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Snake Oil (2022) I fell in love with Snake Oil all over again when I recently tried my 2010 bottle, and I was super curious to try one I found on Ebay. This one is from 4/22, when the oil was re-released after component scarcity during the pandemic. This was apparently created with aged components to be close to the original. Here are my impressions, as a vintage SO enthusiast! Freshly-applied, this is a sensuous, burgundy scent, and it feels red musk dominant, with the beloved pachouli trailing behind. It seems more like a Snake Oil blend than actual SO, which is interesting. For comparison, it has the same vibe as Luna Negra and some of the darker berry-musk scents. I'm not mad about it, and I'm curious to see how it plays out and develops over the course of the day. In fact, this seems more like a "can wear to the office" blend because it doesn't announce its presence in the same way. It's a lovely scent, just different. If you've been put off by the intensity of SO in the past, the 2022 version might be exactly what you need!
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I went the decant route on this one in case it would be too similar to Aristocratic Couple. I gave this a full-day slather during the day yesterday and then deathmatched this with Aristocratic Couple (while also testing Workman Displaying further down my arm...). During the daytime slather, this was predominantly bright apricot and bergamot -- the bergamot really brightens the scent. I don't get any of the bourbon vanilla from this, or the cream musk, but maybe they will emerge with age. Unfortunately, I do get a waxy quality from the scent after it has been on my skin for a few hours, especially in the crooks of my elbows -- it's almost more like a dried apricot, even though it started off like a fresh one. Compared to Aristocratic Couple, this is much brighter, and while the apricot and the sheer bourbon vanilla are really noticeable in Aristocratic Couple, I am not able to detect the bourbon vanilla in Apricot Vulva. Since the bottle of Aristocratic Couple is 11 years old at this point, it's possible that Apricot Vulva's bourbon vanilla will also be more noticeable as the scent ages. But fresh, Apricot Vulva does not smell as good to me as Aristocratic Couple, which also has the bonus of being infused with a tiny bit of cardamom that makes it even more appealing. On the other hand, Workman Displaying His Sexual Prowess and Gigantic Size of His Member in a Variety of Situations is quite different to Apricot Vulva. It does not feature the same apricot note, is very boozy from the brandy on my skin, and it has the woodiness of the sandalwood. Of the two, I prefer Apricot Vulva. I don't feel the need to upgrade my decant to a bottle since I prefer Aristocratic Couple and March Hare, but I'll be hanging on to my decant.
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Strawberry Moon: Dried Strawberries and Dragon’s Blood Resin Hair Gloss
Poenari replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Hair
I don't usually try or wear strawberry scents, but wanted to try this combination because I love Beth's dragon's blood resin so much. Disclaimer- my review is based on spraying this on my skin and not in my hair. This is a very prominent strawberry, and smells exactly like those pouches of dried strawberries you can buy! It's lovely and sweet. I really don't detect the dragon's blood at first. After about 20 minutes, the strawberry has become softer and seems to become a new note: not dragon's blood- something that is both notes blended together in a way that creates an entirely new note! It's soft, sweet, red, neither fruit nor resin but just lovely. This is a great springtime scent and I will update my review after I have a chance to wear this in freshly shampooed hair. -
I loved this as soon as I smelled it, and as it bloomed on my skin, I knew that I would need more than one bottle in my life. The Indolence of Resting Men predominantly smells like sugar cane and cucumber on me, with a squeeze of lemon swirled with some black tea. It smells like the most wonderful, sugared cucumber and lemon-infused iced tea, and I know I'm going to love to slather this on every summer. I'm not getting any of the cream from this, but that's fine with me. I went the decant route on this because I wasn't sure how the cucumber would go with the other notes, but it turns out, they complement each other perfectly! I will definitely be needing at least 2-3 bottles of this before it goes away!
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Pulled this out of my goodie pile today and I had forgotten how incredible this is. the absolute PERFECT patchouli scent. The vanilla tames down some of the metallic or cleaning fluid vibes I can sometimes get from patchouli and the hemp has an almost cedary note. i will be slathering this on like a filthy hippie all summer
- Yesterday
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when i'm trying something new, usually i re-read the description first because i'm trying to teach myself what different things smell like (matching what i can smell to the description), but this was the first time i did things the other way round. as a sort of test for myself to see how i'm getting on, i didn't look at the description until afterwards, when i matched it to what i had already smelt. i was pleased with how well i was able to identify the different notes and how they come and go by myself! it was quite powdery, but in a pleasant way. i think this must have been the amber. from the bottle and wet, it had quite a lemony quality (the sweet pea? is that sweet pea??), which together with the powderiness made it seem rather soapy, but that settled down as soon as it dried off. then the vanilla came forward a bit more and the amber became warmer and everything got creamier and sweeter, and then stayed that way. i don't think i got much sandalwood. for me it is very quiet and unassuming, but though there's no throw to speak of, it's still very long-lasting; i put some on in the evening and it still hadn't entirely faded when i woke up the next morning. it is a very soothing and cosy scent and now i think i might make a habit of wearing it to go to sleep with.
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a disaster for me!! 😭 this is the first bpal scent i have actively disliked - and not only disliked, but had to wash off because it was making me feel so bad. i like musk and honey, but here i got none at all; and i was fine with (and liked!) the clove in madrid, so it must have been the other spices here that didn't work for me. i think it was mostly the peppers and ginger, but in the bottle and wet i couldn't even pick them apart - only that there was a piercing smell right to the back of my head (if that makes sense); i can only compare it to walking into lush and getting hit by all those soapy scents all at once, which gets to me and i find overwhelmingly heady in a similar way. i also had some redness on my arms where i'd applied it 🥹 so i couldn't wait around to see if the scent changed any because i washed it off so quickly. i'm feeling bitter because i've really enjoyed exploring the wanderlust scents so far, and regret choosing an imp of this one over london on ebay. i went for bengal in order to try something new, as i already have quite a few rose scents - but though london would have been a safe or more 'boring' choice, it wouldn't have made me feel bad and i probably would have liked it!
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The ube and red bean listed in the notes are there in spirit if not in letter; what actually shows up for me is baked and grainy, the sweetness of pop tart crust and cake donut and olive oil cake, and maybe even bran muffins, baked up relentlessly wholesome, radiating warmth and carbohydrates, stacked high…and a cozy determination to snorf it all down. Lazy, nap-loving Rilakkuma in his motivated era, powerloading for Fat Bear Week!
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Fruity-zingy-almost-fizzy-definitely-giddy, this is a chaos of golden retriever puppies, a whole pile of them, all of them tumbling over each other, absolutely delighted with everything, no agenda beyond maximum joy and maximum destruction…translated into a very-berry-forward scent.
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Eco-poet-author Robert Macfarlane writes about daylighting, the process of bringing buried rivers back to the surface, re-exposing them to sun and air and the communities who had been living unknowingly above them. And when it comes back, everything around it comes back too. Mangetsu smells like that recovered green space. The sharp green bite of new grass pushing through loosened soil. Unripe citrus, a cool, punchy idea with as of yet no focus. A powdery floral haze, waxy, something blooming in cool air for the first time in a long time, all that new growth over warming earth, something skin-close and alive underneath it all.
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There is a lumberjack in the backwoods mountains somewhere. I don’t know if they are a man, a woman, genderfluid, nonbinary, cryptid, or what. Doesn’t matter. They look good in a flannel and a beanie, and they have a kind heart and exquisite biceps, and sometimes in winter, with their big, strong hands, they feed you spoonfuls of blueberry porridge they kept tucked up under their armpit to keep it warm for you. Syrupy bláberjagrautur, warm grainy oats, a gorgeous bit of musk.
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I am not sure how I am supposed to write a review that even compares to this poetic list of notes, so I can only say is that it smells like when someone who knows better murmurs, “the soil of a man’s heart is stonier, Louis.” Incense like a drifting tide of stone and honey, heavy and dripping with craggy grief and stoic matter-of-factivism.
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Rose Quartz Phallus conjures delightful visions of a grapefruit Haribo candy burlesque performance, pearled sugar pasties, bright pinky-coral musky-soapy citrus wig. A jiggling, jellied, bouncy, exuberant, tassel-twirling, sass-and-wink-and-shimmy extravaganza.
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Honey Dust, Patchouli, and Orris Absolute
ghoulnextdoor replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Lupercalia
Barry Keoghan, post-Saltburn grave-humping scene, Emerald Fennell’s most deranged gift to cinema. A cheeky sprinkle of improv sweetness, speckled and spattered across freshly turned earth, loamy and dark, coffee grounds worked into the burial mound. Somewhere, twenty miles away, a pale iris sits in a funeral bouquet on a windowsill. -
A white sheet ghost of your most aspirational self. The day you did everything right, you woke up early, exercised, kept every appointment, every promise, did right by everyone, and took care of yourself, too. Clean sweat and goodwill and hard-earned dopamine pride, imprinted onto freshly laundered cotton and stored in a hermetically sealed chamber for the day you wake up feeling like a big loser pile of shit. Throw the good ghost sheet over your head and take a deep breath.
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The paradox of recognition without origin. I know this smell, except I don’t, except I do; something in the olfactory memory reaches for it and comes back empty-handed, certain it was there but wouldn’t recognize it if it was. A confectionary Saturday morning something, cottony and fruity and starchy-soft, heady-waxy florals. Turkish delight by way of circus peanuts, both and neither, made of lychee and guava, rolled in coconut powder. This smells like someone’s childhood, somewhere. Not mine. But somehow I feel the loss of it regardless.
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Hot beeswax and honey pooling on warm, musky skin, sticky and languid and lacquered and frothed with cream. Bodies handled like precious objects, anointed and presented and arranged, elaborate ceremonies. I can imagine this is the fragrance Anne Rice had in mind when she wrote the Beauty series.
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White Chocolate, Date Paste & Lime Zest
ghoulnextdoor replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Lupercalia
I want this to be a bar cookie-like dessert, so I can nibble on it. I want it to be a gorgeously quaffable cocktail, so I can imbibe. I want this to be a fragrance, so I can — oh, wait. This one we can do. I hate to use the literal notes of a perfume when I try to describe the experience of wearing it (it seems lazy to me as a writer! I want to use the words that describe its aspects and qualities and spirit and essence, and not just that, but I want to use the most ridiculously beautiful words available to me! And tell a speculative alternate timeline diary entry, a surrealist fairytale dream about it! But as a reviewer, I get it. You just want to know if you can smell the dates and the limes. Well, yes, you can! You can smell the sugary-tobacco-y dates and the cool, slithery lime and the creamy cocoa butter white chocolate, but it smells better than any single one of those things on its own. This is rich and chewy and opulent, a serving of Lime-Kissed Sticky Date Blondies with White Chocolate Drizzle and a Date Night: dark rum, white chocolate liqueur, fresh lime, date syrup float. -
A friend tells me this afterward. She and a date snuck into the empty apartment in the corner of the building, the one with the perpetually broken lock and revolving door of tenants. The space smelled strange, she said. Overripe stone fruit and the dark ink watercolors of night air and the void and emptiness of a place between people. The wallpaper was intricate, spiraling, mediumistic, automatic linework, a Madge Gill drawing duplicated perfectly if Madge Gill had papered a bedroom in a building like this. In the dim light, mid-coitus, it resolved into eyes, dozens of them, staring, swiveling, seething, a shadowy shifting panopticon, humid and pulsing with fleshy plum pulp. Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s, I said.
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Updated 4/19 2:30pm Green tea blends? I am pretty picky about green tea. If it is otherwise in my flavor profile in terms of fruity/gourmond, sure, but I dislike matcha and plain green tea Jigsaw puzzle? How many pieces? I do like jigsaw puzzles - my preference would be 500-1000, leaning toward more complex
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Strawberry Moon: Pink Strawberry and Black Champaca
Larinessa replied to doomsday_disco's topic in Duets & Menage A Trois
In the bottle, this is a full on Black Champaca slap in the face. Like Mike Tyson, it hits you straight on with a knock out punch. Fresh on the skin, it's exactly the same. Pretty much a single note of the Black Champaca. I started to feel incredibly disappointed. Heartbroken. But then, on the full dry down, something sweet, candy like starts to come forth. There's the pink strawberry. It's not a juicy realistic one, but a sweet, jolly rancher/laffy taffy sort. Very pink. The overall result is a sweet pinky smokey haze reminiscent of 2016 version of A Mirror of Spring Pleasures on Kites, but without the gardenia that made it sometimes tricky for me. -
In the bottle, I'm getting very strong jasmine and bright, juicy lemon. On the skin, I get smooth sandalwood and a touch of more earthy frankincense. The lemon smell disappears fairly quickly, and I'm not getting much of the hinoki. The jasmine tea doesn't read as a jasmine tea so much as just jasmine flowers (a similar situation to a Shunga from last year with a jasmine tea note), but while my skin generally amps jasmine, this is much more lowkey. I have a feeling that the frankincense, sandalwood, and hinoki are doing a lot of work to ground this on my skin, and I'm left with a smooth, sweet, earthy jasmine fragrance.
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The Secret History in May 2026 - Two Seats Left!
eldritchhobbit posted a blog entry in Eldritchhobbit's Blog
Now confirmed! I am so happy to report that in May 2026, I’ll be offering a standalone module with SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University on Donna Tartt's The Secret History. May 2026: The Secret History by Donna Tartt: Unpacking the “Whydunit” Mystery The Secret History, the 1992 debut novel of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Donna Tartt, has its own secret history, including an origin story at an actual college campus and inspiration from a real-life missing person case. The celebrated novel opens with the murder of a Classics student by his eccentric and close-knit group of college friends. The tale then unfolds as an inverted mystery, a “whydunit” rather than a “whodunit,” a narrative that interrogates the nature of obsession, beauty, and education. Featuring ingredients of the campus novel, the coming-of-age story, and the New England Gothic, The Secret History has long been hailed as a modern classic, and now it’s been rediscovered by a new generation of readers who consider it a foundational text of Dark Academia storytelling. Why does this mystery have such staying power? How does it serve as a turning point in genre history? And how do its haunting themes relate to us and our search for knowledge today? In this module we will explore the fictional Hampden College and peel back the literary layers of The Secret History. View the full post. -
Our Hunger Games series went so well the first time, we’re doing it again! And it’s perfect timing, too, given that the film adaptation of Sunrise on the Reaping will be coming this autumn. You’re invited to join me in SPACE (Signum Portals for Adult Continuing Education) online via Signum University to talk about all five books in The Hunger Games series! The first module has been confirmed to run in June 2026. What lessons do the Capitol and Districts have to teach us? What warnings should we heed? What road leads from here to Panem? Over the course of five months, participants in these SPACE modules will read and discuss a modern classic of dystopian storytelling, The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. In this hybrid series, each week will include one lecture and one live discussion. The lectures will examine the inspirations behind, allusions in, and questions posed by that month’s novel. In live discussions, participants will share their insights on, interpretations of, and reactions to the story. Together we will consider why this series has spoken to so many readers and explore how its messages remain relevant today. Here is more information. View the full post.
