johnnyhongkong says…

having recently battled earwax myself, the recent escalation of posts on Boing Boing regarding the subject tickles me to no end.  I wonder why different cultures opt for “alternative” and possibly “dangerous” methods to clean their ears.

btw: the “tumor” that came out of my ear was bigger than the photo BB has posted.

i’ve been trying to ignore my blog’s formatting problems for the past few months. while it did grate on my ocd, I pretended that it was only I who occasionally saw the text on the left side getting cut off.

today, I got my first complaint and so now, we have this. maybe one day i’ll understand ajax and web 2.0 to take advantage of all of the functionality its creator intended. i only vaguely understand having the ability to submit to digg, del.ic.ious, and newsvine from the permalinks. for now, i’m just glad that it’s a super clean interface and as far as I can tell, there is no text clipping on the left side.

have at it…

UPDATE: check out this article on Slate about how Web 2.0 is not only confusing but already passe.  who’s on web 2.1?

My OCD has recently manifested itself in a new way and it’s driving me crazy. Every morning for the past few weeks or so upon waking up in the morning, an indie rock song will immediately pop into my head and I’ll perseverate on a lyric or two, hearing it over and over and over again as if my brain were playing a broken record. While it’s kind of nice waking up to an indie rock tune, the repetition gets old real fast and becomes wicked annoying.

Yesterday was “Absence of God” by Rilo Kiley, so for about 20 minutes, as I made breakfast and got ready for work, Jenny Lewis sang, “The absence of God will bring you comfort, baby…Folk singers sing songs for the working, baybee,” over and over again. I’ve learned that if I hum it, it makes it go away quicker but it also means that I’m walking around the apartment humming the same four bars over and over again.

Today, it was “Punk Rock Girl” by that dog. Do you remember that dog? I didn’t think I did either but there she was, Petra Haden singing, “She’s so lonely and lovely and mad at her mom/She’s the best little girl in the world…Punk Rock girl will rock your world,” in my head over and over and over again.

When my mind finally settled down and I was able think about other things, I was sort of struck by how crazy it was. Not the OCD thing but Petra Haden and that dog? Where the hell did that come from?

Then imagine my shock and surprise when I read this interview today with Petra Haden conducted by the fine folks at losanjealous.

Coinkidink or coinkicrazy? My theory is that is has something to do with the solar eclipse.

As some of you have consistently been referred to my little patch of internet by googling ”ear lavage” and turning up this post about that kidney bean of wax that was flushed out of my ear, I figured it would be irresponsible not to link to these two Boing Boing posts about how the Japanese love to dig out ear wax (here’s the original post and a link to a video). 

I’d just like to point out that it’s not just the Japanese but all Asians who love a good solid ear cleaning and go to unusual lengths to achieve this.  I remember being a child and Mammy Hong Kong using a bobby pin to gently pick out balls of dry earwax.  Nikki Nagasaki remembers her mom doing the same with her. 

The desire to stick instruments into our ears and risk perforated eardrums and the like may not simply be explained by race but rather encoded in our genes since dry earwax short circuits the ear’s natural cleaning regimen. 

Obviously, I must warn you that you should not try this stuff at home unless you’re Asian or under the supervision of a professional Asian.  As an unprofessional Asian, I recommend that you just go to the doctor to get your ears cleaned out.    

Mary Milan and I decided to start our Spring Cleaning today. Our plan of attack was to clean out our closets and take clothes that we don’t wear anymore (the garments from our respective fat periods) to the Crossroads Trading Company in WeHo to get some cash money or to trade them in for some hot “recycled” skinny clothes that we would actually wear.

“I’m afraid they’re going to laugh at us,” I said just before we set off to Crossroads.

“Laugh at us for what? Those bitches work at ‘Crossroads’…ooooo, I’m scared.”

“You don’t understand…”

“Come on, let’s go.”

When we walked in, two Arbiters of Recycled Style (ARSe) looked at us and sneered. They said nothing as we stood aimlessly near the counter where they were judging and evaluating an older lady’s S.Q. (style quotient). Happy that she had been judged worthy, the older lady told us to sign a sheet to officially be on the queue.

They called Mary Milan first. She brought up her five bags of clothes which ARSe #1 rifled through, placing each item off to the side with machine-like efficiency.

“Sorry, we just didn’t find anything we can use. Thanks for coming in,” she said.

As Mary Milan packed up, she wished me good luck. Her voice quivered, as if on the verge of tears.

I was sure I’d do better than Mary Milan because I had a bunch of Donna Karan button downs, Armani slacks, and a $750 Hugo Boss blazer.

“Sorry, we just didn’t find anything we can use. Thanks for coming in,” said ARSe #2.

We left having sold not a damn thing. Not one goddamn thing.

Can you believe it?  Our S.Q. score qualified us to ride the style short bus.  We were so demoralized that we didn’t even want to try another used clothing store for fear that we would just get laughed at for being so legally retarded in fashion.  “Burn the reminders of trauma!” we screamed.  “Burn! Burn! Burn!” 

Instead of making a bonfire, we resolved to drive to the Goodwill on Vine to give it all away.

As we unpacked, a bunch of people vultures swarmed aound us. Some milled about our car as we unpacked the trunk, casing the goods we had in our bags and yes, there was one woman who outright asked Mary Milan for the dresses that she had in her hand.

Mary Milan immediately recognized the double bind that she had been put in (i.e., yes, we were giving this stuff away but we were doing so in hopes that others could participate in the process we know as “the economy”) but was caught so offguard, she said, “Sure. Which one?”

“Both of them,” the woman said.

This woman was about 5’5″ and 180 pounds. What does that matter? Mary Milan is 5’10″ and about as slender as a toothpick. What made this woman think that she could fit in these dresses?

Mary Milan handed the dresses to her and that was like a signal for the rest of the vultures to descend. We finally fought our way through to the donation center, dropped our bags off and peeled out of the parking lot, leaving all of vultures behind to fight over the scraps.

After about fifteen minutes of silence in the car that we spent recovering from the trauma, Mary Milan finally said, “Spring Cleaning totally humilated us today.”
“I know. I’m really hurt by how Crossroads treated us,” I said.
When we got home, I started stress eating. Dammit, I might need my fat clothes back from Goodwill.

Speaking of which, if you’re in the market for some really nice dress shirts, jeans, and t-shirts, we suggest going to the Goodwill on Vine in a few days. Maybe the vultures will have left something for you (or found out they’d never fit into the stuff we “donated”).

We are preparing for the battle this weekend in the Spring Cleaning war: putting up shelves. Pray for us.

At the conference this weekend, we saw a bunch of poster presentations on smoking cessation which reminded me of this Human Nature column that cited a study saying that Black smokers are at an elevated health risk:

The same amount of smoking is more risky for blacks than whites and less risky for Latinos. A study shows the risk of getting lung cancer from smoking a pack a day is 55 percent higher in blacks than in whites, and 50 percent lower in Latinos than in whites.

There was one particular study at the conference that said the 40% of Black smokers who classify themselves as “light smokers” suffered from a heart and lung disease at the same rate as heavy smokers.
In other smoking news, Conrad Connecticut, who is not black and who kicked the habit last week just sent word on his progress:

So far so good.  Been wearing my patch and occasionally chomping a piece of the gum (which they have improved so it actually tastes like Trident as opposed to ass) when I feel a particularly strong craving…All in all, it is going well.

Of course, I have yet to really be out [drinking] which I am sure will be the biggest challenge

At Cinematical, Jeffrey M. Anderson filed this bit on what Wim Wenders considers as the future of cinema.

Have any recent movies or filmmakers captured Wenders’ attention? “...The New World, Terrence Malick’s movie. That was one monster movie, and it was so good that nobody could even grasp it.

[snip]

In ten years it will be a classic and everybody will say, ‘That was the movie that mattered in 2005. …’”

It reminded me of this exchange between Werner Herzog and Harmony Korine on the subject of Korine’s Gummo, which I’ve always liked to think of as the proof of the following mathematical equation: “Werner Herzog + Harmony Korine = What The Fuck?”

wh: What I like about Gummo are the details that one might not notice at first. There’s the scene where the kid in the bathtub drops his chocolate bar into the dirty water and just behind him there’s a piece of fried bacon stuck to the wall with Scotch tape. This is the entertainment of the future.

hk: It’s the greatest entertainment. Seriously, all I want to see is pieces of fried bacon taped on walls, because most films just don’t do that.

I don’t know what it is about crazy German filmmakers always foreseeing the future of entertainment but if the future of cinematic entertainment is more Malick, then as his bitch boy, I guess I’d have to say I’d be a happy man. If it’s a whole lot of bacon scotch taped to walls and kids dropping their Whatchamacallits into dirty ass water, I might have to get out of this industry and kill myself.

Unless of course it’s Malick shooting the bacon, kid, Whatchamacallit, and dirty water with a voice over as the kid dunks his head into the water looking for his chocolate:

KID (V.O.):  Hershey, in this sea of dirt and grime, soothe me. I feel the crunch of your wafer chocolate goodness. I wonder about the nature of caramel sticking like molasses to my teeth. Each second I search is like one of the barbed arrows that pierced Saint Sebastian, piercing my heart as well. Bacon taped to the wall, be my salvation.

Now that’s the future of entertainment.