Contrary to popular belief, the biggest problem isn’t necessarily the stench itself — it’s the odor’s illusive nature.  Chances are, if you have bad breath, you don’t even know.  Or, if you are aware of your oral condition, you don’t understand the degree to which you stink.

Bad breath doesn’t taste like it smells.  This is a problem.

Something needs to be done.

Ah!  Something has been done.

The breathe easy: the bad breath indicator.

The breathe easy is a card made out of a patent pending film that acts as a combination of a mood ring and the put-your-hand-in-front-of-your-mouth-breathe-and-sniff technique of checking for bad breath.

The breathe easy is easy to use.  All you need to do is exhale onto the white oval, wait 10 seconds, and watch the oval change colors to one of the 5 shades of stink.  If the color is on the left side of the spectrum, tame the stench before trying to smooth talk a honey(s).  On the other hand, if the color is on the right side of the spectrum, don’t hesitate.  Make your move.

With any luck, the breathe easy will improve the lives of zillions, if not thousands, of people by alerting them to the presence of hideous odors that leak out of their mouths with every exhale.

Me-Yow

Sex, by its very nature, is a lot awesome and a little disgusting.

This is your mind filling in why.

Done.

So, now that we’re in agreement, do the unpleasant and imagine what sex was like for the first thousand thousand years of human existence.  It’s only recently that human have banished their own stenches with a variety of soaps, perfumed, shampoos, ablutions and paper products.  This means that as recently as a hundred years ago, all the sex in the world was the modern equivalent of homeless sex.  Your ancestors, in order to conceive your more recent ancestors, were having straight up filthy, under-the-shrubbery-in-the-park, behind-the-church-dumpster sex.

People in the 15th century took a bath around once a year.  Yes, they didn’t know any different, so the humping was just fine and sustained them carnally.  But most people of recent generations won’t even fuck on a camping trip. Before soap and washing, it was just one long camping trip.  Greasy, smokey, hairy camping.  Forever.

And therein lies the rub.

The greasy, smokey, hairy rub: if you were to travel back in time, how long do you think your gag reflex would prevent you from pressing yourself against one of those ancients?  Could you get over it?  And in that fateful moment, when your lust mutes your senses, will it be the worst sex of your life?

Or the best?

“I am sick man…I am a spiteful man.”

Science says that smell is the closest sense linked to memory.  I think it has something to do with the location in the brain.  I’m not really sure, but I do know that you can read about it by clicking here.

Okay, maybe not there.  But you don’t have to read about it anywhere because you know it.  Because it has happened to you.  Because you’re a human. The flood of memories that come with certain scents can be overwhelming.

I know this all too well.  In fact, I am cursed.  I am cursed because most of the scent-memory relationships in my brain are linked with people.  This would all be well and good, but I can’t go through a single day without a barrage of completely worthless interactions rushing around in my head, playing out like little one-act waking nightmares.

Some samples:

My kindergarten teacher was a sweet old lady who played too much golf and lived with her best friend.  While it would take us years to figure out that she was a lesbian, she was one of the nicest, purest people in the world.  Her stench, however, was undeniable.

Scent: Greek Dressing and Eucalyptus
Present day consequence for me: I can’t eat feta cheese or go into a steam room without fighting the urge to recite the alphabet.

———

My high school girlfriend was a hostess at an Italian restaurant.  Teenage hormones were raging.  It was a heated relationship, some would even say bi-polar.

Scent: Tomato sauce and garlic.
Present day consequence for me: I can’t eat a piece of pizza without my physiological response being that I am about to get into a fight about what movie to pick at Blockbuster, buy a birthday present at J. Crew and then go hook up in my car in the back of a driveway of a house that is under construction.

———

When I was in 7th grade, my brother and I had a babysitter who smoked menthol cigarettes and had a very obnoxious laugh.  She would always invite her boyfriend over, who was twelve years her senior, when my parents were out of town.  He loved to make everyone really sloppy sandwiches and for some reason always used the condiments in our refrigerator that hadn’t been used in years. Then, we would all sit in the family room, have to watch whatever was on USA (they were obsessed) and listen to them talk about how one day they were going to have a destination wedding in Ireland.

Scent: Menthol cigarettes and gourmet mustard.
Present day consequence for me: I can’t go to a country music concert or enter a deli without the theme from Renegade thumping between my ears.  If I actually consume mustard, a shrill cackle enters the back of my brain, leaps forth to the front of my head and I have apparitions of a leprechaun priest marrying a couple on the show Silk Stockings.

———

This is but a sample of my disease.  I assure you there are more.  There are so many in fact that I wrote a book about them.

You can purchase it buy clicking here.

I was reading recently that during hard times deodorant sales drop off fairly significantly. As we watch our  economy plummet, I realized that this is one of those times.  As if an economic recession weren’t bad enough, we can now tack on a “Hygiene Recession”.  It’s time to come to terms with the fact that we are going to start encountering offensive smells from friends and colleagues.  Any congregation of people is going to smell like a 7th grade gym class.  The only difference is that you’ve probably gotten fatter, sweat easier, and are a lot hairier than in 7th grade.  Not just the guys.  Ladies, razors are going to fit into the category of frivolities you can no longer afford.  So it will probably be more like a 7th grade gym class somewhere in eastern Europe.

This evolution of our beauty standards will not stop there, oh no, when you are strapped for cash or unemployed, only the necessities can be afforded.  This isn’t just a slump, we maybe transforming into the one thing we’ve tried so hard to avoid.  We may be entering a metamorphosis into a Nation Of Hipsters.  You might think this a bit of an exaggeration but consider these possible symptoms…

We stop wearing deodorant because it isn’t a necessity.

We start shopping at thrift stores. You try to justify it. “I’m just trying to live within my means.” But you already feel “Deck” and you don’t even know what it means.

We start cutting our own hair or having a friend do it. You say, “I can’t afford a professional, it’s outside my budget.”  The problem is you think your new style is really tight, and feel like you are super edgy.

We start drinking cheap beer. Sure it’s called High Life, but you know it doesn’t taste a damn thing like champagne.  If you resort to PBR it may already be too late.

We move into shitty apartments with lots of roommates. At first it was just an economical necessity.  Now you can’t help but pretend you are in a youth hostile somewhere outside of Prague.  You tell yourself you are getting culture, but it’s not culture when everyone looks like you and no one speaks Czech.

We have no job so we sit around and listen to Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley vinyls. You’ll think it is cathartic.  You are just getting out all those emotions.  You are connecting with the artists.  Nick Drake killed himself.

We are angry at the rest of the world. You say its cause no understands you, and how complex you are.  The truth is you just became a hipster and isolated yourself.

Normally I am all about starting the revolution, because, at least in my head, it starts with getting naked.

This however is not that type of revolution.  You thought Bush was bad?  Think about the terror that a nation filled with hipsters would bring.  We’d all be forced to grow ironic mustaches and wear absurd glasses.  Our flag would be NEON… and our foreign policy would be to send nations mix tapes that evoke just the right emotions to indicate our, albeit vague, position on their political policies.

The mix for Israel would go something like this… (Click to listen)
1 ) Partie Traumatic – Black Kids
2 ) Stab City – As Tall As Lions
3 ) Wolf Like Me – TV On The Radio
4 ) Bruises – Chairlift
5 ) Dickhead – Kate Nash
6 )Hunting For Witches – Bloc Party
7 ) Lost Cause – Beck
8 ) Bankrupt On Selling – Modest Mouse
9 ) Kids – MGMT
10 ) Hang Me Out To Dry – Cold War Kids
11 ) Fancy Footwork – Chromeo (obligatory dance song)
12 ) Back In Your Head – Teagan And Sara

An easily deciphered message to any foreign ambassador.  This clearly lets them know that their current conflict with Palestine is not cool and that they recommend everyone grabs a PBR.

The point is we are headed down the wrong path America, and we need to straighten out.  Even as the recession strengthens its Kung-Fu grip, fight the urge to become a Hipster.  If you want to start a revolution do it the old fashioned way… With a tea party.  Leave the slim jeans and the messenger bags to professionals, like this guy.

You ever have one of those moments when you’re standing somewhere, at some incidental moment in time in a typical day between what you think is supposed to be significant and important, and you suddenly realize, holy shit, this is it, this is my life?

She was wearing a gray sweatshirt and a green corduroy hat and she was slowly sifting through the N’s in the Pop CD section.

And she was beautiful.

It was funny, sort of. She had this adorable look on her face, puzzled, like she was wondering why she was there in the first place, so diligently sifting through a form of music that just several years ago was the opposite of archaic. Or maybe she was just taking her time.

I pretended to look through my own stacks, making my way from the Indie C’s while subtly averting my eyes sideways in one of those moves that makes it easy to shift one’s gaze beyond your intended target if she tries to catch yours. It’s taken years of practice. I still haven’t perfected the technique. I probably never will.

We met up at the P’s.

She moved her way through leisurely, oblivious of me gaining on her and her slow, methodical fingers, dancing through the selection. They paused mid-Coppélia, stopping on a Phoenix record, and picked it up.

Suddenly, like out of some lame movie, the song “Too Young” came on the shop’s radio. I laughed.

Off guard, she turned towards me, but with just her head. A tiny corner of her perfume wafted over my face and for two seconds the entire world smelled perfect.

“What’s funny?” she asked in a French accent.

She was French.

“You’re French?”

She smiled a French smile.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just this song. It’s on the album your holding.” I pointed a finger up at the loudspeaker above us then down at her hands.

“Ohh, I didn’t know that. I just liked this record’s cover. This woman’s arms. They are so pretty.”

I turned and looked into her olive eyes and at her thin dirty blonde hair underneath that cap, and for the 57th time in my life, I was in love. The feeling of wanting to take someone and make them mine and make them happy until they’re dead washed over me in that familiarly pleasant and intimidating wave.

“I’m Jake,” I said, holding out my hand and smiling my safe, I-love-you-and-will-not-hurt-you-unless-you-want-me-to-in-a-sexual-way smile.

“Naomi,” Naomi replied, extending her own fair-skinned one. As her upper arm left the solace of her right side, a scent not altogether different from that of a pizza parlor emanated its way to my nose. The sublime perfume she had on melted away and was subsequently gang-tackled by millions of bacteria making their triumphant escape from her beautiful—yet olfactory nightmarish—armpit of unshaven, un-deodorized hair.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, falling in and out of love for the 56th time in my life, taking my fading smile with it.