense of smell, as part of the broader pattern toward becoming more cerebral and less corporeal. I also get the impression that pastoralists are more likely to wear cologne and perfume, suggesting they have a more developed sense of smell than folks in agrarian societies. Then again they may have the same olfactory sensitivity, but just more of a flair for living.

Any anecdotes you guys have, or patterns that are well known but little talked about?

Gay Peter Pan-isms: No interest in cologne or perfume

I've started to get back into cologne for the first time in awhile, and whether it's browsing through the men's fragrance area in a department store or reading through online forums to get opinions on stuff I can't sample in person, it's striking how minimal the gay presence has been -- like, practically non-existent. Not just on the customer side, but on the store assistant side as well. It's either normal men or women who take care of that part of a department store.

Furthermore, you don't see them in the world of perfume either. That's a woman-only domain, on the customer and service sides alike.

This is in stark contrast to many other areas of apparel, grooming, etc., where if there's a sizable queer presence in your city, you can bet on over half the "men" in H&M being gay during any given visit. Gays also express interest in all kinds of female fashion and beauty -- styling hair, make-up, clothing and accessory design, and so on -- but not in fragrance. They like the idea of playing dress-up because they're infantilized. Somehow fragrance doesn't play so central of a role in dress-up games -- too overpowering.

They just don't like the stuff. Here is a short thread from Yahoo! Answers asking what the best cologne for gay men is. Unlike other questions that ask what your favorite cologne is, which will restrict respondents to those who actually do like to wear it themselves or smell it on others, this more open-ended question allows for more general and less personal answers, like this revealing one from a real-life homosexual:

"In my experience, gay men aren't that into cologne. I've known some who wear it but mostly not."

Looking around the answers of the small minority that is into it, they go for the standard unassertive effervescent stuff that is sold to awkward teenagers in Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch, etc. At a forum for users of "powerhouse" fragrances -- i.e., ones that last long, project far, and smell in some way imposing -- there's no apparent gay presence at all. Looks like metalheads from the '80s are the only detectable over-represented group there, not airheaded faggots.

All of this points to the gay fear of self-assertion, part of their broader syndrome of infantilization. You're too afraid to take up lots of space when you're just a little dork, but that all changes when puberty hits. You start to compete more with other males, and you also want to assert yourself more around girls. The same is true for females: they get more catty and boy-crazy during puberty, and assert themselves more.

Part of that naturally expresses itself as a sudden interest in fragrances, both to wear yourself and to smell on others. They don't bother putting sample strips of cologne or perfume into Highlights magazine, or advertise on Nickelodeon. When I started out as a teenager, it was Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated where you first learned about cologne. I'm sure there was something similar for girls reading Seventeen or whatever to learn about perfume.

Not to mention the rite of passage of going to the cologne / perfume section of the department store and actually getting to sample all of the dozens of scents they had there. Dude, what if we run into some babes at the food court? Better spray on a little Obsession first at Hecht's. You never know...

Gays never felt that normal inclination that both heterosexual guys and girls felt as they matured into adolescents. Sure, some normal people don't find it attractive either, but not across the entire demographic group. The only group that is unequivocally uninterested in and even mildly weirded out by personal fragrances, especially the more assertive ones, are children.

This goes to show that it's not helpful to see gays as hyper-masculine (lol) or as feminized -- which is plausible in some cases, but not all. Females tend to be more juvenile than males in appearance, mindset, and behavior, so many cases will support both the idea that gays are infantilized and that gays are feminized. The crucial cases pit the two against each other, and infantilization always wins.

Most notably, gays have no nurturing or parenting instinct, whether of a mothering or a fathering kind, even when they're well into middle age. Here we see another example where both guys and girls, in their own sex-specific ways, develop an interest in fragrance during adolescence, while gays remain stunted in childhood.

That's true for other aspects of how both normal boys and girls start to change their appearance during adolescence, both to compete against same-sex rivals and to attract mates. Hairstyles get bigger, jewelry begins to accumulate, and designs or patterns get bolder. Gays wear minimal haircuts, don't adorn their bodies, and rarely wear striking patterns like plaid, geometric prints, and so on, only feeling comfortable to go as far as stripes and the odd gingham shirt. Their childish nature keeps them from being very assertive.