Smelly

An old publicity slogan remains well-known in France: « Il se passe toujours quelque chose aux Galeries Lafayette. » There's always something happening at the Galeries Lafayette department store.

For a long time, I've imagined naively that a few modern men's deodorants would keep me as fragrant as white lilies up until the cows come home. I've always liked a joke that doesn't seem to appeal to young generations: "I'm not basically a dirty or smelly person, so I don't need to wash myself regularly." Here's the sort of shit I smear upon my body to keep it fragrant:

Well, I've just come upon a disturbing news article about a typical happening at the Galeries Lafayette. It brings up the question of aluminium salts in deodorants. Apparently they're everywhere... like air pollution. It's almost impossible to understand a label that might warn you of dangers. And the basic danger in question is some kind of cancer, particularly for women.

Smoke gets in your Moscow

This splendid video, shot on a photographic camera by a certain Vitaliy Mendeleev, provides an aesthetic, almost romantic, vision of smoky Moscow.



It's well to remember that, on the spot, things are not exactly quite so nice. It's anguishing to hear that the fires have apparently touched the Chernobyl zone. Meanwhile, funeral services in the Russian capital are overloaded by the quantity of deaths due to the pollution.

ADDENDUM: A news item on French radio indicates that Russia, the third-largest wheat producer in the world (after China and the European Union), has lost a quarter of its cereal crops as a result of this year's heat wave. This information was provided by the president himself, Dmitry Medvedev.