I Smell Mail!
British net provider Telewest Broadband is testing a system to let people send aromatic e-mails over the internet. It has developed a kind of hi-tech air freshener that plugs into a PC and sprays a smell linked to the message. Telewest say it could be used by supermarkets to tempt people with the smell of fresh bread or by holiday companies seeking to stir up images of sun-kissed beaches. Chad Raube, director of internet services at Telewest Broadband, says, "This could bring an extra whiff of realism to the internet. We are always looking at ways to enhance the broadband internet experience of the future and this time we are sure consumers will come up smelling of roses." The technology behind the idea was originally developed by American company Trisenx. Scientists at Telewest's labs in Woking, England, have built on that research to come up with the idea of a "scent dome". The dome comes with a cartridge containing 20 basic aromas, which can be combined to produce up to 60 different smells. A "scented e-mail" would contain electronic signals that would tell the dome to release the smell of flowers, perfume or coffee.
Inspiring idea. That we can send smelly emails to each other, don't you think?
Look at the possibilities. You could send aromatic messages relating to what you feel about that person. You could send pheromones to excite or arouse a person you meet on the web so you can abuse them at a later date. You could send 'Lily of the Valley' to Grandparents or lavender to Mum on Mothers day. The smell of baking bread to presumptuous estate agents who think they are going to sell your house.
Lets face it. We evolved by natural selection over animals as superior beings. The only conundrum is that our noses are only a fraction of the size of most other mammals.
Look at the Elephants trunk. It can smell other pachyderms up to 70 kilometres away.
However, I went to the Hippodrome at Great Yarmouth when I was a lad and had a ringside seat before the beasts had properly digested their food. Having the poor buggers balance on stools and stand on their hind legs would be so unnaturally strenuous for these colossal animals that it is hardly surprising they shit for England during the first ten minutes of the show.
If you asked Johnny Vegas or Jo Brand do such activities they would accept the task graciously as long as they could empty the contents of their stomach in the toilets first. I mean, to the contrary, the average 'Dumbo' doesn't wait for the 'second urge' at the circus and if you have ever been as close as I have to an elephants 'gable end' you would soon realise that you don't need a hosepipe on the front of your head to smell one of their 'dollops'. One was dropped almost on my shoes and looked like it should have been delivered by caesarean. It smoked and steamed like it had been micro-waved first. So, who needs a trunk to gauge how far you are from someone when they already smell of a sewage farm and 'pooh brown papooses' like they were laying undersea cables from here to Alaska?
When I was in primary school through some unfortunate caprice of the alphabet it emerged that I found myself allocated a seat on my first day to a girl called Rosemary Reynolds. She had the breath of a buffalo that could melt the tyres off a car at twelve paces. She had the thick pungency of a flowerpot and where her teeth were not already green she had what looked like 'permabutter' on them. Her bloomers were brown and crispy and she had the finest skill I had ever witnessed of the acrobatic and elastic 'green candle' from one nostril. I used to watch in awe when just at the point her nasal material would drop and stretch to the desk obeying the law of gravity it would almost touch and affix itself to her exercise book. Just when you thought the 'eagle had landed' she would snort like a polaxed hog, and it would disappear upwards like so much sucked spaghetti. Straight up inside her raw and peeling 'bugle'.
For a whole year of my early schooling I sat next to this reeking garlic wreck and while I watched her hair visibly 'move' and observed daily how her impetigo grew to the size of South America, I felt so lucky I was not a piece of shite. A filthy beggar. A stinking peasant as she was. I had Tuf pathfinders and twelve biros in my top pocket. What was I doing sitting next to festering clump of ugliness?
This is a graphic ordeal for you to read. Try sitting next to someone for an entire twelve months that scratched their arse and sniffed their fingers afterwards. Picked knee scabs and ate them with a degree of relish, and wore cereal carton card inside her shoes.
To top it all. I took her behind the bicycle shed to discover the female form, and she said in that 'breathy' way associated with chronic asthma, "For a shilling and a Mars bar, you can poke it with a stick." Imagine my surprise, when I saw her uncorsetted for the first time and because her knicker elastic had snapped altogether, she was forced to tie her underwear in a huge knot to one side?
The unsightly and repulsive wretch was obviously from a very poor family but that's no excuse to have filthy children. Yes, I know Wednesday night was bath night. Get the flags out. In the 'sixties' we were not as hygienically fastidious as we are today. I used to bath with my twin sister until I was almost seventeen, and when the 'Vosene' ran out, it was Fairy liquid or carbolic soap. God knows, that used to sting my pink pencil at that age. What with serge itchy shorts for a uniform I soon acquired a peculiar gait after 'bathnight' and was often mistaken for having polio. The fact was my 'little soldier' was sore and as red as a traffic light most of the time. I was the only child in my school under the age of nine years with a yeast infection that had nothing to do with bad beer.
What I fondly remember is sitting in front of a tiny screened Logie Baird black and white telly watching "Sunday night at the Palladium" in towels made of chainmail and eating broken biscuits. We took our life and our lungs in our hands with an Esso Blue fuelled paraffin stove that made the house stink like an oil refinery and often scorched my nightdress.
Animals all have bigger noses than us. A dog has a 25% better sense of smell than humans. Half their cranium is snout. Humans don't have huge hooters like our canine companions. Apart from Barry Manilow. He once lost an entire chess set up his nose. If the ageing Barry was a dog he could boast of burying lots of bones but now he forgets where he buried them. They were all nice girls though.
Barbara Streisand was famous for her huge proboscis. My mother asked a hairdresser once if she could look just like Ms Streisand, once, and the stylist smashed her in the face with a hairdryer.
Non scents
So what about all this email 'scratch and sniff' nonsense.
I believe if you can send pleasant or aromatic essences on the email system then you can send rotten egg smells to people you hate.
I also believe that the next headline will read, "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction are found at last. Al Quieda have been sending mustard gas over the email network."
You could send offensive 'pongs' to people as easily as essential oil smells. (They are not essential oils if you don't need them)
How about sending email 'unfriendly' odours that are more obscure but still recognisably innocuous?
Here is a list.
Corked wine
Old damp flannels
Those pink or yellow crystal toilet blocks in pub urinals
Moth balls
TCP
A vets waiting room when your pets anal glands have been evacuated
'Charlie' perfume
The stale exhaust when a tube train enters or leaves a tunnel
Swimming bath changing rooms
Old book shops.
Oncology wards.
Plug in air fresheners
Those stupid card trees that hang from rear view mirrors in 'smokers' cars that seem to have the 'masking' ability of a dustman wearing Brut.
That peculiar smell from a public phone mouth piece on a railway platform.
Nail varnish remover that has been spilt on coal.
Bootpolish that has been liquidised with margarine.
Engine oil that is used during sex.
Silage that is mistaken for muesli.
Factor 8 blood plasma that is used as a mouthwash.
Creosote on cats genitals.
Freshly mown lawncuttings that you keep in a knotted bin bag for three weeks and then serve on French toast with a sprig of parsley.
I'm sure you can think of many more.
Next time I will feature our new segment. It's called "Opsy Purvy". Get your coroner to bring in an autopsy for us all to interact with. If you are not a pathologist and just an innocent victim of a life threatening disease lets have a look at your biopsy and place bets on how long you have to live.
Come on. You may not have all day.
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