filigree_shadow

Resurrected version: Although I like vetiver, I don't like quite this much vetiver. It was really strong at first. And then it smelled like powder and vetiver. I found out from other blends that red patchouli is not my friend, but I wanted to give this a try anyway. I discovered that the feud between red patchouli and me is apparently still going on. Ah well. I'm sure this bottle will find a nice home.

Oooo, I loved Poison and wore it for several years. Opoponax is one of my all-time most favorite notes. I'll second the Venom comparisons -- it's similar. If Venom came back I'd buy 3 bottles of it. Queen of Spades is wonderful and similar to Poison as well, but even harder to get than Venom, I think. However, from the general catalog definitely try Bathsheba. Frumious Bandersnatch is similar to a certain extent, too. You might need to layer it with something a bit darker and muskier to get the right feel though. I had the same problem with Blood Countess that you had, so I know what you mean about it smelling kind of like soap. If you're going for the overall feel (dead sexy) but it's okay if it's not quite the same scent, I'd recommend Mme. Moriarty, Misfortune Teller. Also Vixen. Try something with red musk in it. Maybe Scherezade.

We actually have less swaplifting than we used to. I kind of hoped that would be the result of the swap feedback forum, so YAY! I'm nosey, and now that we have the capability I look for bad feedback even if it's someone I've never swapped with. So now I notice swaplifters whereas before I never knew about it unless someone told me. ETA: SCHOOL'S OUT!!!! A textbook will not be open in my house until the first week of January. YAY!!!

That sucks about losing your CT bottle. Mind if I ask who it was? I really like the new(ish) swap feedback section here, but there's one feature I wish it had: an easy-to-access list of all the users with the worst swap ratings. I'd like to be able to see at a glance who the problem people are, rather than having to look through each letter category. But I'm glad that people are now publicly accountable for these things. It seems like often after a couple of people give them bad feedback, they disappear from the forums. But I wonder whether, before we had the feedback system, those people would just continue to do stuff like that because forumites at large had no idea they'd swaplifted other people. Swaplifting seems to be going on fairly frequently lately, and I'm not sure if it's just always been that way and I didn't know because we didn't have the swap feedback system, or whether it has picked up recently.

I'm procrastinating studying anatomy right now. Again. So here are my thoughts about the glorious update! Wolf Moon. Winter air, Terebinth pine, juniper berry, dusty orris, deep amber, white sandalwood, black musk, blue cedar, and tonka. If this smells anything like the previous version, I'll like it. I enjoyed that cold and sort of aquatic feel to the first Wolf Moon -- it was good with the musky scent. Got a bottle. Lycaon. A monstrous, brutal, and bloodthirsty blend: blackened myrrh, crushed olive leaf, black musk, spikenard, frankincense, cypress wood, opoponax, white ginger, and patchouli. Sounds monstrous for sure. I have no idea what to think of it. Spikenard is probably the ONLY note I can count on ALWAYS hating. Ick. However, I really like opoponax, myrrh, and patchouli, and I think that crushed olive leaf would be interesting too. Got a bottle of this too, but I think it was kind of a risky choice. The Salon!!!! I honestly could not afford to get all the bottles I want right now (Christmas coming up and everything), so I just got an imp pack. The Arrival at the Sabbath and Homage to the Devil, Antoine-François de Saint-Aubert. Bourbon vanilla, benzoin, caramel, Mysore sandalwood, aged black patchouli, carnation, and iris florentina. Holy moly. Um, yes please!!! If I could have picked just ONE bottle, this is the one. The Cup of Death, Elihu Vedder. Peach blossom and peach tree leaf, Mysore sandalwood, French lavender, bois du rose, myrtle, and blue yarrow. Hmm. Possibly too feminine for me, and maybe too herby. I don't know what blue yarrow smells like in perfume, but I know what yarrow smells like in the wild. I think the myrtle and yarrow combination might make the whole thing smell a bit too weedy for me. Cupid Complaining to Venus, Lucas Cranach the Elder. Apple blossom, fig, white peach, honey absolute, red sandalwood, and wild thyme. What is honey absolute? I've never seen that. Everything in this sounds fabulous except the thyme... and maybe honey absolute wouldn't smell like play-doh on me like honey usually does. Fingers crossed! The Ecstacy of St. Theresa, Gianlorenzo Bernini. Frankincense, iris, white gardenia, Roman chamomile, amber, and agarwood. I bet this smells breath-takingly lovely. Sigh. Blends like that make me wish that I was breath-takingly lovely so that I could wear them. Unfortunately, scents like that are usually at odds with my Dr Martens' boots. Garden Path With Chickens, Gustav Klimt. Damp grass, ivy leaves, morning glory, daisy, rose geranium, heliotrope, white gardenia, climbing roses, peppery nasturtium, phlox, begonia, verbena and sun-warmed herbs. I know people are going ga-ga over this, but I will tell you a secret. I hate chickens. I've hated them since I was a little girl on my grandparents' farm. And this blend sounds like it'll be way too flowery for me anyway. The Great He-Goat, Francisco Goya. Haitian vetiver, Egyptian amber, carnation, black musk, pomegranate, patchouli, and smoked ginger. This one, on the other hand... yeeeessss, that's more my style. This one's gonna be a doozy. The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun, William Blake. Daemonorops, vanilla, Indian sandalwood, Mexican copal, hyssop, muguet, sweet pea, amber, hazelwood, galbanum, hiba wood, and orchid. I'm concerned about the sweet pea but there are so many other notes in there that I love. I have high hopes for this. Itasô Kansei Nenkan Jorô No Fûzoku, Wada hori Yû. Osmanthus, white honey, ti leaf, hibiscus, and sugar cane. I've got no frickin' clue what this will smell like. I can't imagine. Can't wait to try it! Judith Victorious, Lucas Cranach the Elder. Chestnut blossom, lily of the valley, King mandarin, French magnolia, and golden musk. This is going to be glorious and triumphant, I just know it. If I had been able to choose bottles to buy, this would have been the one that I picked because it sounded so good even though I couldn't tell what the combination would smell like. La Mort Qui Danse, Félicien Rops. Black pepper, white ginger, Calla lily, and lily of the valley. Oh... sad and funereal. But white, and clean. My favorite kind of floral! The Lantern Ghost of Oiwa, Shunkosai Hokuei. Black tea, cherry blossom, ho wood, calla lily, rice wine, and white mint. There are only a couple of blends with mint that I like, and I honestly think this is going to be one of the good ones. That whole combination just sounds fabulous. Les Anges Déchus, Edouard Cibot. Khus, blonde tobacco, life everlasting, orris root, black currant, cabreuva, Spanish moss, leather, and ambrette. I love this painting. And I want something that has the ingredient of "life everlasting." Even if I'm unsure of the Spanish moss. Lot and His Daughters, Hendrik Goltzius. Indonesian black patchouli, petitgrain, brandewijn, incense, saffron, lemon peel, myrrh, skin musk, bourbon geranium, and tangerine. This painting makes me feel uncomfortable. I think this blend will make me feel that way too. Melancholia, Albrecht Dürer. Blue lilac, white sandalwood, stargazer lily, paperwhite narcissus, ylang ylang, delphinium, and cypress. Blue and sad. I bet this will be a lovely shade of blue though. I have my fingers crossed for this one as well. The Sailor's Den, Félicien Rops. Orris, bay rum, palm, coconut meat, oak wood, tobacco, linen, blue lilac, and leather. Woohoo! This one's a shoe-in for me. I can't imagine that I won't like this. Bet it'll smell great on the hubby, too. Three Gorgons, Gustav Klimt. Egyptian amber, mandarin, tangerine, black pepper, tobacco, and vetiver. Oooo. Dark and smoky with bright tangerine top notes. I bet I'll like this one. And... of course, Shub-Nuggurath. A blend of ritual herbs and dark resins, shot through with three gingers and aphrodisiacal spices. Pass! Guess I'm the only person in the world who didn't care for this one. Ginger's tricky with me, and I like Gingerbead Poppet a lot better than Shub.

Dude. THREE MORE DAYS. As of Wednesday night, the quarter is officially over for me too and I am officially on HOLIDAY for a MONTH. And yes, I should be memorizing the muscles in the upper limb right now. But I'm not. Because if I SEE another stupid index card right now with my anatomy-related crap written all over it I think the blood vessels in my eyes will pop. No more flash cards!! Sick of the anatomy flash cards!!! AAARGH! *deep breath* Three more days, three more days, three more days...

In the bottle: A very odd plastic-y grape scent. Wet: Nothing like the bottle sniff at all. Mostly purple flowers with a bit of juiciness behind it. At first I didn't look at the notes, and I thought it was freesia or maybe a combination of violet and something else. I think what I was smelling was violet and wisteria. Dry: Well, I've worn this twice now on two different areas, and I got two results. When I wore it on the inside of my elbow, I got a floral scent with strongly grape overtones. When I wore it on the back of my hand, I got a rather hazy (the myrrh comes through) semi-floral with what seemed to be a dark fruit underneath. I wouldn't necessarily have pegged that fruit scent as grape. Rather like a juicy and more complex version of Blood Countess. Very nice. I like them both, but I prefer the back-of-the-hand version of the scent. Wonder how I can get it to always behave that way. Hmmm....

I usually get a drink from the vending machine when I'm at school. More specifically, I usually get a Mountain Dew. I like the taste, and the caffeine keeps me awake during class. Tonight, I decided to be a grown-up. I'm 35 now, after all. Probably time to stop drinking sodas. I'm afraid I'm at the age where I can no longer tell myself that I will address my bad habits when I'm older. I am older now. So... I chose the Diet Lipton Green Tea with Citrus instead of the Mountain Dew. And get this: It was good! I mean, spectacularly good. I really like it. I feel kind of stupid for drinking so many Mountain Dews when I could have been drinking this tea drink instead the whole time. The taste is great, and it has zero calories and no carbonation. (One of the reasons I like Mtn Dew is that it seems to have fewer bubbles than other sodas. Not a fan of the bubbles.) I'm never going to like carrots as much as potato chips, but I wonder how many other healthier things I can find to replace other bad habits. I did already replace most of my cheeseburgers with Boca cheeseburgers (yummy!), and now I've found this diet green tea drink instead of Mountain Dew. I think I'll make an effort to try new things for the next few weeks and see what I find.

At first I mainly smelled lily, but as it dried it became mostly rose. As rose scents go, this is a pretty good one. It's sweet as opposed to being green. It also seems, to me, to be overtly feminine. When I sniff this I get an image in my head of a pretty woman in a white dress and hat walking through a garden. Hmmm. I expected not to like this, but I do. That white rose is really growing on me.

Imp sniff: Mmm, smells like vetiver. Wet: Wow, dark and dank. Same sort of musty basement kind of feel as in Sloth. I like it! Dry: This ends up smelling like the kind of smoke you get when you burn green wood. I'm not sure how else to describe it. It's a heavy smoky scent. Although I really like this scent, I'm not sure it's something I'd wear as a personal fragrance. For giggles I tried layering it over Black Ice (that one didn't end up being as dark and smoky on me as I wanted it to), and I think that together they are more wearable than either one alone. So I think Devil's Claw will be a good one for layering with others, too.

OK, first off, I usually don't like white musk or strawberry. Grapefruit is a maybe. So even though I love red musk, I didn't think that one of the notes could save the whole blend for me. And I was wrong. This is awesome! It reminds me a little bit of Shango, not in the scent but in the feel of it. There's that lovely dark musk, and then there's the strawberry leaf smelling squishy and round (rather than artificial, which is what strawberry does on me). The grapefruit gives it a bright, kind of humorous kick. Like that sexy red musk is laughing. I really like this. It's not too serious, but it has an element of power to it. I'll be adding this to my bottle list.

This is very floral to my nose, and that green fig sure is green. It's doing a very sweet powdery thing that I don't care for very much. Just... whew, too sweet. I'm not sure what's making it so sweet, usually only frankincense does that on me. This isn't going to work for me, but florals usually don't.

I agree with the previous reviewer that this is similar to Tamora and Katharina, although it's not as bold as Katharina on my skin. It has the subtleness of Tamora, but it's more complex. To my nose, the peach blossom is the prominent note, and it also smells a bit creamy. Not like cream, but soft and full like that. I can't really pick out any of the other floral notes -- I'm concentrating pretty hard but I can't smell any rose, lily, or wisteria. Very pretty blend. Will be great to wear in the spring.

When it was wet, I thought it smelled pink. Kind of like a sugary syrup. It smells like it would be sticky. As it's drying, it doesn't smell quite as sugary, but it's still very sweet. However it's not really a foody kind of sweet, more like dragon's blood sweet. It's really hard to describe... it smells soft, velvety, and very feminine. There's a slightly planty green undertone to it, but it's barely there. When I'm sniffing at it, it smells floral and pretty over the top, but when I inhale deeply, I can smell something daker underneath. Really well done. I like this a lot -- it's now one of my favorites in the Garden.

From the description, I didn't expect to smell any flowers in this, but that's what I smell when it's wet. Some kind of purple flower. I'm not very good at picking out floral notes, but it reminds me of lilacs. Chilly lilacs. As it's drying I think I can maybe sniff a tiny bit of vetiver in there, but I'm still not getting any smoke. When it's dry I don't smell the flowers nearly as much, but I can tell there's something in it making the whole scent vaguely sweet. Still no smoke. Hmm. I had been hoping for something chilly, dark, and kind of gritty. That's not what this smells like to me. I guess I'll try it again on another day.

Hmmm... evergreen trees for sure -- it smells cold, too. The fruit in it is making it a bit sweet and more complex than just a snow/forest scent. As it dries it doesn't smell quite so cold, but to me this is definitely a winter woodsy scent (rather than fall or spring). When it was wet I thought it smelled similar to last year's Snow Bunny, but when it's dry that cold snowy note isn't as prominent. Also the fruit comes out more when it's dry. Very pretty!

Right now I have Pulse Points on one wrist and Debauchery on the other, in order to compare the two. They seemed very similar to each other for the first half hour or so; in fact, I was thinking that Pulse Points smelled like Debauchery Lite. But then Pulse Points got a soapy scent to it, and I didn't like that very much. That lasted for about an hour or so. Also at one point it smelled a little bit like band-aids, but that was only for about 20 minutes. It's been a couple of hours now since I applied the oil, and right now it smells like a nice, gentle floral with a little bit of civet behind it giving it some depth. It's pretty, and I probably would have thought I liked it more if I hadn't done the side-by-side comparison. However, to my nose, Debauchery is the winner. ETA: I just read slave1's previous review and saw that she said the same thing about the soapiness and the band-aids. We must have similar skin chemistry.

OK, don't laugh at me for only commenting on the armpit part of your post. I haven't thought about this in a while, so it's thanks to you that I'm thinking of it at all. A guy I dated for a few years shaved not only his armpits but basically his entire body with an electric razor with the shortest possible guard. (He has no chest hair, so he didn't bother with his chest.) And what did he have on his head? Dreadlocks. Maybe he thought the rest of his hair just couldn't meet the standards his head was setting, so he got rid of all the rest of it. Who knows. It never bothered me at all; in fact I liked it. Except when his legs were all prickly.

This evening I was reading articles about clinical trials in the New England Journal of Medicine for a research paper I've been working on. After reading two of them, it suddenly dawned on me that this is the first time in my life I have understood enough about medicine, medical terminology, anatomy, and physiology to even have an idea of what they're talking about in those articles. In the past it's all been way over my head. Today, I got it. This has been a good day.

I haven't reviewed this one yet, so I'll review it now in anticipation of getting one of the resurrected bottles. I've been wearing Glasya for about five hours now on both wrists. The left wrist smells like a sultry civet*/musk/patchouli combination, and the right wrist smells sweeter and doesn't have the civet. It seems like the civet is noticeable only on the left wrist and the ylang ylang only on the right one. (Not sure why different wrists with the same scent smell different... maybe I started with more lotion on one of them or something.) There's a little bit of rose on both wrists too, but not a lot. To be honest I can't smell any dragon's blood at all. It's mostly dark, musky, and sensual -- the rose is there and gives it a slightly feminine quality, but the civet turns it a little naughty. I think this is definitely one of the sexiest BPAL scents, and to me it feels like luxury. Like an indulgence. It makes me think of a gorgeous, sexy woman who knows she turns heads. I really love it. At this point my imp is at least two years old, and I can't wait to get the new bottle to see what it smells like before it's aged. I have a feeling I'm not going to like the fresh version quite as much as I like this imp (Glasya has a few notes that always seem to get better with age), but it'll be interesting to find out. *One little disclaimer: Civet always smells good on me.

I've had a horrible migraine today. I wandered out of bed for a bit here and there, but mostly I've been trying to stay as quiet as possible. However it seemed to be waning around 8:00 or so, so I decided to take a nice warm bath. I figured that since it was a special occasion I'd bust out the expensive bath products and use the last of my LUSH Christmas Kisses bubble bars -- one and a half of them (I have a big tub). So I crawled in, deployed the bubble bars, and before I knew it the bubbles were arching over my tub in a humongous mound. Light was glinting off the bubbles in every direction, making me feel like I was snowblind. Bubbles, thousands of them, were popping and fizzing in my ears. (Did I mention I have a migraine?) The scent, which I normally love, was WAY too strong for me today. But by then I felt trapped in the tub under all those bubbles, and I didn't want to waste the last of my bubble bars by getting out of the tub, so I forced myself to stay in there until I couldn't take it any more. When I was ready to get out I had to call my husband to help me because there were still so many bubbles that if I got out I'd have bubbles all over and they'd get on the floor and on my towel. I wanted him to rinse me off with water while I was still standing in the tub so I wouldn't be bubble-covered. He came in, and I looked down because I was embarrassed of the situation and wanted to hide my face, which is when I noticed that the water was cherry red because I had used so much bubble bar. So there I was, already irritated and upset because I'd made my headache worse, when I realized that I probably looked like a giant piece of fruit trapped in a tub-shaped cherry jello mold with whipped-cream-like bubbles everywhere. And I'd just invited my husband in to witness this spectacle. I told him about the bubbles fizzing and light glinting and how I used too much and now I felt like fruit in a jello mold and I was nearly crying... I'm not sure that he understood what I was talking about but he tried to be very sympathetic and helpful. He was also trying not to laugh while he was rinsing the bubbles and drying me off, but a few giggles escaped. The whole thing must have been quite a sight. This is my first bath ever that was torture the whole time and ended in humiliation. He told me that I shouldn't feel bad since I had a life-long run of successful baths and only one failure so far. Somehow that didn't make it better.

I can't believe that I didn't think of how sparkly the bubbles would be in the light before I got in the bath. I normally never think about them being shiny, but holy cow, it was like there was a disco ball in there. It was terrible! And the scent... I don't think I'm ever going to be able to smell anything that smells like those bubble bars again without feeling sick to my stomach. I'm glad that my husband is so easy-going... it didn't take long before I was laughing about it too. If he would have come in and been mad about the bubbles all over that would have made it 10x worse.

[instead of posting in the H&EE thread, I told people there that I would write my opinions here instead.] Very brief background if you have no idea what's going on here: Heaven & Earth Essentials is an etailer that sells perfume oils and bath & body products. The owner's name is Michele; her account name in this forum is anxious1. She has been a member here since November 2005. The thread for her business was started here in January 2006. So, let me give you a hypothetical scenario. How well do you think it would go over if a new BPAL competitor joined the BPAL forum and almost immediately asked what the most popular BPAL scents are? And what if she also asked how people were getting a hold of unreleased BPAL scents? I bet people might think that was odd -- if they knew she was a competitor. However in this scenario, the new competitor hasn't revealed herself as a competitor yet. She has only said that she is the business owner of an unrelated business and a LUSH fan. OK, what if she then started buying a whole bunch of BPAL bottles, and then she resold them to BPAL fans on the BPAL forum for a profit. Say you look at her sales post in March and you see FORTY-THREE BPAL GC 5mls on her sales post for $14 each. Think that would go over very well? Yes -- you read that right. A BPAL competitor making money for herself off of BPAL products directly under the nose of the BPAL owner. Not only that, but you happen to notice in someone's post from April that this new competitor was also putting samples of her own oils in with the BPAL packages she sold to people. How about if she then started talking up her own company on the BPAL forum, communicating directly to BPAL customers about her own business. She was answering questions about her products, telling people when their orders shipped, and announcing new product updates on her site. (You are aware that running the BPAL forum takes money and time. You think it's strange that this competitor is allowed to use the BPAL forum for free as her own personal communication tool for her business.) Say the forum administrator warns the new competitor a couple of times that she's breaking the etailer rules -- which are outlined clearly for all to see -- but the new competitor doesn't change her ways. The forum adminstrator then makes her customer service posts invisible and restricts her access to some of the other parts of the forum. The new competitor says it was just a misunderstanding on her part. Keep in mind that until this new competitor had her access restricted, she had access to all the members' posts about which scents they liked and didn't like. Just like any other forum member. She had access to etailer threads of her other competitors, where she could see what people liked and didn't like about those businesses as well. [ETA: please see shriekingviolet's comment below for a correction about the above paragraph.] When people on the BPAL forum ask the new competitor about her ingredients in her oils, the new competitor says in one case that she has made a couple of mistakes on her site and that she doesn't really use a Chocolate EO; in another case she said that she uses real ambergis. At that time, she also had Lily of the Valley EO and Lilac EO for sale on her site -- but you've been reading this newsletter, which contains some conflicting information. A little bit of foreshadowing here: Later, in a post in another thread, she says she's been a "perfumer" for 20 years. You might wonder how a "perfumer" with that much experience would mix up what's an essential oil and what's not, or how a person with so much experience in the field could possibly not know that real ambergis is illegal. Then this competitor comes out with a new perfume that is remarkably like one of BPAL's most recently released AND most wildly popular Limited Editions. She mentions that she "has been told" that her version has more buttery vanilla. She says it's a coincidence and nothing more. When asked about her ISO for that particular BPAL LE only a few weeks before her own very similar oil was introduced, she changes her tune and admits that she did in fact try that BPAL oil (she hasn't just "been told" about it), and she says she wanted more of it because she liked it. She claims that her version of the scent had been in the works for months. Just coincidence, she said. During the blow-up about this remarkably similar product, the new competitor states that she loves BPAL and respects Beth, and in fact she only wears Beth's oils and not her own. You can't help but notice that for all her proclaimed love of BPAL, this new competitor has up until that point posted exactly one BPAL review in the forum, and it was to say that MB Closet smelled like cat pee. In a discussion about using stock oils in scents, the new competitor calls herself a "perfumer" and says "I don't do dupes and I don't relabel." Yet when you look at her site you see a dupe of LUSH's Karma right there! And say that BPAL has been doing, oh, I don't know, a special Limited Edition scent called "Cinco" on Cinco de Mayo for the past two years, and suddenly this new competitor comes out with her own product called "Five" especially for Cinco de Mayo too. But she says, once again, that hers has been in the works for a long time and that it is merely another coincidence. Finally, the forum administrator of the BPAL forum comes into this new competitor's thread to explain that the new competitor's account has been suspended because she broke the forum rules by creating a duplicate account. She used the duplicate account to get around restrictions that were placed on her first account so that she could snoop about BPAL's business and BPAL's fans some more. The administrator can prove this with IP addresses showing duplicate accounts accessed from the new competitor's home and work. (And your husband is a Database Administrator, so you know perfectly well what IP addresses are and how they are logged.) The administrator also says that the new competitor has been borrowing a friend's login to browse the BPAL forum as well. She says she was posting under the friend's login as well. At this point, how many people do you guess would be big fans of this new competitor and unwilling to believe that she has exhibited some shady business practices? You guys, Michele has done every single one of those things and they are all recorded in the BPAL fan forum. Check her posts. It's all right there. (Except that her customer service posts in the H&EE thread were made invisible, so I'm just going off memory there.) I swear to you, I am not making this up. Every single bit of information in that huge "hypothetical" scenario above came from Michele's own posts and the H&EE thread. All I did was put it in one place. Please note that you can look at all her posts yourself by going into her profile (anxious1), clicking on Profile Options, and choosing the View Member's Posts option. This is all right there, out in the open for anyone to see. So here are my major concerns: - I don't like re-selling BPAL for profit in any case, but I think it is especially reprehensible behavior for a BPAL competitor. Bad form. To the nth degree. - On top of that, I think that slipping some samples of her perfume oils into her BPAL sales packages is... well, I want to say it's a dirty trick, but I'll leave it as just saying completely disrespectful and inappropriate. - She was not upfront about her status as a BPAL competitor when she joined this forum and started asking questions about the most popular BPAL scents and how people get a hold of unreleased scents. That's called market research. This tactic in particular makes me angry. I did not write my reviews and posts here so that a BPAL competitor could come along and use what I've written to think up new ideas to make herself money. I resent that. - I might have bought her story about one "coincidence" of copying BPAL. Maybe. But two? Nope. Fool me once... - Someone who supposedly has 20 years of experience with perfumes really ought to know what's an essential oil and what's not. She also ought to know that real ambergis is illegal. I don't believe she's telling the truth about her experience. Also she claimed to have a Lilac EO (and a couple of others). I don't believe she's telling the truth about her ingredients, either. - She refused to sell her products to olympia301, citing oly's post in the H&EE thread as the reason why. (Oly questioned a couple of Michele's ingredients.) Nobody, and I mean no one, should get retribution from an etailer for comments they make about that etailer on bpal.org. That's just wrong. By the same token, people who consistently post glowing remarks about the etailer in bpal.org should not receive preferential treatment by the etailer. - She used bpal.org as a free service to communicate with current customers and answer questions of potential customers. No, wait, I should clarify that. It was free to her -- but it was not free. Someone was paying for it. The fans of her competitor were paying for it. The only thing that stopped her from using it for her own purposes was having her account restricted. Just asking her to stop didn't do the trick. Michele has said several times that the reasons for issues with her were misunderstandings or coincidences. I just flat-out do not believe her. She said she is the manager of a Fortune 500 IT department, and she owns her needlework business as well as her bath & body business. Clearly this is not a stupid person. I think she knew exactly what she was doing when she came to the BPAL forum: She was reading all our posts and finding out which scents we like best and why. She was studying up on other etailers and their products. She was noticing how much money people are willing to spend on perfume oils and on bath and body products. She was buying up Beth's oils like mad and then just sniffing or testing them and re-selling them for a profit. She found a HUGE potential market here -- not to mention free market research -- and she exploited it. In my opinion, that's the bottom line. She saw what was going on here and decided she wanted a piece of the action. Let me draw some comparisons between Michele and roostersgrrl. Both of them: - Tried to come off as BPAL fans in order to be welcomed into the community. - Were secretly (or not so secretly) using this community to pad their own pocketbooks. - Hawked their own wares to BPAL fans inside the BPAL community. - Claimed innocence and misunderstandings whenever anyone brought up issues with them. - Showed a blatant disregard and disrespect for the Lab. - Had nearly every mod breathing down their necks at every turn... which they used to try to convince people that they were being unjustly persecuted and singled out. In roostersgrrl's case there was a very good reason for that attention from the mods -- don't you think it's likely that in Michele's case there's a very good reason for it too? I look at that H&EE thread, and I see red flags everywhere. Warning sirens screaming, horns blowing, the whole nine yards. And I'm quite sure that the mods know a lot more about this situation than they're telling us. Roostersgrrl got basically exiled from the community for what she did, but people are still buying Michele's products and talking about them in bpal.org. A lot of people have said things like "well, that's between Michele and the mods" and "whatever else she does doesn't matter because she's nice to me." That's exactly what people said about roostersgrrl too, you guys. I said those things. Then later I felt like a schmuck for having been duped by roostersgrrl. I don't want that same sort of thing to happen all over again -- a lot of the people who post in the H&EE thread are people I like and care about. I think Michele is pulling the wool over their eyes, and it bothers me a lot. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe the mods are wrong, maybe everyone who has noticed something fishy about Michele is wrong. But there are quite a few of us who feel this way. So do I have too much time on my hands and should I get a job in a research library? PROBABLY. However, I'm not posting this for my sake. What I want is to put this here so that in the future someone won't end up in the situation I was in with the roostersgrrl fiasco: "Why didn't anyone tell me about this stuff?!?" Here it is. I'm telling you. If it seems like I'm singling out Michele, it's because I visit this site every day, and I read a lot of the threads. I haven't noticed any other etailer behaving like Michele has. Not one. She's the only one who is doing this. I don't have a problem with her products -- they're not for me, but I'm not going to say that no one could possibly enjoy them. That's just not true. Plenty of people like them a lot. What earned Michele my criticism isn't her products or her company -- it's her behavior here in her competitor's fan forum. If she had never come into this forum, I probably wouldn't have ever said a bad word about her.

tamburlaine & Inanna9: I'd love to respond to both of you in detail but I've got an anatomy paper that has to be finished in 30 minutes. (But I'm here anyway because I'm pretty much sick of writing about retinal pigment epithelium. Bleah.) In short: No harm done. Also, it's hard for me to know what someone means when I have never met the person and I'm not familiar with her mannerisms -- I tend to assume that other people are just like me if I don't know any better. Some of the things that other people think are perfectly acceptable in conversation are things I'd never say unless I was really mad or if I was trying to be catty. So when I see those things, all I have to go on is what I would mean if I wrote those things. But often it's not what the person meant at all. Anyway, I know this isn't on topic for this blog entry, so I apologize for that. But I'm always interested in discussions about communication. Much more interested in that than in retina anatomy. Sigh. However, duty calls. Back to working on the paper...

Nah. Never mind. I wrote something here but I changed my mind. Let me just take this opportunity to remind anyone reading my blog that this is an emotional topic that has upset many people, and attempts at humor can be easily misinterpreted. Also, personal insults are really not cool. I don't go into other people's blogs and respond to their posts in a condescending tone, and I definitely appreciate the same courtesy. Most people who have responded here have been quite considerate with their replies, so thank you for keeping the conversation civil.