The Peril of Wearing Too Much Perfume

Stayed up last night to watch Craig Ferguson, who, like Colbert and Stewart, interviews people who write books instead of, say, people like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who just get their pictures taken a lot.

Last night, Craig talked to an Irish guy named Ken Bruen, the author of Priest, the latest in a series about an alcoholic ex-cop from Galway. I will probably give it a whirl once I get through the stack of books on my coffee table.

Yesterday at the library I added Donald Spoto's Joan, the biography of Joan of Arc, to the stack. It will be chock full o' laughs, I'm sure. Nothing like a true story about burning a 19-year-old girl at the stake to put a smile on your face.

Good thing I'm also reading Nick Hornby's Housekeeping Vs. The Dirt to fend off utter despair (Hornby, the author of the book that became the Hugh Grant movie, About a Boy, is hilarious and gives me reason to live).

Now for my dating-- or human relations--tip of the day: The temperature here in New England hovered around 93 yesterday with the humidity coming in at about 900%.

And then, in the faintly air conditioned library where I dampened Joan's pages, a lung leadening odor wafted into my sphere, which I came to recognize as women's perfume.

Despite the implications of the seductive gatefold ads in The New York Times Magazine, bathing oneself in a powdery flowery fragrance is unattractive at any time of the year. In the choking heat of summer, it's downright repellent.

Less is more! And even less is even better!

If you must wear perfume during the summer and want to attract men and the goodwill of the general population, resist! Until sundown, anyway.

Which brings me to the subject of fragrance for men. Perhaps you've seen the ads, which promise that women will be compelled to spray themselves with whipped cream upon catching a whiff of a fellow wearing Tag Body Spray.

Even though I don't know any women who've ever succumbed to the mysterious powers of Tag, the advertising clearly works in getting guys to buy the stuff.

Every single man I know has a couple of cans in his bathroom.

Oh!