The delightful scent of Spring

Madam Arcati and I went again yesterday to Kew Gardens, to take full advantage of this beautiful early spring: to catch the magnificent magnolias in full bloom and the fruit trees in blossom, before the seasonal gales blow them all away. One tree in particular (above) has a captivating scent - Pyrus calleryana, commonly known as the Callery pear.

From Vice magazine:

This pretty, floral tree somewhat resembles the cherry blossom. Its five-petalled flowers are dainty and white. If they could talk, I imagine they'd say, "come and have a picnic under us!"

Wrong.

The Callery pear smells like ... semen. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, they want you to know that it smells like human male semen, to be sure. So many people have called it the "semen tree" that it warranted an entry in Urban Dictionary, aptly defined as the odour of "used sex rags."

We had a sniff, and moved on. The old, old story.

[I have, inevitably, featured this unusual tree before]

Acércate y oye como bate mi corazón

Oo-er - it's Friday the Thirteenth!

I also happen to have been posting to this very blog (in one form or another) for thirteen years this month...

...and I have sneaked a long weekend out of annual leave I needed to use up so we are off to Kew Gardens today...

...plus it's the birthday of one of our tackiest ever Patron Saints, the original "triumph of art over nature", Charo!

As I said way back in 2015:

She wants to Dance A Little Bit Closer - and who are we to stop her? Thank Disco It's Friday!

Charo - Dance a Little Bit Closer

Feliz compleaños, María del Rosario Mercedes Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza, aka Charo

Modern communications

Inescapable. Cloying.

Astronauts on the International Space Station have confirmed that the odour of a Lush shop can be detected 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.

Lush, famous for their handmade soap and fragranced bath bombs, have celebrated the news as a triumph for themselves and their inescapable cloying aroma.

A Lush spokesman said: “We were bored of merely stinking out Britain’s high streets. Every brand likes to grow and set big goals.

“The smell was first detected by Russian cosmonaut Alexander Skvortsov two weeks ago, who angrily accused the Americans of bringing flowers on board, then the Americans caught a whiff and investigations began.

“Eventually they realised the fragrance recurred every time their orbit took them over the three-floor Lush shop in Liverpool. It’s official. We have successfully conquered space.

“It’s our hope that, if alien life ever discovers our solar system, they will see the mysterious, multi-coloured, lavender-scented swirling sphere of our planet and assume it is just an enormous bath bomb.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

And we (and Signorina Mazzini) know an appropriate song for the UK's most fragrant soap shop...

Mina - Splish, Splash

Fruity.

Sermon of the Day

Swap the word "feminism" for "gay rights", "women" and "girls" for "homosexuals", "men" and "male" for "heterosexual(s)" and so on in this treatise by Dr Jessica Eaton:

“Feminism is the liberation of women and girls all over the world from the patriarchy and misogyny that continues to harm and oppress them as a class of people. Feminism centres women unflinchingly and unapologetically. Feminism is the conversation about women’s issues in the world; without having to add some tokenistic sentence at the end acknowledging that men also experience some things too. Yah, we know. But we are talking about women right now, so hush.

The problem with saying that we are working towards women becoming equal to men is that it frames men and male cultures as being the optimum culture or the ideal goal that women should reach to become equal. I’m here to say: what a crock of shit. For women to be valid, whole human beings in society – feminism has got to move beyond this notion that women are striving for what men already have.

I don’t want anything men already have. None of it. It’s a mess.”

Amen.

There's no business like it

Sometimes, my quest for a "wake-up call" on a Tacky Music Monday brings some genuinely tacky moments. This, dear reader, is one of those.

From the same producer as a previous bizarre discovery - one that involved both The Ritchie Family and the Village People - comes another slice of sheer insanity...

...welcome to the heady world of Chobizenesse!

Le Show Business

This is exactly how I anticipate this week in the office to be.

Have a great week, folks!

She got legs, and knows how to use them

Cyd Charisse (born Tula Ellice Finklea, 8th March 1922 – 17th June 2008)