“The cat is the fragrance, Nic,” Ollie once told me when I asked the RPS Slack channel for alternatives to my essential oil diffuser, which I can no longer use for fear of my cat getting vanilla scurvy or lavender botulism or whatever else. I contemplated those words last night when she pounced into bed with me, curled up, and serenaded me to slumber with a briney fart. I remembered them again this morning when I learned of the ASUS Fragrance Mouse (thanks, Percy Gamer.)
The mouse is ergonomic, wireless, and comes in plain or pink (“Iridescent White or Rose Clay”). Its innards house a refillable vial for scent oils. It features “delicate underglow lighting,” a sell that would be easier to make fun of if most gaming hardware wasn’t illuminated by a choice of either energy drink piss green or antiseptic gel blue.
Would I use this if I hadn’t a cat? Silly question. I would immediately source a cat. Ah, but what if she was theoretically immune to essential oils and also not sick of being used in dangerous hypotheticals as I assume all cats are by now?
A tendency toward anxious agoraphobia has made me someone who spends a lot time cultivating vibes. I would venture that I own more fairy lights, houseplants, IDM playlists and tiny lamps shaped like mushrooms than most people who don’t also use Instagram. I owned both a scent diffuser and an apocalypse bunker’s worth of Nag Champa before my cat’s arrival meant I had to stop using them. I am, on paper, the exact genre of mark that should fall for this.
And yet, I cannot help but view it as an admission of defeat. As PC Gamer deftly note, the fragrance mouse is “the first development in mouse I’ve seen in some time that wasn’t just ‘more button”. Its very existence feels like a thwarted admission that there are no new ideas left in the world (of mice) and thus ASUS have resorted to just shoving in things that already exist and, I must assume, are much more suited for the task when they don’t also have to fight for space with mouse brains.
Why, if we’re just doing that, I bet I could source several better ideas from the morass of Monday morning ennui that is the RPS Slack in less than five minutes.
“A mouse encased in a magic ball that somehow attaches itself firmly to any surface, including your own leg, so that you can wield it dexterously enough to play an FPS without needing a desk,” says Edwin.
“A mouse with a mouse’s tail; it’s fairly unobtrusive most of the time but it sometimes displays excitement or affection, wrapping itself around your wrist or wagging like a dog’s when you knock someone in Apex,” suggests Ollie.
“A vertical mouse for work that changes into a normal mouse when you want to play a precise FPS. A Transformer mouse,” adds Brendy.
“A mouse with a pencil sharpener in it. Just for the irony”, says James.
Me? Idk. A…toaster? Little tiny toaster? Makes you little tiny bits of toast that you can nibble on to make you feel better about burning your fingers on your stupid toaster mouse?
I do not hate the fragrance mouse. Benign bewilderment is an entertaining emotion. However, my desk only has room for one scent.
Glorious.
function appendFacebookPixels() {
if (window.facebookPixelsDone) return;
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘700623604017080’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
window.facebookPixelsDone = true;
window.dispatchEvent(new Event(‘BrockmanFacebookPixelsEnabled’));
}
window.addEventListener(‘BrockmanTargetingCookiesAllowed’, appendFacebookPixels);