It Smells Funny

[livius drusus]

My corporate masters are subletting part of the 11th floor so there's a bunch of construction going on and, well, it smells funny. You know when you detect a funk of some kind that you can't quite pin down? I bumped into someone in the smelly lobby and asked her if she noticed it and she was all "Somebody made some chili earlier."

I assure you, that was not chili stank. Not even close. I don't even get why anyone would mention chili in the context of that particular stench. It's sickly sweet underneath and kind of moist. The closest I could come to describing it is that it was reminiscent of the giant grape-squashing vats you find on vinyards, like the one Lucy and Ethel stomped around in that time. If you've ever been within a mile radius of these things, you'll know what I mean: they reek to high heaven.

Anyway, I don't have a point really. It just smells funny is all.

[viscousmemories]

Maybe she was referring to a common after-effect of eating chili... :chin:

[Ymir's blood]

Possibly it is either something (mildew, mold, petrified mayo) that has been uncovered when a wall or floor panel was removed. Otherwise it might be some form of epoxy or glue giving off an odd smell.

[Ensign Steve]

My first thought was epoxy glue, as well. Or else that adhesive stuff they bead around new window panes. Same thing? dunno

[livius drusus]

Hmm... The glue theory seems plausible to me. It doesn't have that intoxicant Sharpie aftertaste, though, so it's not any glue I know. Then again, I don't really know that many glues.

[lisarea]

I have probably told this story before, but I am old so that means I get to tell the same stories a lot without getting complained at.

One day, many years ago, I was driving to work one day, and I realized I STUNK. I couldn't put my finger on what it was--my breath, my clothes, my armpits, what--but it was too late to go back, so I just went to work and avoided people. I made sure, the next day, to take a very meticulous shower, to brush my teeth extra, bring breath mints, smell my clean clothes, everything. I thought I should be OK.

Nope. I smelled seriously funky again.

I went for probably a week like this. I was taking extra showers, wearing way too much antiperspirant, gargling compulsively, and popping breath mints all day long, but nothing made a dent. I was seriously starting to be concerned that I was rotting from the inside or something. Plus I was starting to worry that my coworkers were noticing that I was avoiding them. I was just getting ready to call a doctor about it when I went to get something out of the back seat of my car, and out from beneath the driver's seat rolled a rotting onion. I guess it had fallen out of a grocery bag or something. I don't think I'd ever smelled a rotten onion before that. It was pretty bad, I tell you.

The worst part was when I had to go back to work and explain to everyone why I had been avoiding them. Turns out that they had noticed.

[viscousmemories]

Yep, you've told it before.

Maybe not here, though, and it's still damn funny anyway. :D

[livius drusus]

They had noticed you were avoiding them or noticed you smelled of rotting onion? Also, what kind of onion was it?

[Shake]

Occasionally we get a smell here at work which is akin to burned coffee*, which is about the second worst smell I can think of. The worst of course, is burnt popcorn, which can permeate an entire building!

*which, oddly enough, doesn't come from actual coffee in our case, but the grocery store across the street cleaning some sort of grease traps or filters or something (a co-worker explained it to me once, and I've forgotten the exact details)

[LadyShea]

Rotting onions are disgusting. Rotting oranges are the worst of all though, IMO.

[Socratoad]

Oh yeah, rotting oranges are grim (an understatement). I don't know what chemical reactions causes this. However it is the sulfur in onions that make them a close second.

Perhaps a resident chemist can enlighten us.

[Corona688]

We've got a hallway in the University of Regina here, the one that connects Luther and Campion, which smells like a mouldy swimming pool and has for years. Nobody knows why.

[Petra]

An old friend of my dad's had a possum he had shot in the boot of his car. It was there for about 6 months or so. Rotting onions ain't got nothing on the maggot infested corpse of that poor possum in the boot of Russell's car.


Anyway, I think liv's office has bodies hidden in the floorboards. You hear about that kind of thing all the time. :eek:

[livius drusus]

Oh they don't bother hiding them. They just slap an "Outsourced" label on them and kick them into an empty cube.

[Petra]

They just slap an "Outsourced" label on them and kick them into an empty cube.

LOL! Well, no wonder they're all in a funk!

[bobeh]

We've got a hallway in the University of Regina here, the one that connects Luther and Campion, which smells like a mouldy swimming pool and has for years. Nobody knows why.

LOL..I've lived in Regina before they upgraded the water system. Probably just some residual drinking water under the floor...

[bobeh]

We've got a hallway in the University of Regina here, the one that connects Luther and Campion, which smells like a mouldy swimming pool and has for years. Nobody knows why.

LOL..I've lived in Regina before they upgraded the water system. Probably just some residual drinking water under the floor...

As for bad smells...rotting potatoes is right up there on the obnoxious scale too..

[livius drusus]

Y'all's stanky water stories reminded me of what should have been a really lovely little alcove dedicated to Mary and Bernadette at my high school. It was a small, mossy niche with a tiny pool of water, statue of Mary against the back, statue of Bernie on her knees across the pool on the ground.

It reeked of rotten eggs; I mean sulfurous fumes from the impacted bowels of Satan himself. I held my breath every time I passed in front of that spot for 12 years. Can stagnant water smell like that just by itself?

[Ymir's blood]

Y'all's stanky water stories reminded me of what should have been a really lovely little alcove dedicated to Mary and Bernadette at my high school. It was a small, mossy niche with a tiny pool of water, statue of Mary against the back, statue of Bernie on her knees across the pool on the ground.

It reeked of rotten eggs; I mean sulfurous fumes from the impacted bowels of Satan himself. I held my breath every time I passed in front of that spot for 12 years. Can stagnant water smell like that just by itself?
You were high school for twelve years? :eek:

[livius drusus]

Clearly the sulfur fumes had more of an impact than the math classes. :blush2:

(It was K-12, actually, but I call it my HS out of habit because most of the time I'm talking about about my later years, and because the generic "school" could mean college too.)

[Goliath]

You know, I've had porn spam that had the same title as the title of the OP.

[livius drusus]

The mystery funk has a name now: carpet glue. I walked by an open bucket of it today and it almost knocked me flat. It doesn't smell like vinyard vats when it's in its concentrated form, let me tell you. :bleh:

[Ymir's blood]

The mystery funk has a name now: carpet glue. I was right, I was right!
:woohoo:

What do I win? :D

[livius drusus]

A smiley trophy is the best I can do. :winner: <-- Ymir's blood

[Ymir's blood]

A smiley trophy is the best I can do. :winner: <-- Ymir's blood
I could'a been somebody. I could'a been a contender, but instead I'm a CHAMPION! :cool:

[Ensign Steve]

I so called it, too. I don't need a trophy, though. I already know I'm da shit.

[TomJoe]

The closest I could come to describing it is that it was reminiscent of the giant grape-squashing vats you find on vinyards, like the one Lucy and Ethel stomped around in that time.

Well, the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa has a unique smell to it. If you happen to catch a waft of it, it smells like Welch's grape juice. The scary thing about P.a. is that it can grow in water. We used to have it in the pipes at one of the hospitals I used to work at... not good, not good at all, especially because it seems to be particularly attracted to burn victims. The way they got rid of it? They had to super-heat the water, and now every faucet comes with its own "WARNING! CUIDADO!" sign.

[TomJoe]

The mystery funk has a name now: carpet glue.

Well... that's a bit more vanilla than my guess. Good thing I suppose. Though darn... finding really horrendous real-life examples of bacterial mishaps is so tedious.

[livius drusus]

I wouldn't say vanilla is exactly apt given the circumstances, but I'm pretty damn relieved my office is not suffering from a Pseudomonas aeruginosa infestation. It's rather ickily ironic, isn't it, that a bacterium you had to scald out of the pipes was drawn to burn victims. :ill: