Not the Mummy

Blargh, what a day! Just spent 20 minutes writing a blog post here, editing the tar out of it, and then went right on ahead and accidentally deleted it. It was good, too. You would have liked it. I talked about overcoming my natural inclination to procrastinate, and how I wrote a new policies document, spending two hours putting it together only to edit it to death, providing about a minute's worth of reading, two if you're a slow reader. Some actual clever stuff was tossed in there too, like how there aren't many, if any, worthy natural perfumery podcasts, and those that do exist rehash the same old blah blah blah we were reading or gossiping about 20 years ago. I wrote about finding inspiration and how it always seems like the reason you can't find it is because something is missing; a book, a good podcast, some helpful writing, or a tasty aromatic. Anyway. Why whine about being a dork and hitting the refresh button instead of the go-back button? 

Part of the procrastination bit I wrote about originally was how, during the course of research for natural perfumery information, I slipped -- okay, I dove head first -- down a rabbit hole that began with Mark Twain and interestingly ended with some light research of the mythical mummy paper of 1855. The so-called proof of this paper's existence came from Mark Twain, likely it was a satirical embellishment, and was later debunked by someone else claiming any evidence of its existence has never, ever been found, except for maybe two or three pieces of the "mummy paper" which cannot be tested without destroying the proof itself. If it is true that paper was once made from the sale of mummies in Egypt to American papermakers, I am horrified, but also not surprised given the disregard for cultures other than our own that persisted then, and still today. If it's all a bit of satire, then I am relieved, and also amused. But again, I wouldn't be surprised that paper was made with mummy wrappings as there is proof that mummies were ground to dust and used as a medicinal, or that, lacking the actual mummy, the skin of Egyptian homeless was passed off as such.