Actually, I'm not sure if it's my skin chemistry or my nose chemistry, but there's something horribly wrong with a number of blends -- Drink Me, the Hanging Gardens, Jack, White Rabbit, the Knave of Hearts, and Pumpkin III -- that makes them turn to sickening, burning butter on my skin (and sometimes even smell like it in the imp.) Two share pumpkin and two share pomegranate, but that's not quite enough to explain the butter of death.

I wrote a little Java program a while ago to analyze my BPAL spreadsheet. In my spreadsheet, I list the known notes of the blend, give it a 4-5 word review, and then give it a numerical rating; greater than 4 is good, less than 4 is bad. The program searches for a keyword, then averages the scores of blends that contain that keyword.

"verbena, mahogany, birch, oakmoss, leather, tonka, ozone, snow" are the highest scoring.

"white musk, ambergris, lilac, lavender, cherry blossom, fir, cedar, grapefruit, linen, amber, sage, thyme, rosemary, mint" form the next highest set, and...

"musk, patchouli, wood, rosewood, pine, juniper, lemon, bergamot, cherry, berry, vanilla, frankincense, resin, green tea, black tea" slightly correspond with positive scores.

"chrysanthemum, rose, ylang, plum, fig, pepper, sugar, milk" slightly correspond with low scores...

"black musk, black patchouli, chamomile, violet, muguet, gardenia, pomegranate, apricot, cocoa, nutmeg, clove" score slightly worse, and...

"olibanum, cream, pumpkin" have very low scores.

This number-crunching program isn't that intelligent, however; it counts "rosewood" as both "rosewood" and "rose," for example. So here are some subjective additions and clarifications:

I love fougeres and various "cologne" notes.

I also love a masculine tonka/vanilla base note so long as it doesn't get too sweet. I hate foody, cakey vanillas... and sweet and foody scents in general. Exception: coffee scents. I love Miskatonic University and El Dia de Reyes. Other sweet scents... generally no.

I absolutely hate rose and violet; they get really vile on my skin. I also just generally don't like florals, especially white florals. I do like lavender and lilac, but those are pretty much the only exceptions.

I also have a poor record with "sexy" blends like Snake Oil, O, etc. And I generally don't like things with heavy patchouli (the program was skewed by my love of Crowley) or other "New Age"-y incenses. I do love frankincense and myrrh, though.