The smell of love

A whiff of stink

I needed a distraction from everything else, so I went looking for an odd news story to write about and this is one for which one would smother giggles and probably pinch one’s nose. Yet, if one cannot escape quickly enough, you might just express displeasure and allow your olfactory system to bear the brunt of the onslaught than taste it.

Now, I would not go into the dynamics and science of flatulence, it happens. In some cases, it can be discreet and in others registering on a scale of decibels. Yet, they range in orders of pungency to which a slightly impaired sense of smell might well be a blessing if not one of the symptoms of having contracted the Coronavirus.

A test of love

That menace cannot seem to escape attention or intrusion in our affairs. The inspiration for this blog comes from the story of a couple who had been going out for 3 years and the girlfriend happened to inadvertently fart in the presence of her boyfriend and to him, it was the sign that they were really an item that he brought her a cake to celebrate this abandonment of self-awareness, inhibitions, and restraint. [Metro: Man treats girlfriend to congratulatory cake for farting in front of him after three years]

I doubt I would have gone public about certain intimate issues between my partner and I, definitely not on that, though it does not bother me, it usually occurs naturally and though personally there have been times of unfortunate mishaps that have occasioned a swift return home for a change of undergarments along with the fear of the onset of incontinence, which mercifully has not been the case. A gastrointestinal bug or some stomach upset can present difficulty at the best of times.

What I cannot say is whether this does really indicate a sign of love or we have just been invited to the spectacle of eproctophilia, which apparently is a bizarre subtype of olfactophilia. I would think many of us probably exhibit the larger rather than the particular. [Psychology Today: Eproctophilia Explained]

Lingering smells of the caged life

Noah's Arc Cologne

Considering how this blog began to form in my mind earlier today, it is a pleasant surprise that I find myself in olfactory proximity to much zoological defecation.

I boarded the Zoo Express shuttle which had seats that would make traditional church pews feel like comfortable feather-bedded loungers as we tried to set the record for the longest possible time to complete a journey to the zoo in tortoise-drawn carriages. No wonder, I saw no tortoises at the zoo, they had all conked out, the poor things.

The main notice within the zoo declared the place Cologne's Noah's Arc, well, I did not see any animals going in two-by-two and it was well and truly beached. Much as one can be entertained with wildlife from Australia, Madagascar and nether lands, the jury is out on the complete work of conservation since the flood wiping out animals is the human race and their effect on earth, than anything else.

Truly inspired names

In two hours, I had just about seen that almost extinct and endangered orange-nosed, red-breasted, yellow-beaked, black-handed, blue-bottomed, pink-toed, green-eyed, fluffy-haired, three-fingered picinini and everything else.

Somehow, the politically-incorrect names we once used to describe fellow human-beings are now lavished liberally on animals in the zoo.

I am sure when Adam in Genesis had the task of naming animals he must have done a better job.

Now, I have nothing against zoos but one might have to don a gas mask next time one visits a zoo.

That was a day out in Cologne. In the end, when I saw a big stop sign barring people from going down a path, one surmised, great fiery dragons be there - it is a zoo after all.

Pictures of the visit are in the Cologne Zoo Set on Flickr, I did not tour the whole zoo, so no elephants, seals or penguins.

Rubbish elections or elections rubbish

In a week or two

Surely, the irony could not have been lost on any Nigerian, a person with a Nigerian heritage or relationship living in the United Kingdom.

The local elections would take place in a few days and the issue that is exciting the people and the campaigners is that of either collecting rubbish weekly or fortnightly.

The weekly collection deals with the issue of smells and vermin whilst in some way encouraging laxity in recycling and costing councils fortunes in landfill charges. The fortnightly collections do the opposite and the people are not happy with having to keep their rubbish for long periods especially in the heat of the approaching summer. Fair point.

Well, 4 out of 10 councils now do the fortnightly collections and there is a possibility that the Carbon Nazis would get into the heads of the administrators forcing them to install electronic chips on the bins (some bins already have them but have been vandalised) to record dumping and assess charges.

Somehow, someone is not comfortable with this revolt from the shires and is trying to make this issue become insignificant - Let's see.

Before I digress, did I see the rubbish of an election in Nigeria and an election on rubbish about to sweep the United Kingdom? Such, is the mystery of democracy.