February 06, 2008

Q-Tips: the Touch of Death.
posted by Capt. Renault 16 years ago
  • I had sent that to someone who has a pack-a-week habit. Not that I'm looking forward to them now digging in their ears with a pinky, mind you.
  • you can pry my qtips outta my cold dead ears.
  • I thought this was common knowledge. When I was a kid they even said in the TV ads not to put them down your ears.
  • I put Q-tips in my ears each and every morning and have done so for years, nay, DECADES. Of course, I died in 1995, so use your best judgment.
  • Every package today has such a warning. But... where would one use it, then? What for? To clean the outside of my nose? Just be careful. When I can feel it poke the soft grey matter, I stop.
  • Sometimes I've accidentally jabbed my eardrum (or whatever that is that hurts like a mofo), but nothing will stop me! Nothing!
  • I put one end of the Q-tip into my cordless drill, pull the trigger tight, and jam the business end of the QT into my ear as hard as I can.
  • All they do is push the wax further into your ear until it mashes up against your eardrum and makes you deaf. Terrible things.
  • I honestly thought because the tip looked like a Q. You have the ball, and then the little stick poking out of the end. Ergo, Q-Tip.
  • *sips soup noisily from earwax spoon*
  • I prefer the bamboo pickers myself...
  • Also, I call BS on TUM's link.
  • Holy malpractice!
  • Teh baby gays!
  • I don't know about the risk of death (one man's infection aside), but eardrums do get punctured. I know someone who, on his honeymoon, entered the bathroom where his new wife was using a Q-tip. He tripped, fell, knocked her arm, and she pierced her eardrum. A cautionary tale, that. That being said, I've always maintained that if Q-tips really weren't meant to go into your ear, they wouldn't be making them precisely ear-sized. It's obviously what they're for, and I'm sorry, but my pinkie finger does not suffice for getting the water out of there after I take a shower.
  • What the hell are you talking about, mechagrue? Are you saying that Q-tips are made to remove water from one's anus?
  • *makes mental note of a new nickname for kit*
  • I thought neti pots were used for removing water from the anus?
  • Only in the Fenlands!
  • Hah!
  • Oh my god, they can kill you! OMG they can make you deaf! Christ, we've become so mollycoddled and fearful of everything. Jesus, crossing the road can kill you. Picking your nose! OMG it can introduce necrotising fasciitis into your olfactory palps! OMG! Lock the fucking doors, the raccoon might have rabies! OMG that guy just looked at me! OMG don't run with that tinsel, you could get shocked! etc I think its pathetic. I still use cotton swabs in my ears, have done since I was a kid, and I am far from deaf. Stupid, perhaps, but that's genetic. And I am gonna continue to use 'em cos it feels damn good and you can't get rid of that funky ear snot any other way. Just don't jam those fucking things right in there. I mean, how dumb do you have to be to die from a cotton swab, and if you are that dumb, do you really deserve to live? And what about the germs from shaking hands with some bozo who's been squeegeeing his damn ears all morning with his pinky? I don't want his funky ear stank all on my clean hands, thanks. I'm starting to get shit-off from all this scary warning stuff. Let's put signs on all the trees saying 'watch out! this tree can fall on you!' it's just ridiculous. Warnings are for packs of dynamite and cigarettes, and that's it, IMHO.
  • And what about chemistry sets? Erector sets? Lego? My god, at age 6 I swallowed one of them cylindrical single nub yellow lego light pieces! (Later it turned up in my crap like a plastic piece of corn - too much info) Man, that could have burst a bloodvessel! Holy snackpacks, lookout for that fly! It's been eating a poop! Don't get its feet on you, or you'll get E-coli!!!! OMG, paper cut! /faint What a pathetic, sad bunch of wankies we really have become. Actually, mostly it's just you. /points at you
  • Have they SEEN the nails on my pinky fingers??? They could spike my brain....
  • Hey, careful with that, you could take my eye out!
  • That was for Hank. You can scratch me all you want, gomi.
  • No, she got the Japanese on her, man. You'll swell up like a fuckin' balloon. And then have some kind of giant food battle in a castle with kitchen implements and a steak strapped to your head while a J-pop group tickle a Komodo dragon in a tutu.
  • What? what? what? what?
  • Hank you are *such* an idiot. The Komodo dragons are in happi coats not tutus.
  • The moral of the thread is: Don't stick your finger in your ear after fighting Gojira or your eardrum will leak out of your anus. In the Fenlands.
  • THIS IS WHY SHE IS OUR FEARLESS LEADER!!!!!!!! no, really, that was brilliant :)
  • What more can be said?
  • Does this mean that they will take my Q-tips away before I board the plane, now, too?
  • GramMa's GramMa always said don't put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow. Doesn't do a damn bit of good getting the water out after a shower though. >*looks around, enters bathroom, turns off light, ducks behind shower curtain, jams Q-tip into ears* Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! What?!!?! Oh, nothing. *whistles*
  • she's whistling thru her ears, people.
  • This and the back-scratching are my two weird feel-good things; turns out they're not as weird as I thought.
  • How witty we are. Our little shitty ditties amuse. Ha, Ha, Ha, louder than the last each one becomes. As we stuff cotton buds. And die. *St-Pierre, 43, died of meningitis-induced intracranial complications caused by a bacterial ear infection that he developed after accidentally piercing his eardrum with a cotton swab while trying to treat a painful earache. Poor stupid fucking Pierre chose generics rather than care about his meninges. *You'll can of course see the problem with that quote, I mean even a shelved scrot could understand.
  • I swallowed four Legos as a child and then two days later shat out a perfectly formed Tie-fighter. In 1975.
  • Red Leader, I'm going in...
  • One day I was cleaning my ear with a q-tip. Phone rang and I answered. It was for my sister. I walked out of my room to yell to my sister and left the q-tip dangling from my ear. I proceeded to pick up the phone to see if she had picked up and drove the q-tip straight through my eardrum. Man that sucked.
  • Ouch. I had a Q-tip bud come off in my ear as a teenager. My own efforts to retract it just drove it further in. I ended up in the A&E to get it taken out. First the resident on duty tried - excruciatingly painful for about 10 minutes but he couldn't get it out. Then someone senior with a bunch of students tried. Lots of pain for 10 minutes but no joy. Then some of the students tried. Another 20 minutes of tugging, but nothing. Finally I got to see an ENT specialist. He carefully selected the correct tweezers and pulled the bud out with no dificulty. I got out of school for several hours though.
  • I use Q-tips all the time and my brain only fell out once. Twice.
  • My sister had the bud from a Q-Tip come off in her ear once, but I was on hand to save the day. With the correct tweezers. Now I don't buy cheap brands.
  • Prince Harry once said he wanted to be my Q-tip...
  • HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
  • I see what you did there.
  • Here's what can happen when you stick something in your head. (I dare you to click on the picture link. I double-dare you.) Sorry, couldn't resist.
  • OH HOLY GOD
  • My rule is simple but effective: When you feel resistance, stop pressing in on the Q-tip. (It's also handy to repeat that to people who seem to be mildly dumb. Because it's funny and when they don't get it, it's even funnier.) It kills me that they pretend there is any other reason for the existence of the Q-tip than cleaning out the ears. I'm also intrigued by what new warnings will pop up on the package now that someone has actually died. On a 7-up bottle, there is a strict warning to "point away from eyes and face, especially while opening" - which means that somewhere, somehow, someone lost an eye to a plastic bottle cap. I yearn for the days when your own stupidity resulted in self-injury rather than a settlement, and every damn commercial didn't have to have a disclaimer attached. Do not attempt. Professional commenter on closed thread.
  • Bernockle, sorry about that, I guess I could have used a bit more editing. What I was trying to get at was that Q-Tip manufacturers CLAIM that Q-Tips are not meant to be inserted into the ear. I have a box of genuine name-brand Q-Tips Cotton Swabs right here, and it says "Do not use swab in ear canal." (In bold and everything!) Which is bunk. If they didn't mean you to stick it in your ear, it would be shaped such that you would not be able to stick it in your ear. I suppose we are meant to believe that it's a coincidence that a Q-Tip is just the right size to fit in there. They do suggest other uses for Q-Tips on the back of the box. "Touch-up paint for walls and cabinets," that sort of thing. No mention of anal probing, unless that's what they mean by "Dust musical instruments."
  • I'd subscribe to Dr. Mabuse's newsletter, but am afraid of the fumes. Y'all don't know the need for Q-Tips until you've had PSORIASIS IN YOUR EAR. This is my reality. Q-Tips are a compromise. My first tool when that itch started was the sharpest end of a Swiss Army knife, and I still prefer the clean, slim edge of a fingernail cleaner.
  • Agggggggghhh! Kinnakeet, that's horrible. Truth is stranger than fiction, indeed.