The Nerd's Eye View

It's amazing how quickly you can go from well-heeled, well-educated man about town to scruffy undesireable. In the blink of an eye (or in my case, the blow of the nose) you go from top to bottom. I was walking to bus stop so I could go have dinner with Dr Germ, and as I was waiting I blew my nose and the bus pulled up. I walked on and it was packed. For some reason people were looking at me weird but I was dressed sort of scruffy so I put it down to that. Just then the bus lurched and I fell onto this older gent next to me. I apologized and he was like "it's ok" but then gave me another weird look and moved off into the crowded bus. But that's not the funny part.

As the bus went on it slowly emptied and I finally got a seat, so I pulled a magazine out and started reading. Occasionally I saw people looking at me strangely, but I didn't think anything of it. As I was getting to my stop my nose started itching. It turns out that when I blew my nose a booger had gotten onto the side of my nostril and dried there! So I've just spent 20 minutes on the bus with a massive dried booger on my face. It was no wonder everyone was looking at me like one of those crazy homeless people that gets on the bus. Still it was quite instructive into the manner if which people perceive the world around them.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This may sound weird but smells mean a lot to me. I don't mean to imply that I am some sort of human bloodhound but I have been blessed with a rather generous schnozz and I'm not one to be modest about my endowments. So this post is not so unusual, at least I don't think so.

I recently changed deodorants, finally having gone through the stockpile I'd amassed during one trip to my local warehouse bulk store. Yesterday was the first day I'd had to use the new stick, and after showering upon my arrival from home I applied it, got dressed and walked into the kitchen. As I stood there I had an eerie feeling, like a stranger was nearby. My roommate was sitting on the couch, tapping away at his computer, so it wasn't him. A glance out the window confirmed that it wasn't a neighbor.

As I moved around the apartment the feeling stuck with me and I soon realized that it was the new deodorant! I could faintly smell it, and it didn't smell like "me", or at least not the deodorant I usuall smell like. It's a curious thing that such an artificial smell can be so closely linked to one's notion of their own identity. This extends to everyone else as well - take my dad for instance. When I was a kid, my dad used Givenchy Homme Sauvage aftershave. To this day, I can't smell that scent without remembering my dad. When he gave me a bottle of it for myself a couple of years ago I found it really hard to have any on - after all, it was my dad.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just a quick note to express my shock and sadness at reading the obituary of Kurt Vonnegut Jr in the NYTimes this morning. When I first read Slaughterhouse Five as a kid in NY, I was immediately take by the ease and humor with which this story of the horrors of war was told. Not that I was a budding literary critic but I could recognize the underlying horror that drove the gallows humor. The surreal quality of real life drove the surreal interludes (or vice versa). All of which of course makes it surreal now to think of the man who always signed his name with a small glyph representing his asshole (to remind himself and others that everyone has one) is gone. Good bye and God bless you, Mr Vonnegut, you were a good man.

Posted by Lo Fat Mo at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)