kigaloween, and the tale of the scary spice

Kigaloween spirit 

Happy Halloween! Or Kigaloween, as I'm celebrating this year. The scariest smell of the week was definitely the overpowering olfactory force of the seeds of dozens of urusenda, or hot peppers (very hot peppers), that I was preparing for pili pili sauce (I followed these guidelines, plus olive oil and salt). Having been in Rwanda only three months, I am already at pains to tolerate a potato without the homemade hot sauce that's available at most restaurants. We use (and love) Akabanga and Sabana at home, but I wanted some of the fresh stuff, so I set about deseeding dozens of the beauties pictured below with the protection of some latex gloves (kindly provided by my friend and housemate, from her stash dedicated for use in archival research--who says it doesn't pay to live with graduate students?). I was not prepared for the power of these seeds! (My hands may have been, but my nose, throat, eyes, and brain were unguarded.) Even the next day--when the bulk of the seeds had been discarded, but a few remained, along with the peppers, waiting for the superglue to dry on the food processor (owned by that same beloved, well-prepared researcher)--everyone who entered the kitchen came away crying and coughing. 

My apologies, housemates! Please enjoy the hot sauce in the fridge, now de-weaponized. 

So I have even more sympathy than I otherwise might for the residents of Irwindale, California, who have filed a suit against Huy Fong Foods, maker of the indispensable Sriracha (and, even more delicious in my estimation, chili garlic sauce): 

...[In] Irwindale, where the hot sauce’s production facilities are, residents are complaining of burning eyes, irritated throats and headaches caused by a powerful, painful odor that the city says appears to be emanating from the factory during production. The smell is so aggressive that one family was forced to move a birthday party indoors after the spicy odor descended on the festivities, said Irwindale City Atty. Fred Galante.

The spicy odor descended! This is the kind of smell news I savor. I can just see the ghoulish little phantasm of a fiery pepper (probably baring teeth similar to those pictured on the pumpkin above) snaking into this celebration, forcing everyone to clutch their party hats and run inside with their cake. A judge will decide whether Huy Fong must "stop production until the smell can be reduced,"and I suspect I speak for hot sauce lovers worldwide when I say I hope the company and the city can come to a speedy resolution. Huy Fong produces 20 million bottles of Sriracha each year, and it's certainly scary to imagine all the foods out there, counting on that delicious spice, remaining bland in its absence.  

your breath smells in the news

In last week's issue of New York magazine, Jason Feifer tests the Topland Etiquette Checker, a personal breath-stank analyzer that uses a smiley face system to rank your mouth on a scale from "infinitely kissable maw" to "dead animal baking in the summer sun." Feifer "soiled his mouth with garlicky onion dip and coffee," used a series of "masking agents" including gum, mints, mouthwashes, strips, natural remedies, and whiskey, and subjected first the Etiquette Checker, then his wife, to the waft. You can check out a chart detailing the results, and the verdict (a the machine deviated 43% from Feifer's wife!) here. I'm so curious about this project. How many days did it take? Did Feifer use these masking agents in the order listed? How many did his wife smell in one sitting?
 

Screencaps via Jezebel and Huffington Post

In other smell-your-loved-ones'-breath news, Honey Boo Boo Child (aka Alana Thompson) & family recently participated in what Tracie Egan Morrissey delightfully described as "an interesting parlor game" called Guess Whose Breath. You can watch the clip here (scroll down to the second, smaller video screen) and if you're in the mood for more but need a little nudge, let Rachel Shukert convince you that "your mind is [not] too beautiful to sully with the Victorian freak show that is modern American television" in her compelling essay on how the fascinating Thompson family provides "a reflection of the classic immigrant experience."

In still timelier breath news, when I went looking for the Neil deGrasse Tyson tweet screencapped above, the first thing I saw in my twitter feed was an assertion that "Romney breath smell like canned yams and taco meat," as speculated by @seanverde and re-tweeted by Heems of Das Racist (@HIMANSHU), who is, at the time of this writing, on a real Romney smells tear, RT-ing lots of poop & bullshit-themed tweets, but also speculation that Romney might smell like crayons, gravy, mildew, or Cheetos. And there are so many post-debate tweets about Romney's smell and breath to choose from (balloon air, baking soda, old bath water, Lay's Dill Pickles + Spicy Ketchup--these all come from real tweets)! As @silvyysilv says,"ppl are going ham on Romney breath."

mysterious odors of unknown origins

Bad news about the lightsabers. [image via]

After seeing the above graphic in this week's New York magazine, I immediately got to googling, but the news I found didn't yield much additional information about the stink at Staples: 

TWO PEOPLE OVERCOME BY MYSTERIOUS SMELL IN GREENWICH VILLAGE STAPLES  
by Andrea Swalec and Wil Cruz

GREENWICH VILLAGE — Paramedics treated two people after they were overcome by a mysterious odor in a Staples store Wednesday, fire officials said.

Firefighters responded to reports of the smell in the store at 769 Broadway, at East 9th Street, just after 9:15 a.m.

The two people were treated on the scene for smoke inhalation, but were not transported to the hospital.

The cause of the smell was unknown.

Business was back to normal a short time later at Staples.

"The store did not close," manager Daniel Elliott said.

Calls to Staples' corporate offices were not immediately returned.

Call again, Andrea Swalec and Wil Cruz! This mysterious odor, with unknown origins, demands additional description. I tried to think of the weirdest things I've smelled at my local Staples, but the scent of hot copiers and new office chairs dominates. Surely, a smell that required medical attention must be worthy of a few adjectives beyond "mysterious" and "unknown." The shoppers were overcome!

The search term "unidentified odor" returns fewer Google results than I would have expected: a relatively modest 6,400. "Mysterious odor" is more common, with almost 53,000 results, including this one, about a "widespread and mildly irritating odor." What mildly irritates me is the lack of even a gesture towards describing the smells in these news stories. I thought reporters loved a good, gross quote. What was the smell like? Was it human or elemental?  Human and elemental? Sulfurous? Chemical? Medicinal? Like death? Did it have a color? That sticky fuchsia of some cough medicines? Was it putrid or acrid? Stale or just shat? Was it rotten? Or sharp in a way that scraped at your nose hairs? We don't know how to talk about smell, but isn't it better to try?

bloodhound gang

 Alex and Dodie

One nugget that has stuck with me from Rachel Herz's The Scent of Desire is the idea that a dog could smell a single Hershey's Kiss in a city the size of Philadelphia. I love the specificity of that chocolate drop, imagining it lonely on some street corner, a dog hot on the chase. I also like the way it makes us think about dogs' powers of smell being so beyond what we could really conceive of. (We couldn't see candy in a city of any size, and we so often compare dogs' sense of smell to our sense of sight.)  

 Carla (aka "Miss Virunga") and Foster

Tonight I came across the Congohounds, a project based in DR Congo's Virunga National Park. These beautiful bloodhounds are being trained to help sniff out human activity in the park; they'll help prevent gorilla poaching, as well as locate critically injured park rangers (at least 11 of whom have been killed in 2011 alone). When I last checked, the project had raised 0% of its $7,428 goal. (Edit: A closer look reveals they have raised closer to 12% of their goal, but the donation thermometer is malfunctioning).

I was lucky enough to visit the mountain gorillas (on the Rwandan side of Volcanoes National Park) this summer, and I was so moved by the relationship between the gorillas and the guides, many of whom are former poachers. Watching this video of Christian, a park ranger, and Sabrina, a bloodhound, I thought about the pure joy that animals can bring to our lives. This project aims to protect rangers' and gorillas' lives, provide meaningful employment, and help to invigorate Congo's tourism industry. All good and noble goals, but maybe you just want to give because you can't resist those sweet droopy bloodhound faces, or the light in their human partners' eyes.

Joseph and Stella

bad smell, good news

         via (I have chosen some well-manicured toes here, but can't recommend
        that you get too deep into google image results for foot cheese.) 

It's not every day bad smells get good press, but did you read the news of how the odor of stinky feet might be used to fight malaria? Fifteen years ago, a Dutch scientist discovered, by standing naked in a dark room and recording where he got bit by mosquitoes, that the bloodsuckers loved his stinky feet. Now Dr. Okumu, a Kenyan scientist working in Tanzania, has built on that discovery by developing the most effective footstinky blend of chemicals to lure mosquitoes, and he's working on incorporating the stench into an affordable trap.

I can imagine what this device might smell like (clipped big toenail times two thousand?), but will freely reveal the extent of my interest in stink and say that I would also be curious to actually smell one of the traps. In the meantime, if you're inclined to do something other than sniff your gym socks and toenail cheese, might I direct you towards Nothing But Nets? According to the Gates Foundation (one of the groups funding Okumu's research) a child under the age of 5 dies from malaria--a preventable, treatable disease--every thirty seconds. If you buy a net and let me know your address, I'll send you something that smells good in the mail.

hot stinky links

 photo by clemmac

Nosy readers whose olfactory interests extend beyond the reach of my vacations and what my friends smell like may be interested in some of these stinky links:

• "The Smelliest Block in New York" shares cover space with Ryan Gosling's torso in this week's New York magazine: "It’s a mystery, the stretch of Broome Street between Allen and Eldridge—a quiet little block that smells like high meat and old squeegees."
• Like Elisa, I marveled at this notion of "high meat." So immediately evocative--but what does it mean? Speaking of Elisa, her latest On the Scent column just went up, and I could listen to her talk about labdanum all day.
• Smell-O-Vision in our homes (or on our cell phones?!?). My preferred smell in any movie theatre is hot popcorn (it's half the reason I go), but I'd still like to get a whiff of this device. I can't imagine how much more successful/invasive an advertisement for food would be if you could actually smell it.
• A companion piece to the case of the stinky block has Chandler Burr giving an olfactory tour of Manhattan that includes a description of birthday cake-infected sidewalks, insight as to why Coppertone smells so good, and one mention of "really, really, really upscale hot dog."

royal smelling

I haven't been paying attention to the frenzy surrounding the royal wedding (except, of course, the  face-on-food angle), but this excerpt from perfumer Francis Kurkdjian's interview in Vogue UK (via NST) tickled my fancy: 

Who would you love to create a signature scent for? 

Actually Kate Middleton. Coming here at this time there is so much about the royal  wedding, and it made me think: she has no intimacy with anything, everything is seen. Her dress will be seen, her hair, her ring. I love the idea that her scent, the fragrance she chooses to wear on the day, will be the only part that is intimate.  

Of course, even Ms. Middleton's scent won't remain a secret if the British press has any say in the matter. What did you smell like on your wedding day?

p.s. Katie Puckrik, this week's nosy interviewee, talks about the scents she wore on her wedding day in the third installment of her perfume collection series.

colbert smells american

These Colbert clips-of-clips just make me want to watch more Colbert. And sniff the air- beneath-an-eagle's-wing note in his imaginary fragrance, I Smell American (And So Can You!). If America's national fragrance had a season, I feel like it would be summer. Smelled from inside an automobile, maybe.