Shower gels named after famous warriors? Well…okay, but why can’t we use another type of person to promote products, a type that didn’t thrive on warfare, a type that doesn’t make me feel so “adolescent” as I buy a WARRIOR shower gel? I’d even risk appearing pretentious over appearing adolescent, so maybe I’ll develop a Poet Series of scented products myself: Haiku (Bashō) bath gel fragranced with pine needles, lotus, green tea leaf, kyara wood, smoke and bamboo, or a Leaves of Grass candle (Whitman) with sap, lilac, birch, cumin and musk. What about a fragrance honoring a poetess: Marianne Moore; she liked apricots and baseball, so osmanthus and ‘baseball glove leather’ would do the trick for Tricorne Eau de Parfum.
As I dismount my high horse, I admit I like the Zirh bath line for men. Though the Zirh Warrior advertising and online features (one feature at zirhwarrior helps you find out which warrior in the series matches your personality) seem geared towards very young men — we’re nearing Axe territory here — the gels are good quality…
It would seem that the end of autumn has hit the east coast. Dreary skies have arrived, and blustery rainy afternoons turn quickly dark as city lights shine on slick wet streets. A last gasp of bitter crackling brown leaves swirl on the highway as I drive home from school, like djinn rising up in the desert sands, and I have a feeling soon the deep silent cold of winter will set in. (As an aside, the squirrels around these parts have been unusually frantic chasing and burying nuts this autumn which only confirms my pessimistic ponderings.) 
The other morning, as I was pulling out of my driveway, I happened to notice the charming scene of my neighbor across the street watering some tall green plants in her backyard with a great big watering can. I can't be sure, but from a distance they looked like large leafy tomato plants. I was reminded of my own adventures in trying to grow tomatoes; one year I had cherry tomatoes which gave me plenty of fruit but none of it very good, and so the next year I tried the larger kind, which proceeded to overwhelm my garden with their large stalk-y bases and profuse green leaves. They also attracted some extremely odd looking (and rather large) caterpillars who took shelter in the dark shade provided by the plants, and which gave me a queasy feeling whenever I tried to pick a tomato. Whatever the reason, once again, the fruit was mealy and the skin too tough, and so this year I decided that perhaps my climate is not the best for tomatoes and to forego them altogether.