what is that horrible smell

a thread for times when you walked into a room, asked "what is that horrible smell?" and what the smell was

i asked "what is that horrible smell?" and it turned out my coworker had a backpack full of old canteloupes she bought for a dollar

more recently, i thought something was rotting in my desk, but it turned out that my neighbor was eating eggs

mystery smell in my apartment kitchen circa '05 (whole thread devoted to this mystery) never properly explained.

smelled like a bunch of mice were re-enacting the 120 days of sodom behind the sink.

OMG i was gonna start a thread on this the other day!!

about once a week a smell permeates my workspace that is so revolting i almost can't stand it. it's a unique blend of:
burnt dog feces
close-up skunk
a container of wet clothing you have just opened up, which has been closed for months

i've got no idea what it is, but i am pretty sure that the wall it emanates from is the dividing wall between my workshop and a meth lab.

historically, the best example of this was when i was getting picked up for a date (in high school) and i asked him "so i guess you just finished cleaning the bathroom?" (he told me on the phone earlier that he had been cleaning the bathroom) and he said "no, it's fahrenheit" (a notably foul-smelling cologne -- do people still wear this?!)

a container of wet clothing you have just opened up, which has been closed for months
oh god this is a terrible smell

not really related but this just reminded me: i had no idea till i moved to the US that "skunk" is called that because it actually smells like a skunk... i always thought it was just because it was strong-smelling, LIKE a skunk.

;_; Fahrenheit was my cologne of choice

now I go with Moulton Brown black pepper

ew that also reminds me of meeting boys when i was younger who would always smell slightly damp bc they were fucking useless at doing laundry

there's this female perfume/scent or something that's supposed to smell 'fierce' or 'mature' or something but just smells awwfuuull

does anybody know what I'm talking about

sorry oh noes
it smelled like lysol

i thoroughly like good smelling people, but this was not a good smell

there are lots of scents like that dayo

OPIUM?!

ELIZABETH ARDEN'S RED DOOR?

idk it just seems like the smell that a girl wears when she doesn't wnat to smell like flowers

just smells awful tho

*goes to smelltube.com*

there was a customer i used to deal with on the reg, who was a perfectly normal-seeming human being, but she had the WORST WORST MOST AWFUL personal smell i've ever encountered. sort of a bizarre mixture of mustiness and mildew.

it was so overpowering that i would have to wash the clothes she tried on bc they were too revolting to return to the rack.

all three incidents i mentioned were all times when i said out loud "what is that horrible smell?" and it was someone in the room

yeah it's the really rich, mildew-y, damp smells that are the worst.

the kind that you can feel coating your face

again dayo there are lots of different types of perfumes other than flowers and stank -- there are orientals, chypres, etc.

my wife went through a phase where she was all into Clinique everything including their perfumes/colognes and she tried to get me to start wearing Happy! For Men, which basically smelled like a citrus Renuzit air freshener cone; that was horrifying

also just recently we had so much bad food shoved way in the back of our refrigerator that waves of what could be charitably described as "period smell" used to waft through our kitchen at random times until we cleaned that bad boy out

i am talking about having to confront the source of the horrible smell face to face and be like "oh...sorry"

but a catalogue of horrible smells is ok too i guess
i prefer to catalogue good smells though

xxp That reminds me of the time that I had to clear out what was practically compost from the salad draw at the bottom of the fridge, armed only with a single rubber glove with a hole in one of the fingers. Ah, shared student houses.

the fridge thing was a total "what is that terrible smell?" situation complete with forensic investigation and dawning horror at what was in the back of our fridge, likely plotting to break free in the middle of the night and murder us

once i smelled a terrible smell, and i blamed it on my elderly neighbor for a while but it turned out to be a dead mouse beside my fridge

September/kitchen/rotten potatoes

even worse than the fridge smell is when you have a stack of dirty dishes that haven't been done in days and days, and there is no apparent smell until... you lift one off and suddenly the trap of nastiness starts seeping into the air.

i kinda wish there were a smelltube.com but only for good smells
that would make me really happy, in fact

oh i have another one

went camping for the weekend, came home and smelled a terrible fermented fart smell. is it my dirty clothes? no, it is the water from the pot of beans and rice i rinsed, but neglected to wash

uuuuuuuuuuuuughhhh so gross

the actual worst worst is when you are by yourself in a room and you fart, and then you leave to get something, and then you walk back in and realize that an entire colony of dead mice is in your ass

Or if you fart in the car and the lock it up and later when you return to the car with another person and open the door, there it is, waiting for you.

Or so I've heard.

dyao another contender for the perfume of which you speak is CINNABAR by Estee Lauder. Full dIsclosure: I love that stuff and wear it occasionally but I think it smells okay on me and I know lots of people hate it.

Also maybe Clinique Aromatics Elixer.

I mean to say I know lots of people hate Cinnanar out of the bottle but like the way it smells on me. Or maybe they're just being nice and start uncontrollably retching when I leave the room.

coworkers' reheated leftovers

I walked into the front door of my house once and said aloud "what is that smell?" and it was my roommate, hiding behind the door to surprise me. That was awkward.
TBF he was once given the nickname "old pizza" (he kind of smells like that)

September/kitchen/rotten potatoes

― William (C), Friday, December 2, 2011 2:33 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

This has happened to me twice. The second time it smelled enough like vomit to cause me to bring up my lunch.

hmm next time I smell this perfume I will try to capture it in a bottle and give it to you guys irl, to confirm.

you know what's a great horrible smell? fish sauce

a variation of this:

I was talking to a college roommate one night, sitting on his bed, just about nonsense. I asked him when he had gotten brown sheets and he told me that these were the same blue ones he had at the beginning of the semester, he just never washed them

I never set foot in his room again

hahaha
oh old pizza and brown sheets now that is what i am looking for

smelled like a bunch of mice were re-enacting the 120 days of sodom behind the sink.

― dr. strongo, Friday, December 2, 2011 2:16 PM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

also just recently we had so much bad food shoved way in the back of our refrigerator that waves of what could be charitably described as "period smell" used to waft through our kitchen at random times until we cleaned that bad boy out

― OH NOES, Friday, December 2, 2011 2:25 PM (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

dying at both of these

my kitchen sink smells fucked up right now. i guess i need baking soda or something?

I bought my house in 2009 from an old widow who had lived there alone for 4 years or so, but who had moved into the house in the 1940s. It had a very particular smell of dust and decomposing chemicals from the upholstery and 40 years of greasy cooking and booze and whatever.

So I'm on the commuter bus heading home yesterday and a guy sits down next to me who smells just like my house before we cleaned it up and renovated. It wasn't "horrible" like rotten potatoes but it was pretty unpleasant to be rubbing up against him on a bus seat.

iirc the sheet revelation cued me into to some sensory clues that my mind was busily deflecting in order to preserve my sanity, like how the sheets felt vaguely wax-papery and how his bedroom smelled faintly like old ham

xp: my math is somewhat off there. She got the house in the late 50s.

There's a water treatment plant a couple miles from our house which, thankfully, only smells when you are directly next to it. But sitting at the stoplight adjacent to it is pure torture, even with the windows rolled up tight and the vents shut. I've gagged many a time sitting there.

not really related but this just reminded me: i had no idea till i moved to the US that "skunk" is called that because it actually smells like a skunk... i always thought it was just because it was strong-smelling, LIKE a skunk.

― smoove operator, Friday, December 2, 2011 7:19 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

I don't understand at all. You thought that skunks were called that b/c they smelled strong like a skunk, not b/c they actually smelled the way a skunk does? I'm trying to understand but there's something I'm not getting.

Mostly I came here to say that this thread title sounds like the name of an Onion infographic, e.g., What Are We Yelling About?

I remember in high school, a bunch of us spent a week at the U of MN at a high school journalism camp where due to a mixup jjj and I were not rooming together as planned. We were in jjj's room where we'd ordered a pizza and were sitting around bullshitting and eating when jjj's roommate came in and freaked the fuck out. You would have thought we were frying durian in cat diarrhea based on his reaction, which included angry shouts of "WHAT IS THAT DISGUSTING STENCH" and "GET PERMISSION BEFORE YOU JUST BRING A PIZZA INTO SOMEONE'S ROOM, GAAAAAAAWD!" Of course we were all "um yr roommate is right here and he said it was okay, so whatever" and continued eating.

I want to say he ran out of the room and we hid the pizza box under his bed but I might be making that up.

xp: Jesse, "'skunk'" = "'mary jane'" = "'ganja'"

tbf I will probably kick somebody out of my house for bringing in the horrible stench of dominoes

Holy shit. I read a comment on FB a while back that is perfect for this thread. I have to find it!

xp- Ooooohhhh! Now I understand. Thank you.

steady larfs at my desk, keep it up

lol

IIRC it was some local campus pizza place (which may or may not have been a Dominos now that I think about it)

green peppers smell atrocious on pizza, but it's not like old canteloupe.

also the worst smelling old lady perfume from clinique is obviously YOUTH DEW

maybe that's estee lauder?

youth dew vs. creamofsumyunguy

I found it! A guy posted this comment to a friend's FB post about a stinky train car:

When we lived in the city, I was quite tired one winter morning and wearily took the dog for her morning walk. I rushed back to the apartment, got my bag, headed for the bus stop. I get on at LaSalle and Goethe. At LaSalle and Division, a homeless guy gets on and, of course, sits next to me. It is at that time I smell the strong odor of shit. FML. But, by the time we get to Oak St, the bus is packed and there is nowhere to go, so I just stay put. I get off at LaSalle & Adams, head to the office at the CBOE, the shit smell still haunting me. I get into the office, reach into my jacket pocket for my keys, and find a bag of dog shit, no doubt put there during my dog walk just 20 minutes earlier!

OH NOES otm - we don't have skunks where i come from, so i had no idea what one smelled like. i wonder how many other people are completely ignorant of this.

xp: oh god, I have a story like that

We were visiting friends in town and their condo had this awful, horrific smell in it that seemed to have no origin; everywhere we went, it was there. We thought we had tracked it down to some spots on the stairs outside their door and the husband, who was head of their condo association, typed up this long letter about cleaning up after spilling things in public spaces and taped it on the front door of the building.

After about 10 minutes of conversation we decided to leave because the smell just wouldn't go away. We walked outside and I noticed some reasonably fresh dog shit someone had neglected to pick up with a noticeable footprint in it. It jumped out at me because the footprint matched the tread on the bottom of my shoe. Basically, in our quest to find this smell that was magically following us everyone, I managed to track dog shit around their entire condo and halfway up the carpeted stairs in the common space.

Oops.

why do I have so many of these stories, clearly I am a disgusting beast

haha I was just gonna comment about how half this thread is HI DERE posts

the other half is me! i am disgusting but also have a lot of smell-related memories.

I've never had to deal with skunk spray close up, mainly just smelled it in roadkill-passing; from a distance and with brief exposure, I actually kinda like it.

i usually like skunk smell too but as i mentioned, i am disgusting.

I don't mind dead skunk smell, if dead skunk smell is what I think it is

WHAT

SKUNK SPRAY IS THE WORST FUCKING THING IN THE WORLD

gagggagaggrrgrrglaaaaaaaaaa verging on retching just thinking about the time my childhood cat tangled with a skunk, that was not good times

they don't have to be dead!

xp says the guy who wore lysol perfume

http://www.sinpets.com/dogpix/20070727Coprophagia_homebreeder_Samoyed_ToaPayohVets.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSKHUcenqHs

I managed to track dog shit around their entire condo and halfway up the carpeted stairs in the common space.

I have done this. Ugggh!

Old skunk a ways away is okay. Fresh skunk real close will shut you down

xp did the shit hit the fan?

I have done a similar thing as the man with the dog shit in his pocket, except it was a purse that the cat peed on.

I would rather BATHE in cologne than smell a skunk up close ever again

I would rather soak for an hour in DRAKKAR than smell something sprayed by a skunk again, words cannot adequately describe the physical PRESENCE of that smell; the closest I can get is the aggressive BO you sometimes run into on public transportation that mashes so many terrible smells together that the overwhelming scent your brain can process is "stale saliva".

at work there was one set of cubicles which always emitted the weirdest scent. it was as if food had gone sour and someone had vomited in response to that, and then someone took Lysol to try to cover up the sour food and vomit.

I would rather soak for an hour in DRAKKAR

hahaha what about TWO HOURS?!
you're right though -- the amalgamated stench of super old BO is what makes me retch on the most regular basis

Good lord is that Samoyed cute.

Now that we're through mowing for the winter and the trees have dropped their leaves all over the yard, I'm very nervous about tracking dogshit into the house.

xp: don't smell its breath

I think the worst smell ever in my mind is associated with a mental image of a pair of very old red sweatpants that have never, ever been washed

I lived in a total shithole when I first moved out on my own and we had tons of mice. One night my roommate and I were watching TV when we were overwhelmed by a horrible smell. After some inspection he realized it was coming from my chair. Pulling away the cushion revealed that I'd been sitting on a rotten dead mouse for a couple hours. NBD.

Mild, far-off skunk smell is sort of intriguing, but skunk roadkill is bad, (god help if you were the one to hit it) and skunk spray on a dog is worse. My poor childhood dog got sprayed in the face and we tried everything to wash it off (including tomato juice, which did nothing) but it hung on for months. She also got a face full of porcupine quills, and there is no question that a face full of quills is easier to handle than a face full of skunk musk. Not even in the same ballpark.

xps OH NOES OTM. It's just impossible to handle.

more xps

http://damnyouautocorrect.com/images/surprise-mom.jpg

One of my proudest public transit moments was when I led my inlaws between the cars on a moving train because we boarded a car on which a man who had shit his pants approximately three weeks ago and had yet to clean them was taking a nap. Even better, the car we crossed into smelled like vanilla butter cookies, no lie.

i met this dude at a bar once 4 years ago, halloween karaoke party, he was wearing nothing but a one piece shiny gold spandex jump suit type thing as if he was some generic superhero like "solid gold man" or something, and wafting off of his body was the most confusingly awful scent.

like there's BO, and then there's the next-level cottage-cheese-in-the-desert-heat-mixed-with-pickle-brine poupourri that was drifting towards my nostrils in what i swear were visible stink lines.

our cat tangled with a skunk once when I was a kid, which did have a semi-funny ending because before the skunk encounter she was grey and white and afterward, when we pour several cans of tomato juice over her in a fruitless attempt to remove the smell, she ran away before we could wash her off so for several weeks she was stained dark pink and light pink

yeah there is def a world of difference between up-close and far-away skunk. pretty sure we had a family of them living under our house for a while - the weirdest part of the smell is the sort of burnt-rubber aspect.

also remy otm, that should be posted everywhere

yeah I only really remember the burnt-rubber aspect

another fun fact; the urban possum smells just as bad as a skunk

One of my proudest public transit moments was when I led my inlaws between the cars on a moving train because we boarded a car on which a man who had shit his pants approximately three weeks ago and had yet to clean them was taking a nap. Even better, the car we crossed into smelled like vanilla butter cookies, no lie.

― thejenny, Friday, December 2, 2011 9:48 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

i want to go to this car

took me two reads to realize you said "possum"...xpost

xp I assume you mean the vanilla butter cookie car…

lol

There is absolutely no way that urban 'possum smells as bad as skunk.

and I know b/c I've picked up an urban 'possum

at a bar

these fuckers OTOH....

http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-The-Chipmunks-Urban-Chipmunk.jpg

xp

urban shaved 'possum

Possum up here ABSOLUTELY smell like skunks, to the point where I thought that skunks were running rampant in Somerville until I actually saw that it was a possum.

Of course, maybe all of the skunks here are fighting the possum, which then run out into view in an attempt to get away from themselves.

can I just say that I never consciously noticed how hilarious a name "Elizabeth Arden's Red Door" is for a perfume until just now

Elizabeth Arden's Brown Door

http://mouthandcaptions.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/buttperfumesmall.jpg

I'm sure that the 'possums stink (the one I handled did not) but as much as skunk? Or skunk spray?

When threatened or harmed, they will "play possum", mimicking the appearance and smell of a sick or dead animal. This physiological response is involuntary (like fainting), rather than a conscious act. In the case of baby opossums, however, the brain does not always react this way at the appropriate moment, and therefore they often fail to "play dead" when threatened. When "playing possum", the animal's lips are drawn back, the teeth are bared, saliva foams around the mouth, the eyes, close or half-close, and a foul-smelling fluid is secreted from the anal glands. Their stiff, curled form can be prodded, turned over, and even carried away without reaction[citation needed]. The animal will typically regain consciousness after a period of between 40 minutes and 4 hours, a process which begins with slight twitchings of the ears.[14]

just for the record, I think I could have lived a happy and productive life without ever reading the bolded phrase in the above quote

Oh, per the thread's recommended posting guidelines:

When we lived with Jesse, I came home from school freaking out about how our apartment smelled disgusting and was there a Plumbing problem but it was just Jesse cooking broccoli or some other cruciferous vegetable.

Another time when some family was visiting I made a big deal about how bad our fridge stunk and apologized for not cleaning it when company was coming and it turned out the horrible smell was some homemade sour kraut a family member had brought as a gift. (I understand it was good; I just have a serious aversion to sour kraut.)

boiling cabbage is among the worst smells

Here is my urban 'possum

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/19/104107279_ebd0f692b0_z.jpg?zz=1http://farm1.staticflickr.com/35/104107291_5cfaf019fc_z.jpg?zz=1

I'm happy that I remembered to take pics.

xp - I am lucky I didn't get secreted on that night.

xp - It's a good thing I moved out before I kim chee season started.

I was walking home from the bar when I found that 'possum and I sort of wish I had been blacking out so that I could have found the terrible surprise of a string of pics of me handling that guy on my phone.

Some old dogs (particularly males) have troublesome anal glands that have to be expressed. It's wise to do this outside, and downwind of your house, and discard your latex gloves and clothing into a trash fire, and scrub down with something like gasoline...

Ditto cats!

did any of your parents ever make seaweed? boiling seaweed is THE WORST SMELL.

One of our cats would get asshole infections if we didn't take care of that anal gland thing. Then he'd scoot his poopy butt on the carpet. Then I would curl up and cry in despair.

asshole infections

welcome to ILX, infected by assholes

Oh! Dyao not my parents but once I decided to make miso soup and I used about 10x as much seaweed as called for and my apartment smelled the the most fetid saltwater marsh for DAYS.

*blinks*

that is the worst thing about pet ownership I have ever heard

"they give you unconditional love but sometimes you have to juice their asses when they get older"

I *like* the smell of boiling cabbage.

Butthole maintenance is the worst thing about pet ownership there is outside of the pet dying.

sometimes you have to juice their asses into the pot of boiling cabbage

balut is nasty enough as it is, we don't need to improvise

are we still talking about smells

we are talking about juicing a cat's ass, how could we NOT still be talking about smells

I mean god help us all if we're moving on to taste

worst V8 flavor ever

There was an energy drink called 'V' that smelled and tasted like chilled BO.

kobe, tell me how my cat ass taste

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSJaWKB4cVvNgkhhOBH1EhVS9m1v6wThwplqsHeEdWwcd5lW8RP3UPEzn4SJQ

kinda like an anal coffee

xpost, no xpost, you decide

pocari sweat is actually great and tastes like grapefruit

I think I would describe the love of a cat as conditional. xp

does dude in pic give mustache rides y/n

oh, also there was a Right Guard deodorant called 'Arctic Ice' that smelled like fermented old person's sweat.

Pocari Sweat does NOT taste like grapefruit! Not unless you've dumped a lot of salt on it first.

have you ever walked into a room that was full up with the smell of someone's bad breath?
i have

we are talking about juicing a cat's ass, how could we NOT still be talking about smells

― OH NOES, Friday, December 2, 2011 2:19 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

I cannot describe how hard this is making me laugh right now.

I have walked into a stairwell filled with someone's bad breath, so yes?

the wall of halitosis is THE WORST

The combined shroud of bad breath and body odour is awful. The type where the person moves away, and maybe 30 seconds later you move through where they were standing, and it's like you get covered in a shroud of filth.

a friend of mine at this summer camp in high school used to say things like "who cares about that shit?" when I said I had to brush my hair or anything hygiene related, then one day he starts talking to me real close to my face and I figured out he was eating shit nuggets for lunch and clearly not flossing afterwards

what is that horrible smell

herman cain's crotch

I am about 95% certain you planned that post/display name combo

Re: bad breath, on the train, sitting next to someone with bad sinus breath is a bad way to start the day. Or someone with musty bed breath. Ugh.

"musty bed breath" raises so many questions, the first and foremost being "why would you eat a musty bed"

Maybe the afflicted person literally ate breakfast in bed?

Okay, so at the San Diego Comic Con a few years back, my buddy and I met up with this crazy girl he knew from high school who had been walking around all day dressed as Aeon Flux and only at the end of the day realized that a) she was starting to feel self-conscious, and b) she had not had the foresight to pack a pair of pants. She didn't want to leave through the main entrances due to a newfound modesty (after, again, walking around in a THONG through the convention all freaking day), so my friend and I loaned her our cardboard 300 shields to cover herself with, and we decided to go through the upstairs hallway so as to avoid the bulk of the crowd. Now, this happened to be a Saturday, and Saturday night at the convention was Masquerade night, where all the cosplayers gather to show off their Cloud Strife and Sailor Moon costumes. And the upstairs hallway that we decided to go down was the one where they had lined up to get into the ballroom. We went up the escalator, started walking down this hallway, and – BAM. It was like walking into a bubble filled with stench. I don't have any clever analogies to describe the smell, but I will put it this way – it is exactly what you would expect a poorly-ventilated hallway to smell like when filled with overweight nerds (who have poor personal hygiene at the best of times) who had been walking around all day in a packed convention center in the middle of July in Southern California while wearing heavy latex, fur, and cardboard outfits. We dashed through the hallway, which was not a short hallway, and made it to the other side, and it was like we had come out the other side of the bubble and everything smelled perfectly fine again.

Whenever I go to Comic Con with newbies now, I try to make them go through that hallway to get the full experience. But it has never smelled quite as bad as it did that one time.

omg loooooooooool

dunno why but this is my favorite part my friend and I loaned her our cardboard 300 shields to cover herself with

I'm hoping that when Pepper catches that mouse or snake or whatever he's been after in the corner for the last few weeks he brings it out into the open so that we can throw it away, not eat it or let it rot underneath the sink.

i am just getting over a cold and I had a lot of congestion/mucus buildup. some remnants still remain, and today I hawked up a big green thing of mucus taht smelled so bad I almost followed it up with a retch (but thankfully didn't). good lord.....glad that thing is out of me

(also what my mother said after i was born)

this thread is merely the end result of God's revenge on LL for her metaphysical musings over Thxgiving weekend upon the nature of being noseless...

I'll hear nothing negative about Pocari Sweat, as they employ Motomichi Nakamura, the artist responsible for The Knife's "We Share Our Mother's Health" video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YodFCfYPmw

I am ultimately thankful for my ability to smell both foul and sublime smells, it's true.

At the same time? I mean, if someone were to smell a really noxious fart and the most fragrant flower simultaneously, which aroma would they be aware of?

Did that imply simultaneous sniffing? Don't think so.

I meant a mixture of both gases up both nostrils. Not one up each nostril or anything weird like that.

I was thinking that the fart smell would flatten all other smells in the room like a nuclear blast.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrion_flower

Keep Calm and Carrion

Carrion is such a great word. I learned it from "Marian the Librarian".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Amorphophallus_Wilhelma.jpg/508px-Amorphophallus_Wilhelma.jpg
Amorphophallus titanum, common name Carrion Flower.

Day of the Triffids Carrion Flowers

rotted, glowing, mackerel

damn that thing is amazing

Amazingly, lentils can be the stinkiest thing ever if you leave cooked ones in a pot for too many days and then de-lid them... uurrghhh, fermented death yuck.

Worst smells for me though are seriously sick homeless people. I hate feeling judgemental but when someone gets on a tram and the whole tram suddenly smells like BO+vomit+dogshit+doritos I just want to fling myself out of a window.

Burnt tomatoes.

chicken parts in the garbage bin. ew grody.

xxp it's the Doritos that really sends it over the edge

Haha yes.

Why do they even make dogshit flavour Doritos when they're so unpopular?

Well, the shit-eating dog market is substantial....

Rotten potato is one of the worst smells ever. And rotten onion.

I'm surprised more ppl haven't mentioned melons -- old melon is the pinnacle of sweet/rot.

Oooh yes rotten (raw) potato, definitely a foul stench.

The worst. Also if you leave gereberas in a vase too long = rotten potato stench

or however you spell that flower lol

Oh man, rotting flower water is vile. It smells like a big vase of diarrhea.

When I worked at a grocery store I accidentally stuck my hand into a rotten potato. The smell would not wash off, not even with bleach or baking soda.

in one of my rental houses we had a phantom stench in the kitchen...one day I lost it & went through every cupboard & corner praying it wasnt a decaying mouse. In a random empty cupboard I found a bag of completely rotted, deflated potatoes. I can still dmell them. *shudder*

smell

We had a phantom smell in our last apartment. It turned out to be a gallon can of soy sauce that was totally fine (or at least we used it and didn't die) until one day it made our apartment smell like something crawled into a vent and died.

http://i202.photobucket.com/albums/aa225/fowlerjenn/IMG_1770.jpg

Before we figured out what it was, we called Jesse AND building maintenance. Phantom kitchen stenches send me into this panicked fight-or-flight state in which I monomaniacally tear the kitchen apart until I find the thing that smells.

WHOA SORRY GIANT CAN OF SOY SAUCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111

Smelled up my kitchen, now it's smelling up this thread.

see that is why it's not worth it to buy in bulk

I had no idea you could buy bulk metal cans of soy sauce! Yows.

I buy those big jugs of soy sauce. They last about me about 2 months. I love soy sauce.

see that is why it's not worth it to buy in bulk

Yes. So we learned.

Did you not refrigerate it? I've had soy sauce that was still good after a few years that I only threw out because the bottle got too messed up.

No. You don't really have to refrigerate soy sauce and the giant can of it didn't fit in the fridge anyway. But I mean, you don't really have to refrigerate soy sauce if you're going to use it pretty quickly. I'm thinking we had this can for more than a year.

You would think all that salt would preserve it for years.

Huh, it never occurred to me that soy could go bad. Seemed like, I dunno, vegemite...like a "forever" condiment, lol.

EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG *cries*

I refrigerate my soy sauce, including the big jugs. That's what the crisper drawer is for - refrigerating bulk products.

I thought that was for beer.

The second, smaller fridge is for beer!

crisper is for beer and apples
no one needs that much soy sauce in their fridge at any given time unless that fridge is inside of a restaurant

Wrong. I need that much soy sauce.

Also: a gallon of sweet chili sauce.

what is that horrible smell

Also: multiple bottles of Srirachia.

And tubs of pre-peeled garlic (which I freeze).

God bless the Asian market where I buy those bulk items, and of course God bless pre-peeled garlic.

you must make the most interesting ice creams

You keep multiple bottles of Sriracha in the fridge?

I thought that was for beer.

― William (C), Monday, December 5, 2011 11:30 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

OTM

Although Jeff has been lobbying for a second smaller beer fridge for years.

Jeff OTM, the beer fridge will change your life

You keep multiple bottles of Sriracha in the fridge?

Yes, of course.

wtf

sriracha doesn't need to be kept in the fridge fyi

I would be nice to put vegetables in the crisper drawers, I suppose.

I'm still trying to deal with this. Jesse, why do you even have multiple bottles of Sriracha? How many bottles are we talking about?

In the bathroom at my current workplace, there is a dispenser of some sort of fragrance. This stuff deserves to be outlawed under treaties against chemical warfare.

William, having know Jesse as long and as well as I have, I can say that multiple bottles of refrigerated Siracha is probably the least strange of his consumption/food storage/storage of nonfood items in places where there is usually only food habits.

I keep a bottle of sriracha in my toilet tank

I had a friend of college whose feet smelled so bad he often got unsuspecting people to ask what that horrible smell was BEFORE he even took his shoes off

your friend should stop wrapping his feet in your other friends brown sheets

lol

The fatal flaw of these:

http://barefootrunningshoes.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Vibram-FiveFingers-KSO-Men-Full.jpg

I keep multiple bottles of Srirachia b/c I like Srirachia and I don't like running out of it.

I do my Asian foods shopping at an Asian supermarket that is walking distance from my previous apartment, but miles from my current one. Soy sauce, sweet chili sauce, curry paste, straw mushrooms, and Srirachia are ridiculously cheap there, and they are things I use a lot of, so I stock up.

Srirachia, like soy sauce, doesn't need to be refrigerated if used in a reasonable period, but like we learned ITT re soy sauce, it can eventually go bad. (I was at a friend's house where she pulled from the pantry some Srirachia that was rust-colored and very watery. She didn't realize that it wasn't supposed to look like that b/c it had gradually turned that way over the years she had it. It might not have been toxic, but it was definitely *off*.)

It'll go dark after a long time at any temperature. I gave my parents a bottle several years ago and it was dark as barbecue sauce before the old coots trusted it enough to dig it out of the back of the fridge to try it. Surprise! They liked it.

Interesting. Do you think it's just due to oxidation, like when a cut apple turns brown?

I'm sure that's it. I'd buy them a new bottle, but they'd fuss at me for wasting money.

Crazy coworkers are forever bringing in soups & casseroles to kiss-ass the managers...crockpots are on the other side of my cubicle.

Today = broccoli cauliflower soup, I hate both of these vegetables so much

HELP ME I AM IN HELL

if one of my employees brought me a crock pot full of soup, I would make them eat some of it in front of me to make sure it wasn't poisoned

it's pretty much every day...some are good but most of the time it's like, "Um you know that we have homes & food of our own, right?"

The worst was the day of "seafood stew"...stunk the whole area out, I felt nauseous all day

what if yr employee had already consumed the antidote xp

well then, fairplay to that employee and I hope they enjoy the stress and ulcers that go with my position

if one of my employees brought me a crock pot full of soup, I would make them eat some of it in front of me to make sure it wasn't poisoned

haha! i totally do this when i bring food to students. i always eat it in front of them and make a joke about it not being poisoned.

also broccoli soup should be forbidden in office atmosphere -- waaaay too reeky

I eat broccoli every week and have never known it to be reeky

if one of my employees brought me a crock pot full of soup, I would make them eat some of it in front of me to make sure it wasn't poisoned

nevar forget Gus Fring and Don Eladio

all those cruciferous vegetables start to give off sulfurous odors after they've cooked x amt of time -- I try to never prepare enough broccoli or cabbage to have leftovers.

exactly
overcooked broccolis are extremely powerfully reeky
freshly lightly cooked broccolis are tasty (not as tasty as they are raw though imo)

Nope, sorry, they still smell bad and taste bad when lightly cooked.

Steaming brocolli should be mandatory by law.
Cabbage leftovers are not too bad if they're placed in the fridge asap (aftter they've cooled down a bit).

broccoli is poison & should be outlawed, cooked or raw. Nation of VGrrl frowns on it.

wait wait wait a poster whose display name includes 'Vegemite' is trying to argue that broccoli is stinky? ?_?

dealwithit.gif

my sister used to cook broccoli daily and it stank to shit. never want to smell that putrid barf again.

many xposts

broccoli isnt so much stinky as evil wrong & must be stopped

My husband loves broccoli *sobs*

60 seconds of steam makes broccoli sweet and precious

people who steam broccoli, otoh, are disgusting savages

*snaps suspenders proudly*

people who eat broccoli = disgusting savages

sorry ilxors, but it's true

people who eat broccoli = healthy

...smell terrible, and have stuff between their teeth

:D

(joeks, I love youse all)

you know what else is terrible, is when yr teeth fall out due to scurvy

steamed broccoli also helps block cancer

cancer can't even handle the smell.

the farting drives it away

steamed broccoli could give hour long orgasms and glorious shiny stools and cure whatever but it would still taste like the worst kind of ass and I refuse to eat it. hmph

many xps - that was me with the gone over Siracha! Haha we do not use enough condiments it seems.

I would consider eating the worst kind of ass for an hour-long orgasm. Well, I would have considered it 20 years ago when my heart was strong enough to survive an hour-long orgasm.

broccoli is fucking delicious

^^^ real talk

save this talk for vegetables that deserve it, like okra

okra is the most vile vegetable

Your opinion is wrong.

xp vile indeed - it's so watery and mushy inside, and so tasteless

I would consider eating the worst kind of ass for an hour-long orgasm.

#463 on the list of 'Things Not To Say In A Swinger's Bar'

Okra isn't as good as broccoli, but it's good. And you can cook it as long as you want and nobody's going to say "what is that horrible smell"

many xps - that was me with the gone over Siracha! Haha we do not use enough condiments it seems.

― thejenny, Monday, December 5, 2011 4:33 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

No, it wasn't! It was Katie.

I love: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, visits to Yellowstone Nat'l Park, and most of all: RUTABAGAS. FUCK YES.

!!! I did the same thing! I thought you were witness to my shame, but it must have been Jeff.

You know what I like? Parsnips. That's a good root vegetable.

parsnips are prtty gr8

Gonna also rep for broccoli, when its stinky and mushy, yr doing it rong basically. Lightly boiled/steamed, the sauteed in garlic and chilli, Italian-style. Aw yeah

^^^ dead to me, fyi

I do not are for broccoli 95% of the time but I will say that roasted broccoli is really good. Also, I like the stems much better than I like the bushy tops.

*care for

I like the stems too. I wonder if candying broccoli stems would produce horrors or delights. (If Tep can make candied olives, I can at least ponder candied broccoli.)

What is that horrible smell

(haha)

lol, yeah, I think that one may need to stay on the drawing board

you know, i currently have no srirachia in the house b/c what was left in the last bottle i had was ruined in the toasted sandwich incident. it was sitting on the counter a safe enough distance from the skillet, but the extended, extreme radiating heat caused the bottle to buckle, making me think of BPAs and stuff, so I threw it away.

I don't know what that horrible smell was, but it kind of smelled like wet fart covered with cheap cologne and filled the hallways and elevator in my apartment complex when I went out this morning.

BLOOD AND BONE FERTILIZER UUURRGHRHR.

I mean, it smells like what it basically is - death.

Oh mate, is that horrible smell you?

^^^^ a harsh things to say to someone imo. The implication is not so much that they caused the bad smell, but more that they ARE the bad smell, as if they embody whatever smelly smell that's currently assaulting you.

"If you were a bad smell, which bad smell would you be?"

oh god the skunk/burnt/dogshit/mildew smell is back, and i'm in the middle of eating my lunch

perhaps it is your lunch?

They screw up your order at the sandwich shop again?

damn

dad jokes, guys, dad jokes ~rolls eyes~

"I ordered the skunk, dogshit, and mildew special medium rare, not burnt to a crisp!"

Sat next to someone in a meeting today who was...not fresh.

Although tbh I am wearing a quite dirty cardigan yet again instead of having it cleaned on schedule, so the first few times the smell wafted my way, I wondered if it was me...but no.

i was reminded by that dumbass rick perry video that another way of saying that someone smells rank is to say that s/he smells "strong" -- it's all in the delivery, but when you say it in a certain way you know that the person reeks and doesn't just smell strongly of shampoo or w/e

so I washed my cutting board three or four days ago and laid down, wet, on the countertop and forgot about it

when I washed it again today, a horrible smell like decomposing ham was unleashed when I released it from the countertop (it was still wet)

not really sure where it came from - I haven't cooked meat in like a month!

if I'm honest with myself I'll say it smelled like halfway poop - food that's halfway to becoming poop

wow yuk

that's super gross
congrats!

Throw that fucker out, dude, thats salmonella central you got there.

My stinky odessey: y'all recall I had a very sick cat for quite a long time (RIP yampy). She had been peeing all over the living room rug over and over and by the time we realised it was too late to save the carpet beneath. I got it cleaned and then laid down some plastic rug protectors under the rug but she kept on peeing til her end days, and now, six months later, i've peeled up the rug and plastic and OH GOD THE STENCH :(

I am so not getting any bond back :/ I've febreezed the shit out of the carpet but i doubt its gonna do much.

lol I sprayed it with comet and washed it

Impt questions: is comet bleach, and also is the borad wood or plastic? If wood *chuck it*. If plastic thats ok. Bleach and boiling water'll fix it (tho it may still pong)

plastic. it wasn't the cutting side that was gross it was the side underneath it. hmm

it was just some kind of general purpose cleaning stuff. the water that comes out of my tap does get to boiling though so I'll run it under that for a few more mins

That should see to it I think. wood borads are great but they do have more germ risks. lol says me who has been using a wooden board with splits in it and a mouldy taint to it for far too long now haha. :/

Ugh this cat piss smell is the worst, and its hot and muggy which is just adding to the horror.

I DONT EVEN HAVE A CAT ANY MORE :( Yampy, effin' things up even beyond the grave.

The landlord had to replace the carpet in our den-type room because of a ceiling leak and the floor under place where the previous tenants, who moved out more than a year ago, kept their cat box still smelled like pee.

It is a very irremovable smell, I realise :( I feel bad, cos all her life my cat was fastidious about her loo habits, but when she got sick she just stopped being careful. Sigh.

aw :( sorry you have to deal with that trayce

Aw its ok now, I've come to terms with it, tho I do miss her muchly.

There was a kid who went to my middle school named Guy (pronounced the French way, etc) who, unbeknownst to me, came from a really fucked up situation and was actually an amazing person whom I befriended as a more *mature* 19-year old.

Anyway: Guy smelled like a mixture of unwashed feet and puke. Just...raw. Nasty.

We were in computer class one day, and some kid mentioned Guy, and I'm just all typing at my computer and I say, "Oh, you mean that really smelly kid?" And there's this silence. And then I look up and Guy is looking right at me. I don't think I've ever felt more like an asshole in my entire life.

Oh also, he didn't smell bad when he got older. Mostly because his schizophrenic mother who kept 50 cats in the house died when we were both 15.

Last year around this time, there was an awful smell in the kitchen of our former house. It was a nasty winter, and we had decided to smoke cigarettes in the house anyway, so for a few weeks, we just covered it up by smoking.

But then it got worse. It migrated. This awful, burning death smell. Like someone else above, it smelled like we were in meth country, somewhere out in the Alpine area of San Diego or something.

Anyway, it started taking up the whole house.

Then one day I came home and my housemate Jaime said, "WE FOUND THE SMELL!!!" while running up to me. And then she described, in intimate detail, how she and our other housemate SCRAPED A BURNT AND ROTTING RAT CARCASS OFF OF THE BACK OF OUR FRIDGE.

Glad I moved out.

i mean yeah, i've lived in collective houses/punk palaces/squats for many years, but that story actually takes the cake. the rotting rat carcass cake.

oh! and i second that 'soaking beans and forgetting about them' smell. when i lived in a co-op in college, i was preparing lunch for a mess of people and was like, "wonder what's in this metal tub that's been here for two weeks" and when i opened it....ugh, molded....chickpeas.....of....doom.....

we had a carousel of roomates the first couple of years I shared a house, and a lot of them smoked and kept grabbing cups or w/e from the kitchen and using them as ashtrays, and then leaving them outside for us to find later. the worst was a cup that was full of cigarette butts, water, and had been sat just inside the laundry room door at some point and stayed there for...well, godknows.

it smelled like fermented evil vomit and it made me want to die

Man even as a smoker I will say icky ashtrays - esp ones full of water and left for a while - are the worst thing ever. Nothing worse than waking up with a hangover and coming out to a room with ashtrays in it and smelling them :(

I've always wondered why people don't dump out ashtrays more often than they do.

Me too! Especially when the old cig butts catch fire off the fresh ones & it's a big smokey gross mess.

Like someone else above, it smelled like we were in meth country, somewhere out in the Alpine area of San Diego or something.

lol

once in the summer the freezer in my flat somehow became unplugged, i don't know how this happens without someone moving it.

a smell had begun to rise through the flat, and when i confronted it, it was because my flatmate had a lot of fish wrapped in tinfoil in there.

i wanted to cry it smelled so bad, and almost laugh at the same time, i was screaming.

one time I entered the house during the blistering heat of the summer to an overwhelming aroma that made me nauseous and wanting to vomit.

as I got closer to my bathroom, it was enough to make me keel over. and I realized on entering what it was.

Someone, presumably from my roommate's family, had taken a shit, clogged the toilet and let it sit for 9-10 hours. I was so fucking pissed. had to plunge it while holding my nose and trying not to throw up.

also the scent that emanates from really spoiled food? last house. roommate had fucking mayonaise from 2010 in there....all kinds of shit past expiry. it was like he just had no clue.

just spilled half a litre of milk onto the floor of my car fuck fuck fuck

Lucky it's winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

when you have the heat on and the windows up

How did you spill milk all over the inside of your car? Hydraulics acting up again?

there was a horrible smell in the grocery store yesterday and i think it was because they'd set up a propane bbq (for free samples of some sort) and something was amiss. five minutes after i walked by, i went by again and it was gone. half the store smelled so weird, the kind of smell that is bad yet hard to place, so i was both trying not to breathe deeply and yet trying to figure out what the horrible smell was and so, breathing deeper. eesh.

xp Actually I remember when the windscreen on my old car leaked and rainwater got in, pooling in the passenger side footwell, and that stunk bad enough. I can't (or at least don't want to) imagine how bad milk would stink up a car.

way to humour a deems jeez

the only logical thing to do is to find something even smellier to mask the milk smell

Just don't wash, like, ever again.

Also, put used burger wrappers all over the floor of the car to soak up the milk.

one (1) full tin of baking soda brushed in through the carpet, have to vacuum in the morning. fingers crossed

i sold a car before because i spilled milk in it. shit is the worst

Stop drinking milk in the car.

i was transporting it from the shop this time tbf

the last one, yeah ok fair enough

There was an episode of Car Talk from a while back in which a guy called in to ask how to get rid of the smell of rancid butter that had melted into the heating ducts in his car. It was pretty funny.

!!! haha wtf

lol car talk gets bad smell q's all the time. iirc the answer is to take it to a body shop.

there was one where a guy's buddies pranked him by hiding a fish in the vents or something

Maybe advice for d - http://www.cartalk.com/sites/default/files/features/fido/zeolite.html or http://www.cartalk.com/sites/default/files/features/fido/ozone.html

ta!

No smell as yet i've the soda left on it and will hoover tonight before checking status

why are you putting coke on it? gross

simpsons

all i'm sayin

simpsons

The odor that you may smell on the 9th floor is due to an oil delivery to the building early this morning. I have spoken to the building security and they have checked our floor and now that the ventilators are running – the odor should be eliminated shortly.

If you have any problems, please see me at once.

parents are boiling seaweed again