Sunday night smell poll

[stillsostrange]

How well would you do as a werewolf?

[Poll #1155341]

Comments

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I believe I can smell impending snow, as well as rain, though everyone pretty much thinks I'm crazy.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

I love the smell of snow, but we get it so rarely down here I'm not sure if I can smell it impending or not.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You are not crazy. Impending snow smells. It smells wonderful.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

It is indeed a pretty darn good smell.

I also love the smell of hurricane off the coast about four hours' drive away. (Literally, it's the same smell as ocean mixed with rain, but you get it far inland.) I miss that one from North Carolina.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too. For that matter, I can smell something different in the Bay Area when it's about to start snowing in Tahoe. (It usually is the same weather system, just we get rain and they get snow.)

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

In the second one, I didn't tick several things I can smell when they're extreme (really bad illness, someone showering in perfume, &c.).

Also, it's been a gratifyingly long time since I stepped in dog poo, so I can't say for sure on that one.

(Frankly, is smelling well a gift in these overcrowded industrialised times? ^_~)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I can't smell the minute someone gets pregnant. Takes awhile for the hormonal shift to make itself obvious, although it's faster if it's someone whose personal smell I know already.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Although I'm kind of jealous of people who can smell well, I'm kind of glad I'm not better at it--most artificial scents and quite a few natural ones (lavender, woodsmoke, etc.) give me awful migraines.

I didn't mark shampoo or what someone's been eating because I can only smell those if it's unusually strong (super-fragranced or very recent shampoo, or if they've eaten something strongly scented like bacon or curry in the area where it was being cooked).

I'm baffled by the notion that someone could smell arousal or pregnancy (without putting their noses somewhere intimate, anyway). It's not that I don't believe it, it's just that I can't picture it, like if you said you could see infrared.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Can you "picture" (aaaaah, visual metaphors for other senses again!) being able to smell a person's sweat in an ordinary sort of setting when they weren't sweating profusely? Because it's that, just with a shift in what's in the sweat. Fear, too. Exhaustion. Etc.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm really visual, so our language works well for me in that respect. Heh.

If someone had previously been sweaty, then I could smell that, but the scent only has two settings for me: "UGH!" and "weirdly pleasant." Ah well.

[csinman.livejournal.com]

I said I don't choose my mate by scent--but it's a trick question because I'm pretty sure we all choose them that way whether or not we know it. I don't think, "This guy smells great, I want to do him" nearly as often as I do him and then retroactively think, "Man, he smells great."

[csinman.livejournal.com]

I can't believe fadethecat remembered and I didn't! Rain on a hot sidewalk is right up there with the scent of the ocean. I love it.

[rosefox]

Apparently that smell comes from a certain type of mold spore. If someone could figure out how to turn that scent into a perfume, I'd wear it every day.

[csinman.livejournal.com]

I am shocked and disgusted that you would condone the wholesale slaughter of mold--BWAHAHA!

Sorry, I tried, but I can't be a mold activist. I'd wear it too.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's an awesome smell. And one of the best things you can get from being stuck in a hot city. :P

[tanaise.livejournal.com]

My werewolf skills are in taste, where I have to give up things i like (apricots) because I can't stand the sulfur, or many things with preservatives in them because they're so damn chemical tasting. I suspect that I'd be better with smells if I made an effort to pay more attention to them, but in general, other than the extremes of good or bad, I often don't notice. (I think some of this is self preservation--I really don't want to make more situations where I can't stand being because of smells, so I don't pay attention, so that everything stays in the background where I don't notice it.

[jmeadows.livejournal.com]

I can smell a few foul smelling things. Skunk, animal waste when I'm cleaning it, vinegar -- I don't actually mind that -- cigarette smoke, pot, strong alcohol on someone's breath... I can smell department store fragrances if I press my nose to a person's skin/the sample card, but I can't tell what I'm smelling. It *feels* sharp inside my nose, like chemicals.

On a short good list, I can smell fajita smoke, strong flowers (again, when I press my nose to them), some shampoos when I really try...

I think that's it. I fail at werewolfism.

[magicnoire.livejournal.com]

The coming snow.

[clarentine]

I didn't answer the perfume or what someone's drinking questions because all perfume and alcohol stinks to me, so I have never tried to discern the varieties. Well, I could probably tell if it had been wine or beer or something else, but what specifically...nope.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I can smell changes in the weather, often. And a handful of other things, like changes in water quality, and differences between types of stone, that always struck me as kind of odd.

I haven't spent sufficient time around pregnant women to know if I can smell any differences, but I suspect I could, since I can smell differences in emotion - not sufficient to tell you what they are, apart from really strong nervousness, but enough to know they're there - in some of my friends. (I can't smell what someone had to eat, though, unless it's garlic or curry or otherwise strongly spiced.)

Your box wasn't long enough for my favourite smell, though: it's that harsh brine-and-seaweed scent of a heavy sea in late autumn, winter, or early spring.

[aimeempayne.livejournal.com]

Tap water in Florida smells so much better than in Ohio. As soon as I moved, I remembered the smell from when I was a kid and would visit my grandparents in the winter. To me it spells like Spring.

[raecarson.livejournal.com]

Almost every person I know has a distinct scent. (I'm pretty sure that makes me a werewolf.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_eljefe_/]

Now I am going to be sniffing pregnant women. I am usually aware that they are pregnant, but I have never gone and isolated the scent. *laughs*

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

That's a good way to look like an UNSUB...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_eljefe_/]

I only "sniff around" women I know. They tend to be more tolerant of my strange ways. *laughs*