Lileks is having a contest of suggestions for new perfume or cologne scents. I've never been one for stinkum, myself, but his readers have some interesting ones. I wonder if "Durian" would be a big seller? It has a perfumy name.

How about the purple ink used in the old "mimeograph" machines? (Only they weren't really mimeograph machines, but I can't remember their proper name.) Much as I didn't like taking quizzes and tests in school from the '60s into the '80s, photocopiers and laser printers weren't ubiquitous yet, so we got these sheets with the purple ink on them, and OH! the smell! Heaven!

OK, so I'm weird. Deal with it.

Now I remember! They were "spirit duplicators".

Also, I have to chuckle about the idea of "Durian" being a name for a perfume. WBAL 1090 AM in Baltimore has for its weekday-morning talking-head a guy named Dave Durian. The man has a beautiful voice, but for all I know he looks like Alfred E. Newman.

Lileks kicks Wodehouse's b*tt. He needs to get out of the chalkboard media and start writing stories that stick around for a hundred years or so.

Rand, could you enable comments on the "First it was Doctors" article and then delete this comment please?

Haha Hale I had almost forgotten those and yeah they had a nice smell. Many photocopiers (or even printers) do as well and of course freshly opened books and especially those big old-fashioned accountant books/ledgers that probably went extinct somewhere back in the eighties. You're not weird at all as far as I'm concerned ^_^

p.s. durians taste nice, they stink but so does most perfume (or more correctly: perfume/BO mixes) so I guess it might be a hit...

Done, Karl. Not sure why they were closed.

I am holding out for "Hoppes No. 9", "Eau de WD-40" and "CLP".