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BPAL Madness!
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straight to hell...no handbasket

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the salon

Oh holy hell. I think the salon may be the actual death of me. So far i have tried three scents from it, and they may be the most gorgeous, unique, complex, and intriguing scents i've tried so far. They're definitely way, way up there, if not the top.   I ordered a bottle of two monsters unsniffed (a first for me!), and i love it. I have one small hangup about it - the champaca flower. This is silly i know, but i have this fear that i will smell like That One Incense to people, which bothers me. See, i used to wear lush's karma fragrance for years and years, and often times when someone would comment on the scent it would be "ARE YOU WEARING PATCHOULI?! we didn't know you were a hippie maureen," and i'd be like uhhh, pipe down there, i'm wearing a gorgeous scent that contains some patchouli, but no, i'm not just wearing patchouli. I'm always amazed at how some people only smell that one thing, which i know isn't there fault i guess, we all smell things differently. Anyway, ramble ramble...my original point is that i don't want to just smell like i bathed myself in a room of incense, or have it be interpreted as such. Incense is great and all, but i associate smelling like nag champa with the dirty and filthy rich but pretending to be poor college stoner hippies. All this to say, i love two monsters and i will probably keep wearing it and just wonder quietly if anyone thinks i smell like i scent myself by laying in my room burning nag champa all day.   I'm not up to actual reviews of them, but resurrection of the flesh...hoo boy, depending on the total drydown, i may love this. Satan and death blows me away and makes my head spin when wet and in the initial drydown, but i need a few wears of it to see how i feel about its eventual complete drydown.   I am so frigging excited about the rest of The Salon scents.
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Oh yes, i shall see the lab with my very own eyes

So my bff just announced yesterday that and he his girlfriend, also my friend, are moving to LA this fall. I celebrated and asked lots of questions and all that good stuff, but i have to say one of my first background thoughts was OMIGAWD NOW WHEN I VISIT THEM ALL THE TIME I WILL DO IT OVER WILL-CALLS AND I WILL ACTUALLY...SEE...THE LAB. I can't help it, i associate LA with bpal now so it HAD to be one of the first things that popped into my head.   My excitement about having friends in LA, both for the fact of LA and for bpal, really knows no bounds. Seriously. Seeeeeriously.
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Personal Inventory

Everything i own, and what's on order:   5ml Alone Cathode Enraged Orangutan Musk Geek Intrigue Litha Masquerade Medicine Show Montresor Pit and The Pendulum, The Red Lantern Snake Charmer Snow White Two Monsters   5ml Pending Dee Harvest Moon Chrysanthemum Moon Carnaval Diabolique Phantom Calliope Mme Moriarty Organ Grinder Doc Constantine Gennivre Midnight on the Midway Antonino Death of the Grave Digger   Imps Alecto Alone And There Was a Great Cry in Egypt Apothecary, The Arcana Bathsheba Black Phoenix Black Tower, The Blood Moon Blood Pearl Bow & Crown of Conquest, The Budding Moon Cairo Carceri D'Invenzione Carnal Carnivàle Caterpillar, The Cathode Clio Coyote Cracked Bell, The Czernobog Death Cap Dee Dracul Drink Me Elegba Enraged Orangutan Musk Envy Fenris Wolf Florence Fortunato Frumious Bandersnatch Geek Glasgow Gommorah Great Sword of War, The Greed Gypsy Queen Hades Hellion Herr Drosselmeyer Hetairae Intrigue Jolly Roger Juke Joint Kabuki Lampades Litha Lucretia Magus Masque, The Masquerade Medicine Show Melpomene Montresor Morella Nefertiti Nephilim Nocnitsa Nyarlathotep Ochosi Odin Old Scratch Orpheus Ozymandias Perversion Pit & The Pendulum, The Ravenous Red Lantern Red Queen, The Resurrection of the Flesh Saint-germain Salomé Satan and Death with Sin Intervening Scarecrow Scherezade Severin Shadow Silk Road Snake Charmer Snake Oil Snow White Spanked Sri Lanka Tezcatlipoca Torture King Two Monsters Tzadikim Nistarim Vixen Voodoo Yew Trees   Imps Pending none
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smelling of spanked, like i could own the world

Last night i really wore spanked for the first time. I very luckily came into a special rare imp which i then swapped for spanked, and wow. I now understand why people hoard and drop mad cash on ebay for this. I tested it lightly when i first got it and loved it, though i was surprised by it's similarity to geek (same leather i think, and a similarity in the cardamom vs cinnamon part too). Similarity is too strong really, but i related them in my mind, probably because i love geek so much.   Anyway, last night i went to the local music awards ball with the bf (he didn't win this year, too bad), and i looked smashing and decided it was time to break out the spanked. I didn't spare on it either - something that beautiful is meant to be used. DAMN did i smell good. Damn damn damn. That is one fucking gorgeous oil. It was a totally different experience really wearing it instead of having just a tiny swipe on my wrist while i hung around home. I felt like a million bucks, and now i have the twitching, drooling urge to hunt me down some spanked and drop some scary cash on it. I've been trying to stay in control about those super-coveted limited editions, because it's just such a loop to get into. But yikes. I covet.   In other news, i got a frimp of the bow and crown of conquest, my first white musk-containing scent. I hate white musk based on a friend who used to wear it (body shop's white musk though), and a few floral-based frimps i've hated. But this little puppy, boy howdy. Good stuff. I think it reminds me a bit of st. germain, which would make sense. It's really nice, and i'm pleased that i now know not every white musk will make me gag.   But now i really want king of spades and lenore. Sigh. Anyone wanna swap me?
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then vs. now

I sometimes look back at my arrival to bpal, not so very long ago, and laugh at the way i was picking scents. At the time i had been wearing lush's karma for something like 6 or 7 years. Before that the only scents i'd loved were a vial of egyptian amber i got when i was a teenager at a little hippie store in yellowsprings ohio, a tin of solid amber perfume, and a bottle of woody sandalwood from the body shop. I knew that karma contained patchouli and some orange too, and i knew i also loved vetiver. So when i found bpal i nearly crapped myself over all the scents with those notes. I wanted all resins and musks and vetiver and some woods and just anything dark and NOT a fruit or a flower and definitely nothing foody. Ugh, foody! I avoided those like the plague.   Through the wonder of frimps and some imp lots i bought off of ebay that contained one or two things i thought i wanted and an assortment of others i didn't, i discovered that i was a bit off in my original assesment. I still love all those elements, and i'm still not an outright floral or fruity kinda gal. I like anne bonny and czernobog, but my range goes so much further than that! I like some dirty, gritty dark scents, but more and more i'm loving certain select fruits (currant, FIG, orange, and more), and certain florals (heliotrope, carnation), and even certain foody scents (red lantern is food to me!). Even vanilla is sneaking in here and there.   Oh bpal, look what you've done to me. You've made me so happy, and so guilty for all the money spent. I wish i could stop that damn guilt!
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being blinded by love of bpal

I find that sometimes i have a hard time determining if i actually like a scent and want to wear it, or if i just think it's really cool, unique, unusual, etc. I also find that sometimes i smell a scent and think oh yea, i like that, cool, and then i keep it around and sniff it now and then and maybe wear it once or twice and then realize i actually don't like it all, that if i had picked up a bottle off a perfume counter at the mall and smelled something like that i'd be grossed out. But i'm so blinded by excitement about these scents that sometimes i think that i like scents that i actually don't like at all. It's absurd.   Hasn't happened with any rose scents yet though. No siree. The one other note i need to confirm that i hate is white musk, but i haven't gotten a white musk blend yet because it's much more fun to get ones i'm pretty sure i'll like.
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Scent planning, imp overwhelmed, old favs

I usually go to sleep at night with at least a minute or two of thought about what scent i will wear the next day. Sometimes i make a solid decision, and sometimes i waver between a few and decide to see what happens in the morning. In the morning i get up and hover over my imp box, trying to make a decision. Sometimes it's obvious and easy, and sometimes i have to be very careful. If, for instance, i've been thinking about shadow but when i look in my box i find my eye grabbed by lampades, i have to make sure i pick the right one. I love both but if i go with what i've been craving (shadow) i may find myself throughout the day thinking in the back of my head about how i crave the sweet tartness of lampades. Then shadow is kind of ruined for me for the day, no matter how much i love it! And the opposite is true - if i go with what suddenly grabbed my eye in the morning i may find that what i really wanted was the one i'd been thinking about in the first place.   It's all so silly and many people would think i need counseling for having this much thought about something like perfume oils! But i'm sure some people out there in bpal land can identify. And when i say silly, i don't necessarily mean unimportant. These things are important to me right now, even if they aren't earth-shattering or life-changing. It's just something that enriches the other more important things in my life.   I'm still in the stage where i have scads of imps and i've tried almost all of them, but i'm utterly overwhelmed by them all and feel a constant battle between the grasping obsession of must...get...more...now...must...have and must...reduce...quantities...now. When i have that many (i have something like 80 imps) i know i can't do them all justice, and i look in my box and i'm so excited by them all but also have a feeling of dread, like "ack, i need to test those, and i need to retry those and see how i feel about them, and ACK i haven't even had a chance to LOOK at masquerade or shadow or snow white for three weeks and i love them but i have so many others i need to work on." You get the idea. I know it probably seems silly to many, but it's just overwhelming! I want them all at once!   Since i'm trying to move to ordering only on lunacy updates and since i didn't want peony moon, i gave myself the month between that moon and the next to not worry about testing very many if any oils. I'm just going to give the ones i love some time and attention, and basically revisit the ones i've been neglecting while hoarding and trying new ones all the time. It's been very good! I still try a few new ones now and then but mostly i'm enjoying the favs...geek, masquerade, cathode, EO musk, snow white, intrigue...and the list goes on. Once i've satisfied this mode for a while, i'll finish testing the new ones and i'll feel caught up, and i'll have at least separated all the swaps/sales from my keepers, and then i can think about trying some of the new ones out there. Yay!
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I'm a lonely scent lover

For my maiden bpal blog voyage, i shall discuss my status as the only person among my friends and acquaintances who is smell-obsessed.   I'm preaching to the choir here, i know, but smell is such an underrated sense. People think it's hilarious that i collect these perfumes - they may not think it's silly to love perfume, but they don't see why one would want more than one or two favorites. They listen if i explain that it's not just some perfume like going to the drugstore or the department store counter and picking out the latest j.lo or chanel fragrance that smells appealing...there's craft and artistry and thought and love that goes into these, not to mention they're unique and smell better than 99% of other scented things you can get out there.   I just wish i had a friend who is similarly appreciative, so we could dish about our pending orders, squeal when they arrive, talk endlessly about favorites and the horror at adding up just how much we've actually spent on this stuff (but still being so happy to have it!), and just sit around and sniff each other! I mean, i have a few people now and then tell me i smell great, and that's nice, but i want a Nose Buddy. Someone else who loves using their nose as much as i do. It's great to commune about this stuff on this forum, but it's not the same as having a good friend in real life you can do it with.   I'm not really such a sad-sack. I'm just lamenting this one particular lacking area of my current life.
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