By popular demand... sort of

Commenters in Sister's post prior to this one (go ahead and read it, I'll wait) have asked that I share my scented candle preferences. Well, one commenter, anyway... which is pretty much a quorum as far as this blog is concerned.

I have to confess I find the whole "candle" thing a bit off-putting. Any time I leave my apartment, I obsessively check to make sure all heat-producing devices are turned off. I keep most of my appliances unplugged except when actually using them. I have my little space heater sitting on a 50-pound iron barbell plate, to provide a buffer between it and the presumably-combustible carpet. The idea of maintaining an OPEN FLAME in my living quarters doesn't exactly appeal to me.

Assuming some sort of non-flame-driven scent-releasing device, I still have trouble thinking of scents for it.... most of the smells I can think of are unpleasant ones.
People tend to smell bad. Markers and paints and cleaning products and alcohols (pretty much all the volatiles, actually) such have a sort of "itchy" scent that reminds me of being dragged into carpet stores as a kid -- my eyes always started burning from the chemicals outgassing from fifty tons of synthetic fibers in an enclosed space. I don't like new-car smell, either, despite years of stand-up comedy pushing the idea that if perfume was actually intended to appeal to men, it would smell like a new car.

Good ones include: meat being grilled outdoors, the air just before a storm, and newly-mown grass. Some kinds of wood smell pretty good when they're run through a table saw. Steel has an interesting smell when it's recently been machined in a lathe, but it's a very weak scent and probably unsuitable as a household accent. Really, most of the scents I like come from food. I suppose that makes sense in the obvious Darwinian way.

The scent of gun solvent was suggested. I've heard many older shooters endorse Hoppe's #9 as having a distinctive aroma, but I've always used Break-Free (an uninteresting scent, in my opinion) so I can't comment on that.

Really, the best scented candle I can think of would be one which just neutralizes all the offensive smells that already fill the modern world -- human sweat, carpet fibers, cleaning products, plastics, markers, car exhaust, dirty socks, etc. -- without adding its own stink to the mixture.