OBSERVATIONS
ReNew Raleigh
mesothelioma lawyers
Mental Illness Makes Me Ill
War Is Peace?
StringCans Is Dead
Organic / Local Thanksgiving
Vegetarianism Rant
The Secrets of Mangling Metaphors in an Off-Year
The Secrets of Mangling Metaphors in an Off-Year
Those Miserable Bastards Are Ruining Organics
GOLDEN CANS
ReNew Raleigh
Organic / Local Thanksgiving
The Secrets of Mangling Metaphors in an Off-Year
Rockers Unite Over Pirate Vs. Ninja: But what do they know?
HOW A LAW BECOME$ A BILL: We done got us an education lottery, y’all!
Misspelling.com: Capitalizing on Others’ Stupidity.
Let the Boy Be Your Dog: Furry Weekend Atlanta Gets a Bone
The Landscaping Tales - Episode One: Shit Happens
Throw Off the Chains (Restaurants, That Is)
The Moldy Peaches and Toothpaste For Dinner: Cool Collides
Swab Power
We are a Q-Tip culture. It would be trite and obvious to say we are obsessed with cleanliness. Anyone who has ever spent 5 minutes choosing between the quad-thousand varieties of soap at the supermarket can tell you that. But the whole swab thing, that’s a different mother. We’re cleaning inside our heads as if we’re expecting visitors. It’s a little weird.
Now, it’s one thing to clear the wax out every once in a while. That’s natural. Archeologists have found fossil evidence to prove this. Excavated skeletons of early man have been uncoverd grasping small sticks absolutely caked with ear wax. Plus, have you ever let that stuff build up for a while? My dad swears that he’s been woken up at night by the sound of wax boulders rolling out of his ear (see opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Lost Ark). Nobody wants that. But, with the advent of the cotton tipped swab, we’ve taken instinctive grooming to a whole new level.
Now we’re swabbing just for the sake of swabbing. Ear wax builds up at a rate of one milli-inch per quarter moon cycle. That’s an inch approximately every 19.23 years, for those of you who can’t do simple math. And at that rate we should only need to tend to it about once a Toyota-thon. However, I’ve spoke to an overwhelming majority of people I know who clean their ears with Q-Tips several times a week. Some have even admitted to cleaning them daily.
I too am complicit in this weird behavior. In fact, I might take it to a compulsive level. I’m addicted to Q-Tips. And like any good addiction there are warnings on the box not to do it. My box states clearly: When using on ears, do not probe into ear canal itself; use gently to remove visible dirt and wax around the ear. Improper use can cause injury.
Precaution be damned! I’m plunging that thing in ‘till I’m playing the drum. I think of it as tickling the brain, and like all smart dogs my brain loves to be scratched behind the ears. Every time I think about it I’m reaching for one. In college I used to plop the box down on my desk whenever I wrote a paper. For some strange reason they help me think. I’ve already gone through two writing this nonsense.
It’s unlikely that many people would admit it, but I’d wager that most people derive some sort of pleasure from the practice. I mean think about it, how else could these cotton swab companies stay in business if it weren’t for guilty indulgence. My box of swabs contains 375 fix sticks. It cost me about two dollars. Even at the abnormal rate of one a day, a package a year, I can’t see how these businesses stay afloat. We’re abusing the swab.
And here’s one more thing I’ve noticed. Any time I have a party and leave my stash of swabs out in the open, there’s a solid dozen at the bottom of the bathroom trashcan at the end of the night. You’re all hooked and loving it. We’re a country built on excess, and if that means that we’ve created an industry around abusing our ear canals and endangering our hearing, then so be it. Hence, when I say we’re a Q-Tip culture, I don’t mean we’re a bunch of over-washed dirtaphobes. I mean we’re addicts, stuck on the ear stick.
