Thread 17 - TalkLair: "Okay, first of all, what's with the outfit? Live in the now, okay? You look like DeBarge."

[RasaSayangEh]

(Previous thread 16).

Spring is springing, daffodils blooming all over our LairGarden, which have not all been picked by a neighbour's kid...

In the TalkLair, the hearth is glowing, books by non-approved authors line the shelves, cosy rugs are down on the floors looking a bit stained by cat hairball regurgitation. The denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch though, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I read those letters years ago, and agree with you that I understand why Cassandra censored them! I’m currently reading the book Miss Austen, and the author does a pretty good job of recreating the style of them in the ones she invents.

I recommend Jane Gardam's short story "The Sidmouth Letters" which is tangentially Austen-related.

Grossness warning.

Last night, lying in bed, I felt that the inside of my left ear felt a bit ticklish or itchy, gave it a useless prod with my little finger (which, obviously, is too large) and forgot about it.

This morning, sitting at my desk at work, I felt the ticklish itchy sensation in my ear canal again, a bit more irritating this time. So I idly gave the ear a more determined prod and wiggle with my little finger. Next thing I knew, a whole thing came out of my ear. The only way I can describe it is a small knobbly thing, the diameter of my ear canal and about 0.4cm long, dark brown, hard and crumbly. Like a cylindrical scab, is the best way I could describe it. I have had no hearing issues, and neither did my hearing magically improve when the thing fell out. Nor any pain which might have signified bleeding.

I probably should have taken a photo, but I felt it would have been somewhat inappropriate at work so chucked it away.

What the heck was it???

Dried ear wax, surely?

Yep. that was my immediate thought. MrG has to get his ears hoovered from time to time and, when it's been a while, there are small dark chunks like that. Oddly fascinating!

The idea of getting my ears hoovered sounds oddly enjoyable! Where can I get this done?

NB: I don't really have ear wax, except when I'm poorly. I have the dry ear wax ABCC11 gene variant so what comes out of my ears, normally, is like pale sandy flakes.

Are you sure something didn't crawl in there and die?

@RasaSayangEh I have the dry ear wax ABCC11 gene variant ...

Gosh, how exotic! MrG's heritage is Litvak, which presents other problems, but what normally comes out of - or rather gets stuck in - his ears is copious and (quite frankly) disgusting!

You can get your ears hoovered anywhere that does hearing aids - just ignore them when (inevitably) they try to give you a hearing test in order to sell you them! Locally there's a place called Hidden Hearing, which I think is a chain, but there are many others. MrG (who does wear hearing aids) loves going there because the hooverers are not just competent but also female, pretty and kind.

If it's been in there for a while it may well have grown dark not matter the type which I had no idea about. I'm what is apparently what is called a sporner on here. Basically I can't think what the s actually is but sometimes I like to watch pimple popping but really blackhead stuff, especially a pore of wiener or something. My brain's forgotten all words! But I watch ear waxing as well which is satisfying. If it was a creature you would probably have noticed insect signs, which suggests it's more likely wax. It clearly wasn't alive but sort of shaking loose given last night and today (or the night before last and yesterday). I did ick to the highest order when I saw wax and some flying, small sort of cockroach thing in an ear, but there you go.

Dilated pore of winer!

Three post thingy. Apropos of vaguely interesting. After my surgery last year I now have sort of half a belly button which is less of an inny than it was but not an outy. It's strange, not gross and soothing.

Ooh @FagsMagsandBags are you a denizen of Sporners' Corner? I've sometimes clicked on one of their threads out of morbid curiosity, but while I don't get grossed out and find it rather fascinating, I haven't become hooked either.

@Britinme Thank goodness, no, I'm quite certain it wasn't any formerly living creature!

If anybody is interested in the ABCC11 allele, here is a short and pretty good explanation. The difference is due to a one change in the DNA sequence of the gene (a SNP, single nucleotide polymorphism)! The distribution of the dry allele is also fascinating - you can almost draw a diagonal line going from the far northeast of Asia in the southwestern direction.
https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html

It's a good demonstration of Mendelian genetics in our extended family, being of largely South Chinese Han ethnicity but with a hefty dose SE Asian intermarriage over the centuries: my mum has dry ear wax as do I, my dad and brother have wet ear wax. As the dry variant is recessive, this means that my dad and brother must be heterozygous, my mum and me homozygous.

I discovered that sporners corner existed here yesterday but have been visiting YouTube videos for a few years on and off.

I've fallen behind and missed so many posts. Kasper's op and the subsequent nursing of the most difficult patient involved really took it out of me. I hope everyone is as ok as can be.

@RasaSayangEh Are you familiar with SNPedia? The one interesting thing about me is that I'm homozygous for the CCR5-delta32 mutation . I was fascinated by CCR5 when I was studying HIV so I was delighted to find I had the polymorphism, even if it's not necessarily such a good thing.

Is it possible the thing in your ear was the remains of some kind of insect?

Weirdly, despite having (AFAIK) zero Asian ancestry I also have dry ear wax and never have to have my ears hoovered out. I was born in India but I don’t think that is likely to have anything to do with it.

Arf! My sister was born in Germany but isn't keen on sauerkraut and her goose-stepping skills are, quite frankly, rubbish.

I hope Kasper is fully recovered now!

I am familiar with SNPedia although I don't use it in my line of work. How did you get tested for your CCR5-delta32?

I'm pretty sure the freaky ear thing must have been ear wax. Just totally uncharacteristic of my usual ear wax, and also I don't understand why it didn't seem to affect my hearing. Just one of those weird things!

Packing for our holiday... off on Tuesday, overnight flight to Paris and then another to Toulouse, pick up a car at the airport and set off. We have four days staying with a couple of old GUT friends and then a Vrbo in the Dordogne, another in the Loire valley and another in Normandy. Then off to London on the Eurostar and dividing time between kids in Hertfordshire and family and friends in Northumberland and Yorkshire. Home on July 8th. We'll need a rest by then. I'm only hoping DH's back doesn't give out on him more than it has already.

Bloody Hell, @Britinme ... you two seem to be permanently zipping about, having fun! I am so envious.

Don’t know about permanently @Gonners - we last went away together to Nova Scotia and PEI last summer, which is a drive not a flight for us,though it’s true that I did go on my own to the UK for a couple of weeks in Oct/Nov last year for my DGD1’s birthday.

I had no idea ear wax had variation and a genetic component! Perhaps your dry flakes got cemented over the years by shampoo etc into a version of the non-dry type.

The dry earwax gene is a double bonus - it also comes with non-stinky armpits.

I'm watching a BBC4 repeat of a 1970s programme in Gershwin, and have had the horrifying realisation that it's the temporal-gap equivalent of current ABBA reteospectives. My mental equilibrium is not helped by Derek Griffiths doing Gershwinian innuendo, but still in the style of a children's presenter. I'll never be able to hear Balzac's name again without cringing.

My temporal gap realization came recently when DH and I watched the Ken Burns series on the Vietnam war. We realized that this was the 50th anniversary of the year the Americans pulled out of Vietnam, at which point I realized that the 50th anniversary of VE Day was in 1995, and that my parents’ generation probably felt about that the way I feel about Vietnam, whereas to me WW2 was just history.

Whereabouts in Northumberland, Brit?

Ooh, Yorkshire, you say, Brit?

As to the alleged earwax-linked non-stinky armpit thing. I can smell myself if I haven't showered for a while, but it is true that I've never used deodorant and also DH claims that I don't have a smell

The other night we watched Idiocracy with DC, now that they're 16 and old enough for the eye-watering crudity. It was released in 2006 I think, and the action takes place 500 years later. They could have set the action a mere 10 years later and it wouldn't have been far off... and now 20 years on, it feels like it didn't go far enough!

The film was probably meant as a satire of the Bush Jr administration of the time - now looking back, those were intellectual titans of great moral rectitude 😭 compared to all parts of the political spectrum, in so many countries, now!