HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
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HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
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Friday, November 03, 2006Olfactory Direct
I'd originally intended to post some papers about Iraq's nuclear program today, but then when the U.S. government took theirs down, I decided it might be declasse. So I've threw together the following instead:
It's been a very nasally interesting day today. Public schools are never the best smelling places in the world. You've got the bad food odors wafting up from the cafeteria. You've got the occasional puddle of elementary-kid vomit. You've got the decaying hopes of formerly idealistic educators. Today, though, things reached a head, so to speak. The teachers' room--far too pitiful to be elevated to the status of a "lounge"--has never been an incredibly pleasant place to be. It's really a perfect reflection of the New York City School System's attitude toward teachers. It's got a broken table with a handful of mismatched chairs. It's got two computers that kind of work and a printer the size of a semi trailer that prints nothing but legal-sized documents. It's crammed with a mountain of boxes filled with assorted math manipulatives (twelve gross of twist-ties?) that nobody's bothered to distribute to math teachers. A couple of weeks ago, they dumped a couple thousand books indiscriminately on our shelves because they were tired of seeing them. (Or something along those lines.) As of two days ago, the room got something brand new: a disgusting odor. I'd assumed that the smell was somehow related to the staff bathrooms on our floor which don't really work but get used anyway. That would make sense, right? I mean, that stuff's gotta go somewhere. Then, today, a bunch of teachers were in the room and a debate of sorts ensued, in which somebody put forth that, no, the odor wasn't fecal, it was more redolent of decaying rodent. Which came as something of a relief to me. I mean, there's only so much flesh on those rat bones. After it's all rotted off, the smell should go away. But Essence of Rat Corpse wasn't actually the worst smell I got hit with today. I wrote a long, long time ago about how unpleasant it was being jammed into a trolley filled with unbathed French. Today, I had sort of the opposite experience on the uptown 3 train. This is, I may have said before, my favorite train in the city. It's awesome. It originates/terminates just a couple of stops north of where I live, so downtown 3s are always relatively empty and full of precious sitting opportunities. Uptown 3s, as well, are usually fairly easy to sit on, as anyone going all the way to the Bronx grabs a 2. So I'm always jazzed when I'm going home and see the 3 coming up the track. Today, though, as I rode the 3 north from 96th, a guy got on and stood right next to me. And he had basically taken a bath in some noxious cologne. Now I like cologne okay. (Especially if you pronounce it "co-log-nee", which I always do.) But the stuff needs to be used in moderation, people. The guy standing next to me apparently goes through a bottle a day. By the time we reached his stop at 116th, my fucking lungs were on fire. When the guy got off, the stale, acrid subway tunnel air that blew in was actually a blessed relief. This is a pet peeve of mine. If you want to smell nice, that's great. But why the hell do people three states over need to share your favorite scent? A little dab will do you, goddammit. This is a lesson that needs to be taught in elementary school. Although, actually, my school could really use some judicious cologning.
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