Sensory Perception Woes

I've often wished we could selectively turn off our senses and simply receive brain notifications that certain things are happening. For instance, upon smelling an especially foul odor, wouldn't it be nice to say, "Okay that sure does stink, now nose, just send me a thought next time instead of the full-scent experience." You know, something like, "Excuse me, Brain. This is Nose. Sorry to interrupt, but body has just entered an area smelling of decomposing trash and cat feces - just thought you ought to know."

The same could work for pain. "Yes, I know Finger #3 (Frank) has a paper cut. Thank you for reminding me, Nerve. If it's not healed in 24 hours, please send me another pain-free update."

Even better would be if we could apply this principle to other people. Our brain could send a message to another brain requesting a temporary shutdown of a particular sense as it pertains to us. For example, if you were half asleep when you dressed in the morning and are now wearing a horribly mismatched outfit, your brain could simply tell a viewer's eye to ignore the mismatch. We could call it something catchy like Hypnotic Automatic Limiting Telepathy (HALT).

With HALT, all you have to do is set your brain to auto-suppress the olfactory (or other) senses of anyone who gets too close, and as far as they know you might have just stepped out of the shower. Speaking of showers, this would be a great way to conserve water! You wouldn't need to shower until you started to itch, but then of course you could suppress the itching sensation - you would never have to bathe again! ... Okay, I may have just crossed one of those invisible hygiene lines that are never to be crossed. Perhaps I won't patent HALT. After all, I'd hate to put that company out of business that makes the little pine tree air fresheners to hang in your car. I mean, what kind of sad commentary would that be about society if we couldn't dangle those nifty little fashion statements from our rear-view mirrors? What would fill the void? I daren't imagine the chaos.