clean your ears

If you find your ears occasionally seeming blocked, particularly after swimming or a shower, or if you find them particularly waxy, here is the best way to open them up. This was a remedy my physician grandfather swore by.

My diver husband used to use a pricey over-the-counter ear cleaner until he tried this method, which he declared to be far superior to the expensive stuff.

This is what you'll need: a small jar, preferably glass; an eyedropper; a timer; a hand towel or clean rag; a clean tissue folded in quarters; and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

In the small jar, mix one part water with an equal part hydrogen peroxide. Stir thoroughly. Fill the eyedropper with the solution. Gathering with you the eyedropper, timer, towel/rag, and tissue, lay on your side with the ear you want opened facing up.

Once you're comfortably on your side, squeeze the eyedropper so that all liquid goes into your ear hole and ear canal. This will temporarily block your ear.

Remain lying on your side with the solution in your ear for five minutes, which you can calculate with your timer. The solution will fizz in your ear and tickle like the dickens, but don't interrupt it.

At the end of five minutes, place the folded tissue against your ear and sit up. The liquid and loosened wax will flow into the tissue. Wipe up any remaining liquid with the towel/rag. Seal the jar with its lid to be used again. Wash the eyedropper thoroughly.

You can repeat this procedure once daily for each ear until you feel they've cleared. You can also do this monthly or quarterly just to keep your ears clean and open.

commemoration

I thought this was a very moving photograph (enlargement). It shows an Auschwitz survivor at Monday's ceremony marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the camp's liberation.

Given that many of those left alive when it was liberated were children, the man seen here could have been a child at that time.

Some two hundred survivors attended Monday's event, many wearing striped prisoner's uniforms. Other survivors chose not to wear such garments but, instead, wore blue-and-white striped scarves.

The decision to wear such uniforms at commemoration events is deeply personal, a practice some survivors find abhorrent while others feel duty-bound to do so.

With each passing year, fewer camp survivors remain alive. A 2016 estimate put the number of living camp survivors at 100,000. Four years later, that figure has probably declined and not insignificantly.

But how many will remain after five more years? Or ten? Soon survivors will only number in the hundreds and then the dozens and then can be counted on one hand.

Thanks to digital media, however, all their stories will live forever.

the joy of dental tools

One of my husband's cousins in a dental hygienist. In keeping with her profession's standards, she replaces all of her dental tools every six months.

These, in turn, are passed along to any members of the family who want them. She's given a bunch to us, too. They're handy for all kinds of odd jobs around the house, like cleaning phone charging ports.

The best tool IMHO is something called a dental explorer, seen below. This will get into tiny places but it doesn't have a pesky sharp hook that could damage whatever it is you're trying to clean.

when in doubt

I've been reading online about the tragic death of basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and seven others killed when their helicopter crashed in California.

News reports have mentioned that various helicopter fleets, like the Los Angeles Police Department, were grounded because of weather, specifically fog with a low visibility. Yet Bryant's helicopter was nonetheless cleared by ground controllers and allowed to fly.

When it comes to aircraft, IMHO it's probably best to err on the side of caution. If other helicopters are grounded, maybe that's a warning you should stay on the ground, too.

Now the exact cause of the crash has yet to be determined, so it may turn out weather had nothing to do with it. Still, this might be a case where it's better to be a little too cautious than not. Because the consequences could be horrendous.

a lawsuit waiting to happen

I recently brought some toilet cleaner that's the same brand but a different product than I normally use. Once I got it home, I wanted to check the ingredients against the package I already had to see if they were substantially the same.

Now I have 20/20 vision so I normally never have any problem reading something, even tiny type in lower light. But the print on the new package was so tiny that I had to use a magnifying class. For whatever reason, it was smaller than on the product I already had.

Now the tiny, tiny type includes both the ingredients and various serious warnings. But what the hell good is that when it's too impossibly small to see?

The product is a brand that's also sold in the United States. I don't know if it's the same product back there with the same tiny, tiny type.

If it is, that certainly seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen, given America is the land of the litigious. Because what good is a caution if it's too small for anyone to read? I'm wondering if maybe some lawyers cleared the text but have no idea it's on the bottle in such micro-fine type.

Needless to say, I hope no one is harmed by the product. How many would take the time to read the tiny warning? One in a thousand? A million?

futuristic

I love this photo (enlargement). It's a vision of a tomorrow that never really was.

Rather than super streamlined trains, the future brought jet air travel that all but killed the passenger railroad industry. This engine was the pride of the New York Central Railroad, which ultimately would go bankrupt.

clown couture

Pictured below are two outfits that were featured at Jean Paul Gaultier's spring/summer 2020 couture show this past week. What's immediately noticeable is how the jacket in each example is appliqued on top of a support garment.

You'd never actually wear the jacket, only haul it around your front. The men's jacket is only "worn" in the lower sleeves and the woman's not at all.

The big question is why. Who would want to wear a sleeveless top with leather gloves in the spring and summer (enlargement)?

If you look closely at her skirt, you'll see it's made entirely of stockings (enlargement). Some of the other outfits in Gaultier's collection are made entirely of many neckties, including skirts and dresses for men.

Again, why?

living for 500 years

I read an item offline about how futurists predict that by the end of this century, science and medicine will be able to slow the aging process so that people live 400 to 500 years.

That might seem wonderful at first. But then you start to see the many problems that could result.

Probably foremost would be a population explosion. If new babies keep being born but the death rate plummets, suddenly there are a lot more people and exponentially so.

Equally important would be the emotional wear and tear on someone living a half a millennia. You'd hit middle age around 200 years old or so. You'd be elderly by 350 to 400. That means you could be an old person for more than a century.

Your family would be enormous, too. Considering there are on average four generations per century, that means your sixteen-times great grandchildren would be around to help you celebrate your 475th birthday.

I like the idea of slowing the aging process so that you can live another decade or two. But hundreds of years? Count me out.

resting bitch face

While I easily and often laugh, I am not one of those women who smile while in neutral mode. I tend to have a serious, no bullshit face when at rest. I suspect some would say I have a resting bitch face.

I have always disliked the phrase "resting bitch face" for what it's worth. It suggests that only women can have a RBF and almost always is used to describe a particular woman.

But men, of course, can have a RBF yet they're infrequently described as such. Why is that?

Perhaps the time has come then to stop using the RBG phrase and start using one that's more accurate. Resting asshole face. Resting jerk face. Resting shithead face.

Personally, I think resting asshole face is best. It can be a RAF for short.

karma reckoning

Cockfighting is illegal in most places in the world. The birds fight to the death, which is often particularly savage because they're fitted with spikes and knives.

It's illegal in India but nonetheless still happens. But on occasion, the practice can be more deadly to the audience than to the birds.

That happened last Friday when a man from India died after he was accidentally slashed by one of the birds. Other spectators were also cut but survived their injuries.

It's too bad the man died, but when you condone animal cruelty by witnessing it as a spectator, you reap what you sow and all that. You can't be cut by a bird at a cockfight if you never go to a cockfight.

carlos in the trunk

Like many people I'm sure, I've been fascinated by the whole saga of auto executive Carlos Ghosn fleeing Japan after hiding inside a big box the size of a steamer trunk. The whole operation required numerous people and meticulous planning.

None of the coverage I've read specifically mentions how long he had to hide in the box in order to elude detection. It seems to have been about an hour.

The box was used to sneak him out of a hotel near the airport, pass through airport security, and then onto a chartered private jet, which took off shortly thereafter. Presumably he climbed out of the box either once aboard the private jet or shortly after takeoff.

I'm probably no more claustrophobic than the next person, but I wouldn't want to be sealed up inside a steamer trunk. If it meant I could escape a horrible situation and be with my husband and children, then I'd do it in a heartbeat.

IMHO people who become fugitives before standing trial in first world countries are probably guilty. Ghosn has claimed the Japanese legal system would be stacked against him, but that sounds like a pat excuse.

Everything I've read indicates Ghosn was a pretty horrible boss to work for. He sounds like a narcissist. If so, then he would think that no country has the right to put him on trial.

knives out

The husband and I have been making our way through the box of DVD screeners sent to me by my movie business friend. Last night we watched Knives Out, an ensemble mystery that has garnered considerable critical acclaim, particularly for its script.

We both liked the film but, at the same time, we weren't bowled over. It's a competent movie with some flair but hardly a modern masterpiece. It seemed of a piece with any number of British TV adaptations of classic mysteries.

The script was serviceable but, frankly, what's all the fuss about? The story borrowed very heavily from Agatha Christie's Crooked House, right down to the twists to how the murder was committed.

We both thought Daniel Craig's performance was over the top and mannered. He adopted an American deep south accent and slathered that on really heavily.

The real standout performance was by Ana de Armas who really shines as a nurse to the murdered character at the heart of the story. She will definitely be a face to watch in future films.

So Knives Out is worth a watch, but don't be surprised if you're somewhat underwhelmed.

a disgusting fad

The hot new viral video trend is eating cereal out of your lover's mouth. Seriously.

I love my husband dearly but I will not be participating in this trend. I suspect he feels the same way.

I also have to wonder if this is a great way to choke your lover accidentally, possibly even fatally. Your alimentary system wasn't designed for these sorts of capers.

My motto is always "if you can't be good, be careful." This cereal trend does not sound like my idea of careful.

porn lawsuit

A deaf New York man has filed suit against smut aggregator Pornhub for allegedly failing to provide subtitles for their movie fare.

Of course this is funny because the man apparently is watching porn to follow the story, if there even is one. What does it matter what they say?

At the same time it isn't funny because it's yet another example of American litigiousness. Here's a thought — instead of watching porn, maybe he should try to meet an actual woman (or man) for companionship and more so he won't have to worry about subtitles.

transgender athletes

Some American states are considering legislation to mandate that women's-only or men's-only high school athletics should only be open to those who were born into that gender. So natural girls only in girls' sports and natural boys only in boys' sports.

Opponents say this violates the rights of transgender athletes.

Sorry, but what about the rights of girls who were born girls? Why should their chances at winning be lessened by allowing athletes born natural males but identifying as female?

For a variety of biological reasons, men as a whole do better athletically than women as a whole. So a transgender female athlete in the hundred meter dash stands a better chance of winning than a natural female, simply because of biology.

I have no problem with transgender females in the ladies' loo. But I think if they want to compete in school sports, then they need to do so in the gender to which they were born and to which they will always remain biologically.

In an enlightened, inclusive world, there still will be times where a transgender woman must be considered a biological male and vice versa. When that person receives medical care, the gender of birth is not something that can be ignored. So why does that not violate their rights, too?

A transgender woman, for instance, probably still has a prostate. If that develops problems, there's no way you can pretend the patient is a woman. Similarly, a man who becomes a transgender woman wouldn't need pap smears or mammograms.

While society should be inclusive of transgender persons where possible, at the same time society must not be blinded by its own pretense when there are times that just will not work.

these boots are made for laughing

Yes, that's J.Lo in the pictures below and, no, her pants are not falling down. They're Versace boots made to look like pairs of jeans, complete with pockets and keepers and belts.

Of course, when paired with a loose short shirtdress as J.Lo has done, she looks like she just leaped off the toilet because of an emergency before she had a chance to pull her pants back up.

In case you want to dash out and buy a pair for yourself, they run around $3,200 American.

ideas versus candidates

The Washington Post is running an interactive feature that asks you twenty questions and then shows you which 2020 presidential candidate with whom you most closely align.

I haven't decided who I will vote for this year but I have decided who I won't vote for. And, curiously, using the Post feature, I align most closely with one of the ones I will not vote for. And that hasn't changed my mind.

IMHO picking a candidate is about a lot more than just ideological match-ups. Important issues like temperament, dignity, and experience can't be measured by ideological litmus tests.

Given that many election year issues are things that a President cannot single-handed enact and can only be done by Congress, I think many people focus on the wrong criteria for candidate picking. "Medicare for all," for instance, is a popular position for several candidates, but no President could ever enact such a system on his or her own. So making that a campaign issue is a waste of time.

I'd argue that supporting a candidate who doesn't promise measures he or she could enact without Congress is actually more important than ideological alignment. A candidate who focuses on what a President can do, and not what he or she cannot do, is ready to hit the ground running.

free the nipple

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court said it will not consider the appeal of a constitutional challenge to a New Hampshire city's ordinance making it a crime for a woman, but not a man, to appear topless in public.

The New Hampshire Supreme Court previously ruled the topless ban was constitutional. Because the highest court did not take up the matter, that means the state supreme court ruling will stand.

I'm no lawyer so I have no informed commentary on the constitutional issues here. I can, however, speak to the common sense aspect of this case.

As a woman who formerly danced naked on stage, I think both supreme court decisions were the right one. Topless in a indoor venue is quite different than public nudity.

As a parent, I wouldn't want my children to see women cavorting around half undressed. Parents, not strangers, should be the ones controlling if and how and when their children see potentially sexual images.

And to be perfectly honest, as a matter of aesthetics, one should remember that topless women in public means any woman, including hot young things with perfect pert breasts as well as saggy old hags whose udders dangle far below their bloated waists.

fraudulent bookselling

Over the weekend, I finished reading Imaginary Friend, a new novel by the American writer Stephen Chbosky. This was definitely the wrong book for me, because it turned out to be a fantasy/horror hybrid and I was expecting a conventional thriller.

Fantasy just doesn't interest me, but for what the writer set out to do, he seems to have done so competently. The book is too long and could have used some judicious editing and trimming, but that's neither here nor there.

My beef is the fact that the jacket copy on the book flap made it sound like a straightforward suspense thriller with a hint of the supernatural, but it turned out to be anything but. It also made it seem as if an adult woman was the central character, not a young boy, and this too was not the case.

Simply put, the jacket copy was deceptive. It made the book seem like something it wasn't while hiding what it actually was.

Why was this done? Did the publishers fear it would be too hard to sell if accurately described? Or was it just simple incompetence.

I'm tempted to write a letter to the publishers to complain about their fraudulent bookselling. I'll sit on the idea for a week or so, and if I'm so inclined still, I think I'll do that. I didn't actually buy the book, I borrowed it from the library, but I invested the time in reading it and am no less annoyed than had I purchased it.

filthy history

If you like history and listen to podcasts, you might find an episode about medieval hygiene to be of interest.

What struck me the most about this topic while listening to the show was the realization that holy people were arguably the filthiest as a whole. A holy man might have so much lice in his hair shirt that they could be scooped out by the handful.

The holy people allowed themselves to be tormented by lice out of the belief it brought them closer to God. But that also suggests they were pretty significantly mentally ill that they would allow their physical condition to deteriorate to such a degree.

Seen below is a fifteenth century illustration of a wealthy man bathing in his private bath.

australia is burning

A long-time reader emailed to ask if we were affected by any of the big fires burning here Down Under. The good news for us that we are not.

The bad news, however, is that we are surrounded on nearly all sides by national parks with endless acres of open land where a future fire could burn.

One of the biggest fires in the country right now is Kanangra-Boyd National Park, which is about fifty miles to the west of us as a bird flies. The city of Sydney has seen smoke from that fire settle around the harbor, but we're blocked by low mountains in between so our air has been much clearer.

Needless to say, because a fire could break out much closer to home, we have an emergency evacuation plan and supplies at the ready, with some stuff already packed in the cars.

Given it has the hottest average temperatures of earth's continents, Australia is a foreshadowing of climate change's future. While average worldwide temperatures have risen about one degree Celsius since the dawn of the industrial revolution, they've risen by more than three degrees om average here.

That may sound small, but in climate terms, it's a very big deal.

reluctant royals

Henry and Meghan Wales, better known as Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex, have announced they will "step back as senior members of the royal family" and will divide their time between Britain and North America while becoming financially independent and starting a new charity.

Good for them. The move comes after increasing criticism of the couple both within the royal family and in the British media. It can't be easy living in a fishbowl like that.

I also wonder if they both were struck by the pointlessness of royal life. Harry is sixth in the line of succession, so the chances of him being the largely ceremonial king some day are close to zero. And I suspect that the constant schedule of openings and ribbon cuttings and awards presentations gets very old very fast.

And I think the idea of financial independence is a good one. Every adult should pay his or her own way. Living on the dole, as they essentially are doing now, has to be humiliating after a while.

Of course, they won't be able to escape media attention. But perhaps they'll be treated more like "ordinary" celebrities instead now.

catholic guilt

I'm currently reading a novel where one character is a super devout Catholic woman plagued by guilt because she fantasizes about sex. She keeps repeating a mantra to distract herself that she learned in a catechism class: "To think it is to do it."

I believe that merely fantasizing about something, but never acting, is completely different than actually committing the act.

Fantasizing about strangling someone you loathe is not a sin. Actually strangling that person is.

The same is true for sex. And for many other imagined sins that never actually happen. No harm, no foul.

bad results from good intentions

If you're an adult under age twenty-one in the United States, you can no longer legally buy cigarettes, cigars, and other tobacco products, thanks to a new federal law that went into effect January 1, 2020.

Let me say upfront that I think anyone who smokes now, given the mountains of evidence that tobacco is seriously harmful, is a fool. A dunce. A moron.

However.

I think this new law is wrong. An adult aged eighteen or nineteen or twenty can be drafted against his or her will and sent to war. He or she would have no choice in the matter. He or she would be expected to die for his country.

But he or she can't buy cigarettes.

So they're an adult enough to send to war but not adult enough to make their own decisions about tobacco? Sorry, I don't buy that. I don't buy this idea of "sometimes an adult, sometimes a minor."

You're either an adult or not. If you're nineteen, you should have all the same rights as someone who is twenty-nine or ninety-nine.

Yes, allowing those above eighteen but below twenty-one to buy tobacco products will mean more will become users. But that's their choice. They're adults, and sometimes adults make bad choices. Part of being an adult is that you have to live with the consequences of your bad choices. And there are other ways to make smoking unattractive, like much higher taxes on smoking products that would hit all adults.

I know the law is similar for liquor and I think that law is wrong, too. There's no such thing as a halfway adult.

hoarding cash

Typically we live on my husband's pension and the earnings he makes from his diving gigs. Earnings on investments, primarily stock dividends, are reinvested in new stock purchases.

Like many people, however, I believe the American stock market is overpriced now and ripe for a correction. So for most of 2019, I stashed cash in a simple savings account instead of reinvesting while waiting for a big market drop and reset. No point buying something and then having it lose 15 percent of its value in a few days.

But I'm starting to get impatient. I don't want to put the money in a CD because I need it instantly available should the market tank so I can buy more stock. The best time to buy is when other people are panicking. In the meantime, however, I'm earning a crap interest rate and thinking about the money I could be earning in dividends.

With that said, if I lose 3 to 4 percent in dividends for a year but keep from losing 10 to 15 to 20 percent in a correction, I'm still better off. My husband salivates when he sees what's in the savings account now but praises me for my extreme self control. I could spend spend spend that money now but I won't.

I guess this would be called a first world problem. I should stop complaining.

sleepy shopper

While testing a mattress at a store, a Kansas woman accidentally fell asleep and didn't wake up until roused the next day by an employee opening up for the day. Although police were summoned, she was not charged because presumably she was believed.

A police spokesperson joked that her accidental overnight stay was the best possible recommendation for the mattress.

I'm a heavy sleeper but I don't think I could sleep the whole night in a store. I could see myself falling asleep on a display bed but then waking up a few minutes later.

The sleepy Kansan must have a really sturdy bladder and didn't feel the need to have a pee at night. Imagine how disorienting it would be to wake up in a dark store, clueless about where you are and desperately needing to use the bathroom.

I honestly think in such a situation I might accidentally wet myself.

anti-porn nutters surface again

Like a plague of locusts, the social conservatives are back on an anti-porn crusade. Four members of Congress are trying to get the Justice Department back into anti-porn prosecutions, this time directed at major producers and distributors.

Yes, that means they're coming for your online porn. Some of them are even calling for an outright ban on smut, apparently ignoring past Supreme Court precedents. They also seem not to realize that anti-porn prosecutions about a decade ago failed spectacularly and were openly mocked from the bench.

It's amazing how small government types mysteriously turn pro-Big Brother when they're trying to stamp out things they don't like. But nobody is forcing you to watch porn if you don't want to. You have to go out of your way to find it.

IMHO, they're going after easy, low-hanging fruit and ignoring much more difficult problems to crack, like the many thousands of women and children caught in sex trafficking in the United States. You want to fight something truly evil, you go after their exploiters.

a hidden life

The husband and I have been making our way through the screener boxes that my Hollywood friend sent to me. Only one film so far has really grabbed hold of us, and both of us were surprised.

We both really were struck by and strongly recommend A Hidden Life, written and directed by Terrence Malick, a hauntingly beautiful and sad movie that I just can't stop thinking about.

The film tells a straightforward story, based on true events, about an Austrian farmer during World War II who was openly anti-Nazi and refused to swear an oath of allegiance to Hitler even when he knows that will lead to his execution.

A Hidden Life tells a simple but powerful story about an honorable man living in horrible times who becomes the only one who dares to say "no" to a great wrong that everyone him enables. August Diehl plays the farmer with spare, subtle brilliance. His wife, played by Valerie Pachner, is equally strong.

I've really liked some of Malick's films while loathing others, like the pretentious The Tree of Life. Thankfully his latest movie is as different as night and day.

It's still a typical Malick work, long and slow and small and very arthouse. But it just really works on every front and is a magnificent achievement.

I will not be surprised if it wins the Oscar for Best Picture. See it but be in the right mood to see it. Don't if you're just looking for some light escapist fun because it's anything but.

spiderman vs. thor

Spiderman is not the sharpest pencil in the box, because several workarounds quickly come to mind for some of these pranks. Coincidentally, the people who make these popular superhero videos happen to live not far from us here in Australia.

I may have seen them shooting one of their videos at a train station I was passing through a few months back. Spiderman was being filmed as he apparently was failing to start his car.

My son was hugely thrilled to see Spiderman in the parking lot. Rather than burst his bubble and tell him it wasn't the real Spiderman, I kept my mouth shut.

a monster's letterhead

I always find social history to be the most interesting, those true stories of ordinary people from previous eras who experienced historic events. So I was interested to read a recent article published in Smithsonian magazine about a professor assembling an archive of letters written home by ordinary American military personnel during past wars.

Two from World War II illustrating the article are the most notable IMHO. One features a man who sent coded messages to his wife about where he was stationed by referring to imaginary aunts and uncles. "Aunt Martha" would mean he was in Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands, "Uncle Herb" in the Dutch East Indies, etc.

The other was from a young staff sergeant writing to his parents about the horrors he experienced at Dachau Concentration Camp. He wrote the letter on Hitler's on stationery while sitting at Hitler's desk in his Munich apartment.

Unfortunately, the article mentions nothing more about him. A quick Google search, however, found a 2017 article with details about the staff sergeant and some excerpts from his letter.

Both articles link to the letter archive online where a small sampling of the collected correspondence can be read. Unfortunately, neither letter mentioned here is available online.

Nonetheless, by searching some more on Google, I was able to find the entire letter transcribed. It is an amazing artifact.

welcome to the roaring twenties!

Happy New Year! Happy 2020!

The 1920s are often referred to as "the roaring twenties." Will the 2020s be as roaring? As life altering as one hundred years ago? As historically consequential? We'll know in ten years — or maybe not.

Until then, I hope you and yours have a very safe and prosperous and loving new year.