Work Occuring While Unemployed

GA - ROSS!  Jesus Christ, put a lid on that thing.  Do you have no sense of smell, of humanity, of MERCY?!  Please! Seal it up! This is not excellent not excellent at ALL.

Ok, I know, I know, you can’t really smell anything, nor can I, but I can smell my imagination percolating away, perck perck percking!  Smell is an incredibly strong sense.  It can trigger memories, nausea, happiness, sadness, or homicidal compulsions.  In fact, after some research on the old internet I found out very interesting things, very interesting things indeed. 

Firstly, preferences of smell are learned and different for each individual.  It’s not like taste where when you’re born you already have a preference for taste due to buds and chemical reactions and, you know, science and babies.  But that’s neither here nor there.  So yes, when you smell something while experiencing pleasure, pain, stomach upsetedness, or murder, your brain forges a link between that smell and that circumstance, making the two linked forever.  For all eternity.  Until the end of time and future space.

How has scents’ ability to bring back painful or happy memories or even induce strong feelings of fear or disgust been used?  It turns out that governments caught wind (right?  WIND?  CAUGHT WIND??!) of this and decided to employ it in warfare.  The first known instance of this experimentation was in World War II when the Office of Strategic Services developed a scent to be carried by the French Resistance.  The scent was packaged in a pocket atomizer and distributed to French Resistance living in German occupied France.  The idea was that with one squirt of the scent, called Who Me?,  the French could embarrass the German officers so horribly that they would abandon their posts and go screaming back to Germany.  Sounds highly unlikely right?  Yes absolutely, it was highly unlikely, mainly because it turns out that Who Me? is quite hard to control and contain.  The squirter could easily become the squirtee and then everyone just ended up smelling like the most horrible shit ever unleashed in Europe.  Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), Project Who Me? was deemed an utter failure and the French went back to smelling of croissants and cigarettes, while the Germans remained reeking of borscht and sauerkraut.  

Well that was over sixty years ago, what’s being used now?  I want to know and I want to know bad! Turns out smell has kind of reached a dead end for being used in warfare.  In the 70s the government did some tests: hollowed out chicken eggs and filled them with chemical compounds that stank of shit.  These eggs were then lobbed at enlisted men to see how they would react.  God bless the US Military!  It was discovered that people usually adapt to a smell within fifteen minutes of exposure, so for all practical purposes using the ole’factory in warfare became kind of moot.  Bummer.  Still, the idea of the army bankrolling scientists to create the most horrible odors the world has ever smelt is hilarious and fascinating.  To me… yes me… who me?