Have you ever noticed that some things, when you just catch the faintest whiff of them, smell like something completely different?
Pine resin, for example - I find that the sweet resiny smell of a pine forest, when first and faintly sniffed, smells like sweet strawberries.
And a tiny whiff of burnt toast smells like wee.
Or is that just me?
I’ve always found that the smell of a bbq chicken, one of the store bought, mass rotisserie ones can often smell like a fart, unless you’re really hungry.
If you’re hungry, it smells like heaven.
I thought that was strange, until one day my wife asked me I smelled fart, just as we were walking past the bbq chickens in the supermarket.
Sometimes sweaty socks can smell like popcorn. I don’t know why.
No, they smell like corn chips. I thought it was just me thinking this, but a few years back I started hearing jokes about it (Like Eddie Murphy’s character in “Mulan”).
Sometimes lemonade smells surprisingly like skunk (!)
Coffee, too. sometimes coffee smells like skunk.
Fresh laundry smells like baking bread.
The faint smell of a Marlboro can smell like a joint at first whiff.
I don’t doubt you for a minute, but I never saw the movie – how did a movie about a sixth-century Chinese girl work in references either to corn chips or socks? Or is there a joke here too subtle for me?
All those unfortunates who regularly pass by the Tropicana plant can testify that rotting citrus is a very skunky smell, so I’m not a bit surprised.
It would be nice to hear from someone who is intimate with the relationship between memory and smell – reportedly an unusually strong one – and its effect upon mood, which itself affects memory. Could it be sometimes that a smell triggers a memory that cascades into another memory that triggers another smell, in itself not so very like the first one? It seems plausible, but then again, my father was a fisherman.
Ah, that memory triggers a smell of a remembrance of things past.
I think grape juice tastes like skunk smells.
Ha! We just had a seasoned rotisserie chicken this week from the market and it was to die for, but after it was in the garbage, my husband threw something in the trash, but I didn’t see him. As soon as I got a whiff of it, I yelled, “OH MY GOD! WAS THAT YOU??!” I thought he farted. 
Thanks a load, Madeleine. My father’s memory, usually evoked by all that smells fishy, is overpoweringly strong. All that does, unfortunately, is make his admonition to trust evidence before testimony all the clearer. So, whatcha got?
I mean it. I wouldn’t hold out on you if I knew something and you didn’t, and I’m not spoofing you when I tell you I’m clueless about Mulan. Corn chips and socks? Go on, tell me: I won’t rat you out to those who worship you as an all-knowing and impassive cinegod. They wouldn’t notice if I did. I’ve made a few jokes you liked – pay me back by rewarding, rather than punishing, my honest ignorance. Okay?
Eddie Murphy’s dragon character , Mushu, tries to dissuade Mulan from taking a bath in a stream/lake/something, afraid the army will discover she’s a girl. He makes a remark about kind of liking “that corn chip smell” his feet get (I think – I think it was feet, and not socks).
Of course it’s anachronistic – no New World Corn in ancient China, but that sort of anachronism is stock-in-trade for Disnet humor. (Hey – the dragon’s named Mu-shu, like Moo Shu Pork, get it?)
I find that a nearby bowl of Sugar Puffs can smell like somebody’s just opened a can of tuna.
Raw broccoli smells like body odor.
“The faint smell of X smells like Y” can save your butt in a chemical plant. Cyanide smells like almonds. Phosgene smells like freshly cut grass. Methyl isocyanate, one of the chemicals released in the Bhopal disaster, smells like boiled cabbage. If you smell one of these faint smells it means that something nasty has gotten out of the tank where it is supposed to be, and in a chemical plant that’s usually a BAD THING.