Monday Musings (by Mr. Gaskill Rascal)

(I've been asked to start doing regular guest posting on this blog and in an effort to appease the Mrs, I’ve agreed to post about once a week about various topics. It will mostly consist of things in the world I find humorous, annoying, or just plain dumb. I am, after all, the smartest person I know.)

This past weekend we were up visiting NanaMax™ and as we were leaving, I made a quick stop into the restroom. Now, NanaMax have a lovely restroom filled with all the things you would normally find in there…hand towels, soap, TP, and of course a bottle of Febreze (for Max not Nana, I’m sure). Now, usually air fresheners have all kinds of lovely scents associated with them – I’m thinking something like “Summer Breeze”, “Mountain Fresh”, or maybe even “Vanilla Spice”. But this particular bottle of Febreeze was labeled as “Moroccan Bazaar”. Uh? Admittedly, I’ve never actually been to a Moroccan Bazaar, but couldn’t they just have easily called this scent “European Flea Market”? And why would you possible want your bathroom to smell like that?*

The first thing that came to mind was this time in college when I used to referee basketball. There was this one team made up entirely of guys from the Greek Student Association (why they needed an association, I'm not sure, but I digress.) I’m sure these students were very nice people, but holy cow these guys smelled horrific. Like they hadn’t taken a shower in weeks. Seriously. At first, I thought it might have been part of their strategy to keep people from playing close defense on them, but the more I thought about it I was convinced this is just how these particular students lived. We used to make the freshmen referees do all their games, until we were told to stop because of the school's hazing policy. That’s what I’m pretty sure a “Moroccan Bazaar” would smell like.

In my bathroom? No thank you. (In Nana's defense, she got it because the brown bottle matched the rest of the bathroom, not for the scent. Fair enough. The impracticality of house decorating is a blog post for another day).

Anyway, as I did a little investigative research, I learned that Febreeze also has a complimentary scent called “Brazilian Carnival”. Are you telling me that the makers of Febreze have so exhausted the list of scents in the world that they best they could come up with is that of a South American fair? Really? Do they at least serve cotton candy at these carnivals? Because that would smell good, but then why not just call it “Cotton Candy”.

To commemorate this new found knowledge of the sweet aromas of the world, I’ve come up with a list of fragrances that I’d like to recommend to the smell-improvement industry. No need to send me the royalty checks. Just a simple thank you will do:

Wet Dog, by Old Spice
Diaper Genie in the Sun, from Yankee Candle
Crusty Fishing Boat, by Lysol NeutraAir
Scented Tide Laundry Detergent, now with new homeless man stench
Sunday Morning Frat House, by Ralph Lauren


*Yes, I realize that Morocco is actually in North Africa, not Europe. But it’s on the Med and was under Spanish and French control for a long time (thanks, Wikipedia!) so I’m lumping it in with the rest of Europe for the purpose of this blog.