Tuesday, July 27, 2010

SMELLING IMPOSSIBLY BUTCH

Earlier a rumour reached me that one or two coworkers may be upset over the fact that they can smell tobacco.
I am the culprit.
See, whenever I go outside to indulge, I cover myself with a foul miasma, an odeur, a reek infernal.

A rugged manly smell. Tobacco.

Personally, I think I smell fine. Kind of old-fashioned, traditional.

When nobody is watching, I sniff deeply of my own fine perfume.

Mmmm. Nice!


It's rather like the delicate fragrance of the alloys that manufacturers used to use for drafting equipment. Something with a high nickel content, which gave the metal a hardness and a sheen. Not like that cheap German crap.

I can also smell ink - the kind of ink that had a slight acidic component. Not the sourness of a gallic acid liquid, nor the oxidized smell that such heavy inks had. More like the ethereal wiff of Namiki (Kabushiki Kaisha Pairotto Koporeshon) intense blue-black - slightly chemical, slightly resinous. Lovely.

Everybody should smell like this.
It's better than Brut. Emmes.
Buckets of real women are falling at my feet, I tell you.

6 comments:

jonathan becker said...

mmmmm, nickel. actually (and i know this only because i'm a guitar player) the word itself is from the german and the main source of it up until the 60's, i think was germany, in spite of the fact it isn't mined there. useless information 101, you know.

"not like that cheap german crap".

The back of the hill said...

In the seventies and eighties German companies started using a soft alloy that contained a lot of tin – giving a duller look to the tool. These were far cheaper than the better made Swiss and Chicago products, but they also wore out much faster. And they smelled different. Good drafting equipment has the faintest whiff of old silver. Bad drafting equipment smells leaden.
I still have my own drafting equipment, as well as my father’s. I had more drop-bow pens, he had more protractors and ruling pens. This reflected a difference in neurosis: I was obsessed with perfectly inked circles and arcs, he fairly naturally was concerned about precise dimensions and clean lines.

Of course nowadays everybody uses computer aided drafting programs. I doubt that many people still draft with pen and ink on paper. Don’t even know if the patent Office still insists on two seizes of submitted drawing only, on paper, inked. They probably accept floppies with all the data instead.

The back of the hill said...

For reference:

Ruling Pen

Proportional Divider
I have two extremely high quality ones - they're probably antiques by now.
Image: Dividers on Google Images

Drop Bow Pen

Tzipporah said...

"They probably accept floppies with all the data instead."

Wow, you're dating yourself here. Nobody uses floppies, they use CDs. Or thumb drives. :)

e-kvetcher said...

In medieval Germany, a red mineral was found in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) which resembled copper ore. However, when miners were unable to extract any copper from it they blamed a mischievous sprite of German mythology, Nickel (similar to Old Nick) for besetting the copper. They called this ore Kupfernickel from the German Kupfer for copper. This ore is now known to be nickeline or niccolite, a nickel arsenide. In 1751, Baron Axel Fredrik Cronstedt was attempting to extract copper from kupfernickel and obtained instead a white metal that he named after the spirit which had given its name to the mineral, nickel.

Ari said...

"Falling at your feet," or passing out? :>)

Now, don't get me wrong, I love the smell of tobacco in the morning (it smells like victory). But perhaps others think it smells like wet dog.

Maybe a milder blend?

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