Why reading Topless Robot Blog made me start wearing deodorant again

I am finally wearing deodorant on a (near) daily basis now. This is how it happened: I started reading a new blog, called Topless Robot. It feeds into my nerdishness in a way no other nerd/geek/fanbeing website ever has before. Each week they have a new contest; one weekend the old man and I were reading the comments on the latest, "Most Shameful Con Moment." Most of the comments were pretty hilarious. Here are the results if you are so inclined to follow.

The shorter is this: Apparently, rendering Marina Sirtis unconscious or some kind of pissed-off is a prerequisite for gaining notoriety within the fandom of Sci-Fi conventions. The thing that struck me, however, were the allusions to bad body hygiene that came up again and again. The one that got me, though, was the comment by Mitch:

I was sharing a room at a hotel with a dude from my local gaming shop. In the interest of timing I suggested:

"We should arrange things so that one of us showers in the morning and the other in the evening, so we can get there early."
He responded, "I only shower when I feel like I am dirty."
"All right well understand this: you are always dirty. Especially during this convention during which you will shower daily. Afterwards I suggest you keep up the happen because this recent confession explains your persistent odor."

That was not the first, nor the last time that I would advise a fellow gamer on the habits of good hygiene.

Gah. That did it. I went out the next workday during lunch and got a "natural" deodorant at the local granola shop. My year-long B.O. paranoia had reached fever-pitch and I lost. I surrendered to the fact that if I could smell my stink, certainly other people could, as well. DG assured me time and again that it wasn't a problem, but I just ultimately could not get around it.

I think we, as Americans, are acculturated to the fact that we must always smell "clean," and to most that equates to smelling like you've been smothered in a synthetic flower factory. So, thank you, Topless Robot Blog commenters, for helping me see the error of my ways.