Spaz Wants To Know: What Is The Worst Thing YOU Have Ever Smelled?
August 7, 2010 in WLP Wants To Know
Have you ever smelled something so horrendous, that you just HAD to share it with a friend? Or have you ever had a friend tell you “Smell This!!!” because they can’t wait to share a bad smell with you? You’ve come to the right place because I want to know about YOUR worst smell experience.
Have you ever heard of a Corpse Flower? Yeah, me either. But when my friend Tygriss told me about them, and how Houston Natural Science Museum has its very own Corpse Flower named Lois, I said “Sign me up! I want to smell!”
It just so happens that I was heading to Houston the weekend it was opening up, apparently when it smells the worse. See, an Amorphophallus Titanum, AKA Corpse Flower, has earned its name because the “fragrance” it gives off is not unlike rotting meat. The purpose of this is to attract carrion-eating beetles and Flesh Flies that pollinate it. The flower’s color helps to give the illusion of a piece of meat, and its temperature is said to help its own perfume disperse. The heat is also believed to assist in the illusion of rotting meat that attracts carcass-eating insects.
So when I woke up Friday morning, I learned that Lois had opened and was nice and ripe at a “Stink-O-Meter” level 10 – the highest Stink level possible. Excitement!! After working a full day then driving 3 hours to Houston, me and my friends got to the Houston Museum of Natural Science at 10:15 PM. I have never seen a museum so busy, let alone at 10 PM on a Friday night. Reports that visitors to the museum had increased by 400% with Lois’s arrival was definitely apparent. We stood in line for about 20 minutes to get tickets to see Lois, only to be told that “the next available viewing is at 3:45 AM.” Say what now? 5.5 hours from now? Come back to the museum before the crack of dawn just to smell what is said to be rotting death? There was no hesitation. We got our tickets.
We killed time at a sushi place until 1:30 AM when they kicked us out. We went over to a 24 hour Starbucks and killed some more time there. Then, we went back to the museum and got in line with our tickets for our showing. From there, we waited in another line that led us through the Museum’s bug center where we learned everything possible you could need to know about bugs. We finally worked our way to Lois.
And it was utterly anticlimactic. By 3:45 AM the Stink-O-Meter had dropped back down to a level 5… we missed the funky stink! When we first walked in to the warm area it was displayed in, we all caught a great whiff of what smelled like garbage, and then it was gone like a thief in the night. As my Bestie stated, “We could cook up more stink wearing Sketchers with no socks”… But, I will never forget that evening, the laughter, the experience, and most importantly that I waited 5.5 hours to see a stinky flower at 4 AM in the morning at a museum. How many people can say that?? It was totally worth the sleep-deprivation coma I was in by the time I put myself to bed.
So now I ask YOU… what is the worst smell experience you have ever had?? Were you dying to run and tell someone about it? Did you go so far as to share it with someone. Tell me!
I would! That’s cool. I’ve always wanted to see one in person. It’s stamen (is that what it’s called?) totally looks like a… hehee.
The worst smell? Wow. There’ve been so many. All prison related. It surprisingly wasn’t the guy who covered himself in his own feces. I know, surprised me too.
Actually, it’s a tie.
It was 110 degrees in Seg. (Down where they only get to shower twice a week.) and we had about 300 guys down there. It stank of dirty body, fecal matter and this weird chili ramen. The air was so wet and heavy, it was like trying to breathe water and this stench crawled up into your nose and stayed there. It was awful.
The other one was a space after a certain person left it. Now, I’m not a chubby hater. I *am* a chubby, but we thicker women know you have to be extra diligent when washing. Well… this fattie did not. She smelled like used cunny, that fish and menstruation smell, and she was always eating candy, so it had a sweet, skittle smell to it as well. I almost yarked every time I walked past her.
YES! Thank you for bringing the gross!!!! 300 guys cramped in a space… twice a week showers… OH. MY. GOD. I can’t even imagine the FUNK. I am giggling in horror just thinking about it. Now, more importantly…
THE FATTIE SMELL!!!!! Listen, I do not want to hate on any of my fellow ladies no matter what size they are either, BUT OH MY GOD I WILL if you do not wash yourself appropriately!! “fish and menstruation smell” I am laughing so hard I’m about to fall out of my seat that is so so so so awesomely gross. Plus Skittles. Whew! Thank you for sharing and illustrating such horrific scents. Love it.
But you knew exactly what I was talking about. LOL.
I DO and I have always thought maybe I was just imagining it, surely having that much more body mass doesn’t make anyone smell more than anyone else… dot dot dot
I do have occasional interaction with a very very not-just-chub-morbidly-hugungous woman and I’ve always felt so guilty for noticing she smells, but she DOES, and she smells EXACTLY like what you’re describing minus the Skittles. It is exactly how you describe it too, like freaking cunny!!! I am not really sure how I’d feel if she added the rainbow of fruit flavors smell to her. ***GAG*** At least she isn’t FDSing that shit. Whew!
I’m thick, so I always feel like a chubby traitor, but you know…
To be clinical, I think that some women who get really heavy either have too much testosterone or too much estrogen. When there’s too much testosterone, you get that funky stench from the pits, but an overabundance of estrogen makes your vag fat and harder to wash. It also causes more discharge, so it’s a hormonal thing. Or so it seems.
I am by no stretch of the imagination skinny, and feel somewhat like a traitor too when the thought even enters my mind that the obese woman really does smell. However, that makes total sense that the hormones are screwed up and are creating scents that might not normally be present without all of the extra extra extra weight going on. And we clearly are here to testify that whatever is causing it, it is VERY REAL.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Penny, Natasha. Natasha said: RT @SpazP: Visit me over at WLP @wickedlpixie for "Spaz Wants To Know: What Is the Worst Thing YOU Have Ever Smelled?" http://bit.ly/cfzem3 [...]
Hands down it’s White Shoulders perfume. It’s like sickly sweet with undertones of vomit, antiseptic, and bug spray. *hack PTOOEY*
Honorable mention – my lovely boyfriend made me dinner last Saturday. But he threw the shrimp shells in my garbage instead of packing them up to throw outside immediately. It was a new garbage bag so I woke up yesterday to the smell of death in my kitchen. *BARF* It lingered all day long no matter how many cleaning agents I used!
HAHAHA, wow I haven’t smelled White Shoulders in a longgg time, but now I am dying to smell it again to catch the notes of vomit and bug spray this time around!
Uuuuugh the smell of forgotten meat in the trash, particularly shellfish/seafood is sooooooo wrongggggg. Poor you! *GAG*
I love that you drove all that way to smell something so bad… and couldn’t wait! LOL
Sick dog. Back end. All I’m sayin’…
Sick dog + Back end = Nooooooo Goooooood.
Hee hee, that reminds me of when Wilson, our pug, first joined our family. I though he had the cutest puggie butt. And so I squeezed his cheeks.
And the butt squirted back.
I didn’t know they did that. o_O
OMG I’d never had a dog before, and knew nothingggg of anal glands until we got a dog. I was mortified when my dog kept scooting and we took him to the vet. The vet nformed me that you have to keep the “anal glands expressed” if they don’t clear out on their own. What the WHAT?! And the smell!
I have a few, Chinatown in the summer is HORRID. It’s just the smell of rotting food first thing in the morning that is just blach.
When I was in my last year of high school until college, my whole purpose was to become a cop then later go into forensics as a pathologist (coroner). My ex’s dad was the CEO of two major hospitals here and happened to be good friends with the Chief Coroner here so he set me up to meet with him. Of course I get my period that day, so I have queesy tummy….and he takes me on a tour..uh huh, for some reason the smell reminded me of boiled hot dogs…I couldn’t eat hot dogs for 5 years! You NEVER get the smell of death out of your nose, EVER… I’ll have to save an even worse horror story about death for halloween
EWWWWWWWW it smelled like boiled hotdogs, ewwwwwwwwww! hahahahaha
Well I think I have discovered my ‘worst smell ever’ in recent history.
Yesterday, we were out visiting a good friend. He invited us to his place… awesome, we thought… until we entered the lobby.
The lobby was hot. Not warm, hot. There were these plug-in aroma things that had long since aroma’d themselves out of usefulness. All that lingered was this strong artificial cherry odor. The kind of cherry that you would only smell on those crystally pellets that people would stick on the side of the toilet bowl. Except this toilet bowl of a lobby hadn’t been flushed in a long long time… and all that was left was the steaming grimy humid vapors of fake cherries and real poo.
I held my breath up the stairs to the second landing. Before he opened the door to go up another flight, we were warned of the second smell. Smells like cat poo, he says. I’ve done the weekend trips and come home to a 2 day old litter box… this was not cat poo. This was more of a cat that had died in a pile of it’s own poo… a week ago. The un-airconditioned corridors helped it steep in it’s own juices just right. Since Lois let me down, I haven’t smelled a rotting corpse… but if I had to guess, then this was it. It had just enough of a sour high note to make my eyes water, a deep base note that only painful diarrhea could give, and the accompanying heat just made it wrap around you to where you could almost ‘feel’ the smell.
And that’s my gross smell story.
Ahh, my fellow Stink Partner In Crime!
Ohhhhhhh my GODDDD this just made me barf in my mouth a little!!! Thank you for providing a full report on the high notes and base notes. Each sentence was beautifully equipped with wonderful adjectives and analogies. LOVE.
I totally thought of you, too. “Why isn’t SPAZ her to smell this?!?!”
Ok I got three. One has to do with Shug (why do almost all my replies on here have something to do with him?’)
1. My dad once he left the army became a 18 wheeler driver. I used to spend my summers on the road with him. Once we were in Texas and there was a whole bunch (like 50) voltures feeding from some cow that had been hit in the road. My dad tried to stop, but let me tell you there is no horror quite like seeing buzzards bounce off the windshield. They burst by the way. Rotten road kill all over the truck. The smell was the worst thing I have smelt.
2. I had a pet skunk. Once my brother tried to sneak up on it. No one said my brother was smart. I had to pay to have the skunk’s glands removed. And new carpet in our house.
3. When my husband and I first started dating he worked for the police dept, and after working a parade detail he came to my house. He took off his shoes and it smelled like rotten cream corn. I freaked out and made him take them off and get a shower and I washed them. I then fabreezed every spot those socks touched.
OMG Lily that might be one of the grossest stories I’ve ever freaking heard hahahahahahahahaha. The vultures, full of rotten cow carcass, all burst on to the car. Excuse me while I go gag now. Thank you for this awesomely gross story, love it!