Follow the Money
From Your Nose to Your Toes
I have always heeded the wise advice about never putting anything smaller than my elbow in my ear but I have only recently learned that it is probably better to let ear wax also known as cerumen to dissipate naturally rather than sticking a Q-Tip in your ear and forcing the wax even deeper. A classmate in grammar school never heard that warning and he used to stick crayons and pencils in his ears and up his nose.
And I also heard this story but thought it was fake until I read it on Google that the danger triangle of the face is from the corners of the mouth to the bridge of the nose, including the nose and maxilla. Due to the special nature of the blood supply to the nose and surrounding area, it is possible, although extremely unlikely, for retrograde infection from the nasal area to spread to the brain, causing cavernous sinus thrombosis, meningitis or brain abscess. And that is why I will never use a Q-Tip to clean my nose and it puts into question the safety of the COVID-19 test where a long Q-Tip is shoved up your nose. Also I recommend against rhinotillexomania, otherwise known as nose picking, because you might infect the danger triangle.
This all leads me to opine also about №2 pencils and the Brazilian Butt Lift.
I recall in elementary school the warnings on the dreaded, Iowa Standardized Test of Basic Skills to use only a №2 Ticonderoga pencil to fill in the correct little circle next to the correct answer but I wonder why and I can only assume that there is a fiduciary relationship between the testing company and the pencil company and I say this because it would seem that a №1, №3 or a №4 pencil would all work as well as the №2 pencil. I may be wrong but my gut tells me someone made a tidy amount by fixing the contract to exclude all companies and to accept only the one pencil company that sells the №2 pencil. And why not a pen, a pen leaves just as dark an image as a pencil and that begs the question of whether the pen companies were even asked to bid on the contract and I expect the answer is no. The problem with pencils, whether a №2 or a №99, is that the lead breaks and if the lead breaks while in the middle of a timed Iowa Standardized Test of Basic Skills test, you would have to ask the teacher if you could use the pencil sharpener in front of the room, or if not, use a pen knife to sharpen the point and that can be tricky and it could prove to be delaying in finishing the Iowa Standardized Test of Basic Skills in the allotted time and possibly lead to a failing grade which would have grave implications affecting a student’s life, in particular, a failing grade could eventually cause rejection from a top quality college and instead attendance at a small county college that does not have very high rankings and on and on and these are the things you have to consider to lead a successful life. And why Iowa, what’s the link with New Jersey and why not Alabama or Washington State? Just saying.
I would note that Q-Tips is a trade name, just like Kleenex, BandAids, AstroTurf, Baggies, Band-Aid, Beer Nuts, Breathalyzer, Brillo Pads, Dacron, Dumpster, Frisbee, Hi-Liter, Hula-Hoop, Jacuzzi, Jeep, Jell-O, Jockey Shorts, Kitty Litter, Kleenex, Laundromat, Liquid Paper, Magic Marker, Muzak, Novocain, Ping-Pong, Play-Doh, Popsicle, Post-it Note, Q-Tip, Realtor, Rollerblade, Scotch Tape, Scrabble, Seeing Eye (dog), Sheetrock, Slim Jim, Styrofoam, Super glue, Technicolor, Teflon, TelePrompTer, Vaseline, Velcro, and Walkman.
I understand that it might be clunky to ask for a facial tissue for your nose, a cotton swab for your ears, an adhesive bandage to staunch the bleeding after you stepped on a piece of glass in the kitchen, a small plastic bag to save the leftover salad so it doesn’t get brown and slimy, a bag of sweet and salty peanut snacks, a scouring pad to get the baked on grease off of the frying pan, men’s cotton briefs, a mixture of clay and other minerals, and natural ingredients such as pine, wheat or corn, or synthetic crystallized silica to rid your basement of that vile cat poop smell, petroleum jelly to lubricate those hard to lubricate places, a fastener that is made of a lineal fabric strip with tiny hooks that could ‘mate’ with another fabric strip with smaller loops, attaching temporarily, until pulled apart or a snack that is made with beef, mechanically separated chicken, lactic acid starter culture, dextrose, salt, sodium nitrite, and hydrolyzed soy and it isn’t a meat stick but rather resembles a fermented sausage, such as salami or pepperoni, which uses bacteria and sugar to produce lactic acid, lowering the pH of the sausage to around 5.0 and firming up the meat.
Yes, it would be inconvenient to avoid the trade names and that is no accident because those companies spend lots and lots of money to imprint their name in your brain and they make jillions of dollars from people who go to the drug store and ask “Where are the Band Aids” rather than where are the adhesive bandages that will staunch the bleeding from this cut on my foot from a broken wine glass. If you ask for cotton swabs, the employee will likely have a look of confusion and ask if you mean Band-Aids. And if you ask for a mixture of clay and other minerals, and natural ingredients such as pine, wheat or corn, or synthetic crystallized silica to rid your basement of that vile cat poop smell, you will likely be met by a glazed stare and silence.
These are the insidious ways that companies worm their way into our conscious and subconscious so they can take our money away. It is not a question of quality because you’ve seen one cotton swab you’ve seen them all although I have noticed that not all cotton swabs are equal and that some actually have more cotton and they are not necessarily Q-Tips so I believe progress has been made and the same goes with adhesive bandages although some of the cheaper kinds fall off your wound at the first mention of humidity.
On to the Brazilian Butt Lift or BBT to those in the know and it refers to a surgical procedure to expand the butt and give a woman an hourglass look something like the comic book character, Jessica Rabbit in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” A BBT is not cheap but it can be bundled with other procedures, sort of a buy two for the price of one, as in a breast reduction for $7,400 and BBT for $9,190 plus anesthesia and facility fees. A story in the N.Y. times said a BBT typically costs around $15,000 and is not covered by insurance. To get a bigger butt, a surgeon sucks the fat from a woman’s flanks, tummy and lower back and injects the fat into her butt, “like moving money from your checking to savings account.”
BBL is one of the most popular cosmetic surgeries among women although some men have it done also for reasons that escape me. BBL was searched on Google roughly 200,0000 times per month between January and May 2021. And like Q-Tips and №2 pencils, women ask for a BBL and not gluteal enhancement because that’s what the procedure is generally called. They don’t look up gluteal enhancement so that’s more money in the coffers of the surgeon who created the patented BBL but the funny thing is that it does not include “lifting” anything although it was created in the 1960s by a Brazilian plastic surgeon Ivo Pitanguy and I don’t understand why it isn’t called a Pitanguy lift but maybe that’s because the famous women who have had it might not be able to pronounce Pitanguy and they include Jennifer Lopez, Kim Kardashian and Nicki Minaj, although they all deny they had the surgery and Kardashian had an X-ray taken during an episode of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” and it showed no implants although fat grafting, another word for Brazilian Butt Lift, was not discussed. Just saying.