#note: musk

[cleolinda]

Sugar, sugar (Pink Sugar, 2004)

(Pink Sugar Amazon store)

Have you ever taken the lid off a sugar bowl and really stuck your nose in there and given it a good huff? There's a texture to the scent that reminds me a little of sand; I couldn't quite explain it in terms of amber, and I still can't here, but I swear to you, it's an ambient dryness that smells distinctly different from the liquid sucrose of a green hunk of sugar cane. And this is different from powdered sugar (even holding a powdered donut to my nose, I don't smell much), which is different from brown sugar (a touch of molasses that actually smells sticky), which is different from marshmallow (fluffy, slightly vanilla), and incredibly different from caramel (cooked sugar, rich, almost buttery) or praline (nutty, possibly creamy) or cotton candy (vanilla + strawberry/raspberry). What I like about a good sugar perfume is the nuance of the type of sugar, the character that is something beyond the literal sweet—and this is itself entirely different from the floral nuances of a honey perfume, which I also love.

Ideally, you'd apply a sugar perfume with a light hand, so that the nuances will blend with the scent of your skin and become A Secret Third Thing. If you're traipsing around smelling like a candy shop, you—well, I won't say you're doing it wrong, but that's not what I'm advocating for here.

Let's rewind a moment to that sugar cane I mentioned. Demeter Fragrance's single note Sugar Cane was the first scent of theirs that I tried, partly because I wanted to know what the hell they'd done to win two FiFi Awards with it. Demeter prides itself as a company on their Proustian sensory experiences (which is why they have scents like Crayon, Dirt, Paperback, and, uh, Fuzzy Balls), but they could not have known that Sugar Cane would take me back specifically to preschool. I have an incredibly vague memory of standing on a (dirt? paved?) road among the other kids on a field trip to a farmer's market, holding a four-inch chunk of freshly-cut sugar cane. I have no idea how we ended up there or if the preschool even got our parents' permission (it was 1983, a lawless time), but I do remember gnawing on this green hunk of cane, and my mom remembers me bringing it home. (She did not seem the least bit bothered that I'd been off who knows where chewing on produce, because it was 1983.) Everything is vague but for the olfactory memory: Demeter's Sugar Cane really, truly has that fresh-cut, not "vegetal" or even "green," exactly, but that ineffable sense of a juicy plant that is not yet dried and crumbled and cubed. It's lovely, and I wore it off and on for years.

Another favorite sugar perfume of mine is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's Sugar Skull ("A blend of five sugars, lightly dusted with candied fruits"), a seasonal offering. As time has gone on, my 2004 bottle has taken on a richer brown-sugar tone, but it actually started out with that whiff of dry sugar bowl. I'm not sure what the fruits are supposed to be, but I might guess plum and strawberry, like the sugar-dusted strawberry candies I used to get in my childhood Christmas stocking. Which means that I might guess something like Furaneol is involved: "Intense caramel and fruity note, reminiscent of cotton candy. Indispensable ingredient for strawberry, pineapple and exotic fruity accords. Often used to bring a jam effect. Naturally found in coffee, malt, grape, guava, pineapple, raspberry, strawberry." I tried Sugar Skull on the other day for this post, and while the fruit accord comes out more distinctly now, the perfume itself is still fairly subtle, a restrained golden sweetness that hangs back rather than yell at top volume.

No, top volume would be Pink Sugar.

In my experience, ethyl maltol (the caramel/praline note you may remember from last week's Mugler Angel) might be strong when it's fresh, but it's Godzilla when it's aged. My bottle of Pink Sugar (maybe 2007?) has also turned from clear to brown, which might be the vanillin. I would be willing to bet there's a strong dollop of furaneol in this thing as well, and the musk isn't helping; all together, I remember being like, "Let's give it a lil spray, see if it's still good," and having to evacuate the room. The powdery candy musk cloud, my GOD. So for this post, I went and ordered a fresh decant (for the princely sum of $0.99 USD), so I could at least see what Pink Sugar's ideal state is, and also I could control it with a tiny wand cap.

A couple of swipes, and this, this is why I liked Pink Sugar back in my twenties. I'll say up front that, these days, the Italian company Aquolina doesn't seem to have much of an internet presence anymore, except for a pinksugar.it site that mostly exists to redirect you to the Pink Sugar Amazon store (and a US Instagram that redirects to Macy's). So I had to dig a little to get the creator(s)' name and the full list of notes: raspberry, orange, fig leaf, bergamot, cotton candy, licorice, red berries, strawberry, lily of the valley, caramel, vanilla, musk, tonka bean, sandalwood.

Secondly, I'll quote two other reviews from people with sharper noses than I have:

Bois de Jasmin:

On a technical level, Pink Sugar is a clever thing, and I find it impressive how its creator, Pierre Nuyens, chose to offset the dessert extravaganza with plenty of sharp citrus, tart berries and crunchy anise seeds. The drydown of musk and sandalwood is like a sprinkling of confectioner’s sugar on warm brioche. Its softness offers a respite after the burnt caramel overload. It’s a long lasting, tenacious fragrance and a little goes a long way.

[I'll note here that I have seen Pink Sugar credited to either Pierre Nuyens or Shyamala Maisondieu of Givaudan, and I don't know what's with the discrepancy. Are we possibly talking about old and new formulations?]

Now Smell This:

Pink Sugar opens on an extraordinarily sweet blend of fruit and caramelized sugar. There is a hint of citrus, but the red berries dominate the first 15 minutes or so. If you love the smell of strawberry candy, the top notes may well be your idea of heaven; I'm afraid it is not mine. [...] There is lots of vanilla sugar, a teensy little whiff of licorice, and a pale, woody-musky base with a hint of powder. It is, as advertised, very reminiscent of cotton candy.

That mention of "offsetting the dessert extravaganza" is similar to the logic that Olivier Cresp and Yves de Chirin used with Angel: it was so unexpected in 1992 to build a fragrance around ethyl maltol that they balanced it with a tornado of patchouli so intense that I can't smell a single other damn thing in it, other than some fruit in the first ten minutes. But by the time Pink Sugar came along in 2004, truly, nobody gave a shit. Trying to balance candy with more candy is, if we are honest, just the slightest gesture towards optimizing your Eau de Toothache (I say this lovingly). There's a reason that Angel is considered a Hall of Famer and Pink Sugar is something people generally scoff at.

So I open my new sample, and I brace myself. The current decant opens with, yes, a pretty strong citrus to immediately counterbalance the sugar. And yet, while I said that Dior's new Joy has a "vanilla lemonade" feel, that's not the kind of sugar + lemon we have going on here. There are several things going on, including some kind of musk, but mostly, my nose can't distinguish what they are; "it's very well-blended" is what you say when you can't figure that out. I'll also say that I couldn't perceive strawberry, or even strawberry candy (no matter how much I love it), in all this; what I get is Cotton Candy™. I remember how surprised I was to find out that the traditional flavor of American cotton candy is just vanilla, often with some strawberry if it's pink, and definitely with raspberry if it's blue. Cotton candy is just A Thing Unto Itself to me (ask me how shocked I was to find out that yellow cake mix is just vanilla. Mm, tastes like yellow), and that's mostly what I smell in Pink Sugar. A specific whiff of caramel emerged about two hours in, but that was the best my nose could do.

Four hours in, as I sat drafting this post with Pink Sugar on the back of my hand, the citrus notes had evaporated, and I was getting just that cotton candy—but dry and fluffy, on a floating bed of musk, not a sticky, just-melted-in-your-mouth, washed-by-a-confused-raccoon note. So the first hour is when Pink Sugar is most interesting to me. And I'm gonna tell you—I can't distinguish fig leaf or lily of the valley or even sandalwood in this thing, but I get something in that first hour that I haven't seen anyone else mention: something shadowy.

There's something sultry about Pink Sugar early on to me, and that may be the combination of licorice and musk, going by the notes listed. (You'd think I could pick out licorice after two posts about it, but not specifically in Pink Sugar, no.) You're at the cotton candy stand, sure, but there are dark clouds gathering overhead. For some reason, Johnny Jewel's "Windswept" popped into my head—something noirishly forlorn. The fairground is closing at the end of summer, the boardwalks are empty; up in the late afternoon sky, something watchful and gray is rolling in.

And this stage does pass. But that first hour, that's the interesting stage, the part where I get why "counterbalancing the toothache" is such an important consideration. I also have Demeter Fragrance's Cotton Candy single note (does what it says on the tin), and sometimes a simple sugar is what you want. But if someone could actually cook up Film Noir Cotton Candy Stand, combining two things you would pretty much never think to put together, you would have a story on your hands. Pink Sugar has that for about an hour—except for the fact that I think I must be hallucinating it, because I've never seen a review where anyone ever accused Pink Sugar of having one iota of depth to it, much less darkness.

That's the thing about fragrance: it's so wholly dependent on what your own nose can pick up and how it interacts with your own chemistry, as opposed to anyone else's. I could hold out my hand thirty minutes in and say "SMELL IT. SMELL THE FILM NOIR," as you do, and it might be that no one else would smell anything "sultry" or "gray" or "forlorn" in Pink Sugar at all. You ever have that Super Deep Thought that maybe nobody sees color the same way, and maybe what's orange to you is blue to someone else? With fragrance, that might be a little bit true.

The other thing I've realized is that most people smell a perfume on you after you've been wearing it a while—people at work or a party or wherever you actually left the house to go, they'd mostly smell the base notes and maybe a few mid notes of your fragrance by the time you got there. (Unless you're reapplying it frequently. I... do not advocate for that.) Everything I find interesting about Pink Sugar would have faded by the time anyone smelled it on me, leaving just a vague aura of musky sweet. I'd actually love to smell a fragrance made of all the notes that aren't cotton candy: Pink Sugar Without Sugar.

I'll end by pointing out that I started with a nostalgic story about preschool and sugar—and a different fragrance. Most people reviewing Pink Sugar mention nostalgia as part of its appeal, but it doesn't evoke memory for me at all, and I think that's because the musk is so strongly present for me all the way through. I will argue, though, that the Secret Third Thing it comes up with is more sophisticated than people give it credit for.

Perfume discussion masterpost

[aqours]

i think elon musk has had a really, really bad week. thoughts and prayers next week is even worse <333

[clonebrainrot]

I’m like 95% sure trump and Elon are crashing the economy on purpose. This is something Elon Musk explicitly said he would do

He warned about this before the election yet stupid fuckers voted for him anyway

[the-sand-guardian]

last night i dreamt that elon musk was getting bullied so hard on Twitter (due to the connoreatspants stream) that he took down the entire website and sold it to john green for $80. Because he deleted the entire thing and destroyed everything, when you went to the website it just had a banner of John saying "Sorry about him, twitter will be back soon" and promoting his new book

[aphrodicci]

ᴘʟᴀɴᴇᴛᴀʀʏ ᴊᴏʏꜱ

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paid chart readings are open!

BEFORE I GET INTO THIS, I WANT TO REMIND YOU THAT THE CELEBRITIES/PUBLIC FIGURES THAT ARE LISTED HERE ARE USED FOR AN EXAMPLE TO HOW IT COULD MANIFEST IN ONE'S CHART. I DO NOT SUPPORT THE ACTIONS OF SOME OF THE PEOPLE I HAVE LISTED, THANK YOU.

♇ before we expand about the planetary joys placements, we need to understand what it is about.

♇ planetary joys comes from hellenistic astrology, so nothing after the planet saturn [uranus, neptune and pluto], are not included within the belief. but planetary joys is about where the traditional planets in rejoice in a chart. [where they work the best].

SUN ⟶ 9H; the house of God.

MOON ⟶ 3H; the house of Goddess.

MERCURY ⟶ 1H; the house of Helm.

VENUS ⟶ 5H; the house of Good Fortune.

MARS ⟶ 6H; the house of Bad Fortune.

JUPITER ⟶ 11H; the house of Good Spirit.

SATURN ⟶ 12H; the house of Bad Spirit.

♇ in this, the benefic planets, venus and jupiter are associated with the benefic houses. [5H AND 11H].

♇ in this, the malefic planets, mars and saturn are associated with the malefic planets. [6H AND 12H].

♇ sun, saturn and jupiter are diurnal, meaning it's at the top of the chart, the morning or the day. whereas moon, venus and mars are nocturnal, meaning its at the bottom of the chart, the night.

♇ mercury can be both since it's on the helm, the ascendant, the first house.

PLANETARY JOYS PLACEMENTS ⬎

SUN IN THE 9H

♱ the 9H is known as the house of God, connections to beliefs, faith and philosophy. also with education as it is about arrangement about what someone could believe in.

♱ people that i've seen with this are wildly liked, especially celebrities that i'll list after this. they could also be people who have massive supporters, and they can be very vocal about their opinions, bad or good.

♱ they can be very provoking people, but they can also be people who make other people take accountability or even make a movement; or they could make other people aware of another person's behaviour.

DAKOTA JOHNSON = ELLEN.

KENDRICK LAMAR = DRAKE.

MARTIN LUTHER KING = WHITE RACISM.

they can also be known for their great smiles.

celebrities with 9H sun ⟶ martin luther king, billie eilish, brigitte bardot, jessica alba, kendrick lamar and dakota johnson.

MOON IN THE 3H

♇ the 3H is known as the house of Goddess, it's opposite the 9H. thus the name Goddess. along with it being associated with the Moon, and the Moon Goddess is Luna/Selene which translates to Moon. it is about alternative religions, different ideas, and can be people who like to spread messages or commands.

♇ very strong opinions, they also have a lot of supporters, though they could also be very annoying and provoking. if they're not careful, they can come off as know it alls.

♇ as celebrities, they're very easy to market and they can do well with influencing other people. can have a really wide smile as well.

♇ could be the type to never practice what they preach. or they could preach their opinions more than actually teaching someone or having a cordial conversation with them.

celebrities with 3H moon ⟶ mariah carey, adolf hitler, eminem, robert pattinson, zendaya and margot robbie.

MERCURY IN THE 1H

♱ in Hellenistic Astrology, before the First House was called the Ascendant, it was known as the House of Helm. the 1H is entirely about you.

♱ people with this placement can speak about themselves, A LOT. always making something about themselves. either way, these people are usually spoken about and even edited.

♱ they could have the decency of being very annoying. but its a great fame indicator because they're very marketable. they also have to be careful about what they say because it can come off as very different to others.

♱ mercury is very happy in the first house, because its in the house of self expression, it's very radiant and likes to express themselves to the world.

celebrities with 1h mercury ⟶ selena gomez, katy perry, elon musk, gigi hadid, bella hadid and blake lively. [see how almost all of them are known to be very annoying]. another set of people who could talk about themselves a lot.

VENUS IN THE 5H

♇ the 5H is perceived as the house of good fortune, sometimes the 9H is perceived as that. but it's mainly known as the house of God due to description i've already provided. though, venus in the 5H is about your self-expression, creativity, pleasure and hobbies that can be turned into jobs.

♇ people with this placement are excellent at portraying the roles they are given. and it doesnt necessarily mean career role, personality role and the expectations they're supposed to live up to.

♇ most of them do have romantic controversy like, princess diana, dolly parton and even henry cavill. and most of them could have problems with battling hyper-sexuality. they're people who are easily liked and can be very influential.

♇ people could want to copy their style a lot, especially people like princess diana, alexa demie and eva longoria. they're visionaries so a lot of people trust their judgement when it comes to making creative decisions, and they usually have really beautiful children.

celebrities with 5h venus ⟶ barack obama, princess diana, alexa demie, henry cavill, dolly parton and eva longoria.

MARS IN THE 6H

♱ in hellenistic astrology, the 6H is known as the house of bad fortune, as it is the house of sickness, competition/rivalry, where we wear our selves down.

♱ in a career, they have to fight for their spot, and could sometimes fight to be known as the "best" as what they do. their career usually involves them receiving critique and validation from the viewers.

♱ they tend to be people who has controversy with their children, like john lennon was said to be abusive with his son, drake once rejected his son until he had a blood test happen and jay-z was said to have a secret child with a woman who was likely a minor when she was im-pregnanted. and unfortunately, sharon tate died eight months pregnant.

♱ they're people who are usually seen to have a classic aesthetic and seen as people who will remain legends or just remembered within their fame. they're usually in conflict or compared to people within the same industry as them.

♱ and women with mars in the 6h tend to be highly admired because of their beauty.

celebrities with 6h mars ⟶ sharon tate, drake, john lennon, jay-z, audrey hepburn and adriana lima.

JUPITER IN THE 11H

♇ jupiter is know as the house of good spirit, about productive belongings, how one makes a living [you can also perceive it as how one is agreeable] and religion.

♇ people with this placement have a bigger than life personality, and sometimes are perceived as the "cool girl" or the "cool guy" people just want to be around them and hear what they have to say, no matter how crazy it sounds.

♇ they usually have a likeable and memable personality. and most of them have a better time with fame, it can be about being liked, or always able to make money out of something. they usually tend to have longevity with what they put out.

celebrities with 11h jupiter ⟶ kanye west, adele, zendaya, anne hatheway, salma hayek and frida kahlo.

SATURN IN THE 12H

♱ the 12h in hellenistic astrology is known as the house of bad spirit, it's where your hidden enemies lie, the realer side of fame, and is also the house of material and hardship.

♱ to have saturn in the 12h shows that how you interact with fame is karmic, how you treat your money and your finances will follow you into the next life. you could be considered as a celebrity who is hard to connect with, or a person hard to connect with in general.

♱ they tend to have rumours and information about them revealed, some of it are usually made up and delusional, considering its the twelfth house as well. can be uptight people and can abuse their power onto the unknown, or people they see smaller than them.

♱ most of them ending up being humanitarians as the 12h is about what you do for the community, particularly people who have less. it's usually apart of their karmic debt to do so.

celebrities with 12h saturn ⟶ angelina jolie, beyonce, kendall jenner, zayn, whitney houston and tyra banks.

masterlist

[skypperlegacy]

Hello. I'm really sorry I haven't updated here, I really don't know how many people are going to see this. The place in the photo above is called Catia, it is a popular lower-middle class area close to where I live.

Currently in Venezuela the largest electoral fraud in its history is occurring. Thousands of people around the country are protesting against A DICTATORSHIP that has left the minimum wage in misery, economic support for elderly adults in almost nothing, and universities in ruins thanks to the fact that the governors steal the money. money that is destined to fix them. There are few artists or public figures in my country who say anything about it, since many of them have bought their silence. Please, many in our peaceful protests have been kidnapped by the national guard, and they are minors. They are transferred to El Helicoide, the largest torture center in the country.

I am currently serving first aid during the protests, but I also fear for my life. There are seniors and many young people with us. Today a guard almost stole my cell phone.

You would help us a lot as a nation by reblogging this and spreading it, thank you very much. May the virgin bless you.

[animentality]

[isabela-merceds]

what inner peace feels like

[chaoticace22]

this pride does have everything

[datasoong47]

Yeah ... you're not really making the point you think you're making

[craetor]

Been thinking about Mello a bit & I think it's his turn to have the pleasure of punching a fragile nazi, KMFDM style✊🏻

Speedpaint below the cut

[nezz-cringe-crib]

coping.

[lestats-ovaries]

"He did a roman salute, not a nazi salute!!!1!11!1!!"

You mean the roman salute, also known as the fascist salute, that mussolini adopted in fascist italy and nazi germany copied for themselves? That salute?

Even if he meant to do a roman salute, it's still a fascist symbol. The only reason you're making a big deal about semantics is because it makes the elongated pissbaby sound slightly less horrible to the average person.

[clonebrainrot]

Saw this tweet on Reddit about if Ukraine actually did hack Twitter. Elon really should lead by example it is only right

Credit @itsallcrazy on Twitter no I am not providing a link to the Nazi site

[parfavar]

[unitedfrontvarietyhour]

"It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker."

- Malcolm X

(Pt.2)