Scents and Sensibility
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Mona's word of last week, smell, has lingered in my brain like the scent of burnt microwave popcorn.
So, an olfactory anecdote: while I was working at the worst job I ever had (a "crepe assembler" at the Magic Pan in Minneapolis), my mean-spirited boss fell down half a flight of stairs at a party. He went to the ER, and when he came back to work a couple days later informed us he was fine, but - and I am not making this up - he had lost his sense of smell in the fall.
My theory at the time was that since smell is located in the limbic system, an ancient part of the brain (in evolutionary terms) commonly called the lizard brain because lizards have this structure in their brains as well, he would lose the more reptilian aspects of his personality, and emerge from the fall as a nicer, more pleasant individual.
I was wrong. He was still a dick.
Just a dick with no sense of smell.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
Also: Willie Ziebell sez that there is a word for the smell of rain in the air: petrichor. Pronounced pe-trĂȘ-kor. Cool word. Thanks, Willie.
A non-smell related item: you may recall I predicted the Cubs were gonna go all the way this year. I was wrong. Very wrong. They didn't win a single game, and were effortlessly swept out of the playoffs by the Dodgers. More strangeness: on TV I witnessed Cubs fans booing their own team! At Wrigley Field! I don't think I've ever heard that before. Mets fans, sure. Yankees fans, absolutely. But not Cubs fans. They're supposed to be above that sort of behavior.
No Mets. No Cubs. No Rockies. No Twins. Gonna be a boring post-season, I predict.