There are very few things in this world I hate. Disapprove of? Yes, of course - the list is endless. But that visceral, full-body despite which grabs you by the ear and pulls your heel and twists you into a veritable pretzel of antipathy? That's a rarity.

I hate patchouli. Hate the stench, hate the miasma it brings with it, hate the way I can't breathe when some potheaded head-shop patron is upwind, hate the way it almost yellows the air around the afflicted. It's potent, it's vile, and it lingers. Lingers like a fart at a black-tie affair. Lingers like Ralph Nader on the political scene. Lingers like a bad belief. You can smell a hippie drenched in patchouli from thirty feet away; more if there's no breeze.

No, I'm not allergic. It's just noxious.

Why, yes, yes I ran into one of the Patchouli tribe today. My new manga stink of her "perfume". I suspect they'll be stinking so for the next couple of days or so, if I don't hose them down with some alternative stink. Even then, I fear they'll just stink of patchouli and violets, or some other, even more horrid combination. Is there such a thing as anti-stink, of stink repellant?