I've written about a Lisa Carver-book I ordered second-hand, and how I tried to get rid of the smoke through the magic of incense, but hell no, that only added a layer of sweet, earthy and woody scents to the thick layer of cigarette-smoke that hovered o'er the tome.

So I put the book into an old pillow-case, shut it, slung it into a plastic bag, filled it with coal ((as the legend of the Internet goes, when one wishes to rid something of smoke...rummage various forums taking advice from complete strangers!)), shut it and waited for a little more than a week. Then I wrote a post on it, saved it, and as my site was down at the moment, lost everything and had to start over. Fuck it! Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Today, I opened the bag and the book smelled significantly better.

Back to the main problem: I should have checked the seller's references. This is common on sites like Amazon.com and eBay, but I merely checked the seller's 97%-positive-grade; to my advantage though, it's pretty safe to say you're not purchasing a book to smell like hell; at least that's not de rigeur in my universe. Among the comments at the site, two were about their bought books smelling of cigarette-smoke. Now, I'm not overly sensitive, but that shit made me cringe. Imagine a thousand of the most demented, animal-test-friendly scientists you can think of who keep making rats smoke to test the long-term effects of...rats smoking; make them meet and put all of their chain-smoking rats in a cage and then put the book I bought in there - those rats would fucking die of the horrid, pungent, old-man-dying-ish smell emanating from the book! I can't stop writing "fucking" every time I wish I had checked the comments before ordering that book. Fucking Jaysis.

The next time I buy something second-hand through the Internet, I'm not just going to check every fact there is to know about the seller, but I will resurrect Herve Villechaize, send him through channels that not even the most secret, cunning spies in every known universe will be able to detect, and have him tap the seller's phones, check the (e-)mail, psycho-analyse his/her pet and hide in the seller's toilet to dissect his/her poo, have the contents minutely probed and analysed to see whether he/she has been stressed in the recent weeks and hence, perhaps, been more prone to lying under pressed situations (e.g. when describing items correctly while proffering them on Amazon) - I will make this my life's mission - and the reincarnated Herve's with me. Maybe.

As the book still smelled of smoke after the incense-cum-coal-treatment, I followed another Internet-savvy tip: caress every single page of the book with drier-sheets. This I did, and here's the residue; three used-up sheets and a sore hand later, said book smells even less of smoke, and more of...some chemical-scented sheet that is coupled with flowers, apparently approved by naked infants.

This worked some kind of magic, and I'm quite happy now - even though I had to wash my hands three times in a row after I used the drier-sheets - but the coal was the big thing. Without the coal, this wouldn't have worked and I'd have to give to book to Patrik and Staffan, as they're the only ones I know who smoke.

Ta-daaah! You can almost smell the quasi-cleanliness.