Wednesday, December 26, 2007

DOLLARS CHICKENS AND SCENTS


Money doesn't smell.
Maybe new currency has a new smell, but not the old and faded bills.
Correction:
I just opened my wallet and smelled some old fives, ones and twenties.
They had a musty-dusty scent.
Don’t try this at home.
Who knows what microbes might go up your nose?
I know.
I’m strange.
I recently bought some cologne that was reduced in price from $89.99 down to $9.99.
The price was too good for me to ignore.
I bought one bottle (BATH AND SHOWER GEL included), and noticed that there were still a few bottles of the same cologne left on the bottom shelf.
I thought to myself,
"Well, if it's good, I'll come back and buy some more."
The cologne wasn't that good, but at its reduced price it wasn't that bad either.
It's the first cologne that I've ever bought that contained human pheromones.
So far it hasn't made any difference, with or without those pheromones.
But maybe my body doesn't interact that well with this particular cologne.
I plan on going back and buying the remaining bottles.
I can't pass up that price---with or without the pheromones.
I like that word pheromones.
It makes me think of pharoah moans.
Maybe the cologne is working better than I think it is.
When I taught English at Kabul University, the United States Peace Corps paid me in afghanis.
I had to carry around a lot of afghanis.
If I remember correctly, one dollar was worth about 40 afghanis back in 1977.
Getting my "paycheck" was equivalent to getting a small basket full of afghani bills.
I felt rich having all of those bills.
One thing I started to notice was how much of this currency was covered with blood.
The blood was dry, of course, and this was before AIDS had become public, so the blood-covered money, although quite gross, didn't bother me too much.
There wasn't that much violence in Kabul, so I guess maybe the blood was from something else, like chickens or lambs getting murdered.
I once watched how a chicken is killed in Afghanistan.
A man held the chicken above a street gutter, looked up to the sky and spoke some words, then sliced the chicken's neck, above the fowl's Adam’s apple so that it couldn't tell Allah what was transpiring.
The chicken was then held above the street gutter for its blood to drain out.
The chickens in Kabul were about as big as sparrows.
Here in America certain people complain about how chickens are raised in order to get those huge breasts and bulky legs, but we should be thankful for it.
In America we seem to super-size everything.
Back to scents.
I once stopped using commercial deod0rants because of what I had read about them.
I was living and teaching on a tropical island.
Although I swam every afternoon after work, I also drank and smoked.
I'm sure that my perspiring let those around me know these facts.
On one particular day of teaching I knew it was time to turn over a new leaf, or at least return to using deodorants.
I was one of only a few teachers who had an air-conditioner, but even so my reeking perspiration could not be hidden.
I walked by one of my students who squealed, "Ooh...you smell!"
I immediately put my nose into my right armpit, and indeed, I did smell quite bad.
I said to this student,
"You're right. I'm sorry. I'm going to start using deodorants again."
After that day I started using lots of deodorants and colognes--- EVERY DAY.
I started to smell, as one teacher said to me one day, like an exotic flower.


IT'S THE OIL STUPID!

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