Dark night: thoughts on the Colorado massacre

Like a lot of people, I find I can't live - can't go about my day-to-day activities and try to enjoy life - if I'm paralyzed with grief, horror and fear. At the same time, how can I NOT feel this, and feel deeply for the survivors who are reeling with shock and disbelief?

It COULD happen to me, or to you. We don't have special protection, even if we believe in "God" or "the angels".  It's NOT "a movie" or "part of the show". Those AREN'T "firecrackers", but gunshots! Gunshots that kill people.


Do you still think everything happens for a reason? Then tell me, explain to me: what was the reason for this?

I get sad and melancholy and I don’t know how else to feel when the news is so horrendous. In a sense, you have to just push it away. It’s not good mental health to practice so much denial, and it’s not honest either, but what else can you do, not go out because you’re afraid you’ll be gunned down? I don’t care about me, though I’d rather be cleanly killed than be like Gabby Gifford who is now reduced to a bewildered, childlike state.

It’s my loved ones I worry about. All the time, really. I worry about apocalypse of some sort. The weather, world climate, which is already deteriorating alarmingly, fire and flood, drought and snowstorm occurring where/when they shouldn't be, and I wonder what I am leaving for my grandchildren and their children, if they even have a chance to exist. And/or terrorism spreading like an evil ugly cancer, ultimate weapons, what they used to call “germ warfare” that would knock out so many people, there’d be no one left to try to cure it.

I know these are worst-case scenarios and the stuff of science fiction and  movies/books about the horror of dystopia, but still, did anyone anticipate 9-11? I don’t see how anyone could have, and that's what alarms the shit out of me. It was just a taste of what terrorists might do to us. If it happens again on a mass scale, of course it would be all-out nuclear war and the end of everything.

We can’t think about this, of course, but there is a cost to repressing it all the time. If you talk about it and openly express fear about it, you’re seen as a sort of party-pooper who doesn’t know how to have a good time (text-text-text, tweet-tweet-tweet!). I asked Bill once, “what’s IN all these texts? What are people texting about?” Bill said, “NOTHING.” And I think he’s right. They have no content, so all they are is a sort of mutual narcissism and a smokescreen insulating people from their feelings.  

Myself, I lasted about two seconds on Facebook because every time I tried to post anything serious, all I got was dead silence, or a nasty jibe meant to send up my comment or minimize it with a joke. I felt like I was eight years old and being ostracized on the playground once again.

I'm not in a personal crisis now, my life is stable if a little dull, and in many ways I am blessed beyond measure.  But that doesn’t mean I have no problems. Is it normal to have problems? People pretend they don’t. But all these sick evil people are emerging who think it’s OK to randomly murder strangers, even children. Meanwhile people say things like, “I thought it was part of the show.” During 9-11, people repeatedly said, “It looked like a movie.” Do we know the difference any more?

With all this emphasis on "social networking", we're increasingly wearing masks and becoming anyone we want to be. It's fun for a while, then an awful barrenness steals in and begins to eat away at the core, the very foundation of your soul. And for the most part, you're not even consciously aware of it. Everyone's doing it, after all, so it must be OK.

Constant shallow tweeting, texting and phoning about nothing drowns out the drone of horror in the background, the sound of those awful air-raid sirens I used to hear as a kid (supposedly, just being tested out, but tested out far more often during the Cuban Missile Crisis and at other points when the nuclear clock stood at a few seconds to midnight).

I never used to hear about random shooters when I was younger: did you? Did you hear about events like this, or Columbine, or people just randomly opening fire in mall food fairs?

Why is this happening now, when it never used to happen before? Though there is a tremendous amount of denial about this subject, in many ways our world teeters on the brink. Brink of what? Climate meltdown, terrorism on a scale so massive it's beyond our capacity to grasp - and, the thing no one talks about any more, vast, even grotesque overpopulation.

Being crowded together far beyond the carrying capacity of the planet, a planet we have poisoned grievously and choked with vast islands of dead computers and other forms of plastic that will never degrade, has done something to us. It's cooking up a huge vat of collective stress, the kind of stress that can explode alarmingly in a susceptible person. I have a theory about why so many people are becoming grossly obese: it goes beyond the ubiquity of junk food in seemingly every store. Cramming a chocolate bar in your mouth helps you push down that low-grade vibration of anxiety about our survival as a species.

Try to project all the problems we have in the world to fifty years from now. I am afraid to. I just don't see how we will be able to stop the juggernaut, the relentless progression of a destruction we set in motion ourselves, mostly through thoughtlessness and greed.

We treat these horrendous fires and floods as if they came out of nowhere, but I see it as the planet hitting back, finally unable to stand any more abuse. We HAVE changed the world climate, folks - irrevocably, and not for the better. I am afraid that these feeble attempts to reduce our "carbon footprint" is too little, too late.

But we are awfully good at numbing ourselves to the truth, whether with drugs, food, or an obsession with technology you can hold in one hand like an ice cream cone.

If a lonely, isolated, socially-deprived person with a fascination with weaponry begins to entertain an idea - an awful idea - what will stop him? He won't talk to a friend about it because he doesn't have any friends. ("He kept mostly to himself" has become almost a cliche in these situations.)  Friends aren't people any more - they're Facebook pages and "tweets". (And I think it's no accident that the inventor of this strange form of non-communication named it after the sound a silly, superficial, bird-brained creature.)

Every time something like this happens, authorities are quick to tell the public that it was an "isolated case", just one disturbed nut case whose mental illness had nothing to do with the rest of us or the alienated, anxiety-ridden, sick world we live in. That makes everyone feel better for a while. Doesn't it?

I don't know what to do about all this. It's as if I'm expected to care, but not care, or at least not care very much. I can't prevent another dark night, have no idea how to start. But the profound social isolation and alienation that gave rise to this horrific act affects all of us, without exception. 

So we don't know how to feel. We don't know how to go on. "We thought it was part of the show," the survivors said.

And in an awful kind of way, maybe it was.

Crazy cats: nutty, funny cat gifs!

Flipper never had it so good. Interspecies romance at its finest. (Let's not get into animal hybrids here: catphin? Dolphat?)

Ohhhhhhhhh. . . yeahhhhhhhhh.

Feladdin and his flying litterbox!

Something tells me these two were trained. At least poor Doggie fell on something soft.

This is a classic. But I can't quite figure it out! Looks like an endless loop of sliding kittens.

Without a doubt, THE cutest cat gif to date. But there's always next week.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Don Draper and the shifty scientist

There's nothing I love more than old ads (except maybe old cartoons), and this one just reached out and grabbed me. Pure sixties nostalgia, sleek and sophisticated, which of course reminds me of my all-time-favorite TV series. . .

Et voila. This took very little photoshopping, was the exact size and head angle, and had a similar attitude of kibuki-like enigma. Don's in a little more contemplative mood than our "scientist and educator", who has the shiftyiness of someone who's about to blow up Cleveland. But they are oh-so-the-same: the skyscraper background, the clean boxes full of statistics giving the whole thing an air of - what? Of not-rotting-your-body-out-with-horrendous-cancerous-tumors-that-kill-you-before-you're-40?

Don's particular about his Luckys, but for the sake of the ad he must have been persuaded to switch. Now, wouldn't that be something - Don actually DOING ads? Posing for ads, I mean? Isn't he perfect? Isn't he the most amazing - I mean, he's the kind of guy who just smells good. Nothing more to say about it.

Half-alive in the barren land of publication

This isn't the clip, oh no, this isn't the clip  I wanted at all. If you've ever watched this big lumbering thing on TV - and for some reason I do, every year at Easter time, even though the story of Moses has nothing whatsoever to do with Easter - you'll know that the good part comes AFTER this scene. In which Moses crawls on his belly on the scorching sand, while Cecil B. deMille says stuff like "pitiless days, forlorn nights, only the scorpion and the cobra for his companions", while it just gets better and better as Moses squeezes his wineskin or whatever-it-is (canteen?) into his mouth for the very last drop of water. Then he sort of collapses and all these women come after him, but we won't be bothered with that.

In short, it's about an ordeal in the wilderness, a test of endurance and faith.

It's also all about a certain email I received today, a certain message, not a surprise, mind you, the only surprise was in the timing, but the timing was quite a surprise, yes, quite a surprise indeed.

For it was a rejection of a manuscript I submitted to a literary press, oh, some time ago.

Try JANUARY 2011.

Yes. That is how long it took to get my "no". In the interim I made several inquiries, mainly because I had been wildly excited when they expressed interest in seeing my work.

They asked for it. They asked for ME!

Then came the trek, the miserable trek, the long and miserable trek that nearly dried up my brain, let alone my hope.

This was the biggest press who had ever shown serious interest in me. Maybe it would work out! All I had to do was deliver the manuscript in person (none of this electronic nonsense, no sir, and who trusts the mail anyway?) across 20,000 miles of uninhabitable desert. Sounded fine to me. I love hot climates. 

But just in case, I wrapped one of those thingies around my head to keep the sand out of my ears.

The desert was pitiless, my friend, just like Moses' Land o' Cobras and o' Scorpions. It was a long hard ride as I tried to balance myself between reality
and hope. 

Pretty damn hot out there, but luckily Fulton the Camel was more than willing to carry the immense burden of paper (all 12,000 pages).

Along the way, Omar and I met some pretty weird types who had been out in the sun too long. This guy who forgot his clothes, and speaking of Moses, there was this guy who was looking at a burning BOOK!

My horse got tired after a while, so I had to find a suitable mount. He moved kind of slow, but didn't seem to mind the heat.

What can I say? Shit's shit. It took nine months to deliver the thing there, and nine months to get home again. Exactly a year and a half.

That's two pregnancies, back-to-back.

Why was I so surprised when the answer was "no"?

I wasn't. Surprised, I mean. Just devastated. Nothing like a hard punch in the gut after two pregnancies' worth of hope.

I mean, don't we all know it's better to rip the bandaid off fast? Must it be stretched out to a year and a half?

The only good thing is that I made a new friend, and he hasn't eaten me yet, maybe because he's made out of some alloy or something.  And Abu ben Adam (may his tribe increase!) has become my best bud, even though he insists on borrowing my lipstick and sunglasses.

I may make fun of all this, because it's the only way I can keep profound depression at bay and try to stifle the dreams I've nurtured for more than fifty years. It sort of works. No it doesn't, but the really stupid thing is, I haven't given up hope even though I KNOW I should have, long long ago.

Meanwhile, my manuscript, fading from yellow to brown and lying perfectly camouflaged in the desert, awaits discovery and spectacular success in the publishing world. . . after I die.

Should I slit my. . . sleeve?

Have you ever owned a shirt or dress that fit great but had too-large sleeves? Do you ever think of just making small changes to shirts or dresses simply to have a new look? A dress or shirt that fits perfectly, but has an issue with the sleeves, is easily fixed by changing the look of the sleeves. You don't have to have a lot of sewing experience to create new sleeves, and in some cases, you don't need to sew at all!

Blogger's note. I don't know how I end up in these things, these weird things. All I wanted was a bit of advice on clothing alteration - which I hate doing - but when I got an incredible bargain on a beautiful long-sleeved blouse and discovered the sleeves were 3" too long, and when I further discovered it would cost more to get the bloody thing altered than it cost to begin with, I was determined to find some fast-and-easy, no-sweat methods of shortening sleeves.

I knew such methods didn't exist, but I thought I'd try it anyway, like you'd look up a home remedy (such as relief for crackling ears). These always end up being entirely useless, but in this case the alteration methods were so bizarre and incomprehensible that I just had to pass them along to you, Gentle Reader, mon cherie, light of my life. (Come on over here.) I assure you this is strictly cut n' paste and I didn't change a word of it. It was too good to be true, just the way it was. So. . . take up your scissors, and prepare/beware! 

A quick no-sew method for changing sleeves is to use a giant, gold safety pin. You'll find the pins, in different sizes and colors, at any craft store. The pins are made so that the head screws off and allows you to slide beads onto it. So, you won't slide the beads onto the pointed end of the pin, but onto the opposite side. When the bead pattern of your choice is in place you can then screw the head of the pin back on.

(Blogger's note. "Giant gold safety pin"? What the fxxx? I have never seen one of these in my entire life. And what's with this screwing off the top of the giant safety pin and putting beads on it, but "not on the pointed end"? Sounds about as easy as screwing them on your elbow.)

Now open the pin, slide it over your sleeve with the beads on the top part of the sleeve, then gather the sleeve. Close the pin and you've created a new look for the sleeves as well as the shirt. The beads are showing on the outside of the sleeve and the whole sleeve is gathered to make it much shorter. This is a great way to correct shirts and dresses that have sleeves which are much too long. The great thing is, you can change the beads at any time, and you can use the same pins on several different outfits.

(OK! - if you want giant gold safety pins with beads on them stuck to your sleeves.)

Create a cute, unique look for sleeves by first laying the shirt flat on a table. Find the center of the sleeve, opposite the sleeve seam in the underarm area. Crease the fold of the sleeve. Cut a slit from just above the hem to almost at the shoulder area. Now hem the slit. Start near the top or bottom of the slit and stitch around it. Try to turn the sleeve, when you get to the top and to the bottom, so that you'll create a point rather than a rounded look at the points of the slits.

(Uhhh. . . what the hell is going on with this? I'm going over and over it. "Find the centre of the sleeve", OK. Crease the fold of the. . . cut a slit? - waitwaitwait, cut into the fabric just like that? "From just above the hem to almost at the shoulder area" is so vague and confusing it frightens me. I think it means you just take some big old scissors and grab the sleeve and hack the hell out of it. I never knew you could "hem a slit" without turning the whole thing into a bloody mess.  The rest of the instructions are completely unintelligible. "Turn the sleeve" (turn it where, how?), "points of the slits"? This is against the laws of physics, sorry. And once you've got that big ol' slit running down your sleeve, then what?

But it ain't over yet. . .

Do something similar by first cutting the hem off sleeves that are too long. Cut the slit and hem it. Sew a piece of fabric around the hem area of the sleeve. This piece should be long and hemmed on one long side. Sew the new piece around the hem area of the sleeve. Make sure the ends of the new piece extend beyond the slits on each end. That way, you can tie the new piece of fabric into a knot. The new look, of a slit with a tied sleeve, is cute for t-shirts and similar sleeves. It can also give a dressier look to simple outfits.

(This woman is obsessed with slits! Doesn't she know this is a family blog? Tying a slit into a knot is even more bizarre. I don't think I've ever seen anyone with their sleeves tied in knots, nor do I wish to. As for that "dressier look". . . I think the doggie below wins the prize for that.)

Completely change the look of some sleeves by using elastic to gather them upward instead of around the arm. Start right below the shoulder seam and begin stitching elastic down the sleeve, opposite of the underarm seam. Crease or iron the fold so that you'll have a guide for the elastic. Use eighth-inch or quarter-inch elastic to gather the sleeves. Use a straight stitch, stretch the elastic slightly, and stitch all the way down to the hem area. Stop above the hem, or take the hem out, put in the elastic, then stitch the hem back in again.

(This one sounds downright hazardous. I think all that gathered elastic could snap back in your face like a slingshot and possibly knock out an eye. I would imagine that this method would indeed "completely change the look" of your sleeves, not to mention rearrange your face.)

Changing the sleeves in an outfit can completely change the look of the shirt or dress. It's easy to change them in many different ways to create all new looks for your garments. Whether you sew or not you can still change the look of many outfits. If you have a dress or shirt with sleeves that are too long, or you simply want a new look for an old outfit, use one of the above techniques to change the sleeves. It's easy, cost little, but will give you a whole new look!

(I must say, I do love her optimism and unassailable confidence. I'd like to introduce her to Julian, the man who taught me how to cure an ear infection by rooting around in my ear with a Q-tip. What he lacks in competence and knowledge, he more than makes up for in sheer lunacy. These two sound like they were made for each other.)

Why this scared the living shit out of me

OK, you have to realize one thing: this came out in 1957, so I was exactly three. So I had no idea at all why this grotesque little cartoon man was standing there making those grotesque little noises, or why those other lumpkins were marching back and forth holding signs I couldn't read.

I remember my older siblings saying a word that also made no sense: "Bilko." It reminded me of Bosco in milk, or something you'd feed a dog, like Milk Bone. Later I found out what it is to be "bilked". I remember little or nothing about the show except for a character named Doberman. (Ironically, the actor who played Doberman would later do the voice of one of the characters on Top Cat.) This got all mooshed together with Car 54, Where Are You? which I liked much better, cuz who doesn't love Fred Gwynne pre-Munster?, and cuzz there was a character played by Al Lewis (Grandpa Munster!!) named Schnauzer, another type of dog. See, it's all connected. Magic.

But when you're three, do you know any of this? When you're three, you sit in the middle of the room pounding wooden pegs into one-o-dem-dar t'ings, then turn it over and pound them in the other way.  I remember the black, smudgy, infinite depths, the flickering primitive cathode images that seemed made of phosphorescence and soot. I have such primeval memories of Ernie Kovacs that I think he became part of my developing brain stem.

Only one thing scared the bejeezus out of me worse than Bilko, and that was Topper. Topper was terrifying! Cups and hats and canes and things flew around in the air and you couldn't even see the strings. Why was this happening? What were those voices? Topper was sort of old when I saw it, coming on very late at night along with Love That Bob and I Married Joan ("what a pearl, what a girl, what a wife!").  I thought Ann Sothern was called that because she was southern. I thought Gail Storm was a real name.  I didn't get it, obviously. Didn't get it at all.

And just like that, she was gone

She would never say where she came from
Yesterday don't matter if it's gone

While the sun is bright
Or in the darkest night
No one knows
She comes and goes

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you
When you change with every new day
Still I'm gonna miss you...

Don't question why she needs to be so free
Shell tell you it's the only way to be

She just can't be chained
To a life where nothing's gained
And nothing's lost
At such a cost

There's no time to lose, I heard her say
Catch your dreams before they slip away

Dying all the time
Lose your dreams
And you will lose your mind.
Ain't life unkind

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday
Who could hang a name on you
When you change with every new day
Still I'm gonna miss you...

Why not blow your brains out?

Public Health Care Option 

Crackling in Ear

November 13, 2011  Posted by Julian

Blogger's note: Since coming down with the Virus from Hell in San Francisco - where I left my heart, my wallet and my health - I've had a residual effect that's driving me crazy. I get a crackle in my left ear - actually, it's more like cannon-fire - whenever I swallow. I realize this is probably due to a bit of infection lingering in the eustachian tube and won't clear up except with antibiotics. But last time I tried to get antibiotics out of my doctor I had to get down on my belly and grovel. She simply does not dispense them any more.

Ever.

It doesn't matter how sick you are. She won't give them to you. From handing them out like candy, a way to quickly dispatch nuisance patients and cycle them out of the office without listening to them, the pendulum has swung violently the other way. Doctors have been "told" (by whom? The Big Brother of Doctorhood?) not to do it any more because, as the snappy little TV jingle puts it, "not all bugs need drugs".

But I know why this happened, and it's ALL OUR FAULT. People came in sick, and because they wanted to feel better (and because doctors had been telling them to do this so they'd feel better), they'd ask for antibiotics. So because of  all that overprescribing, which is our fault, NOT the doctors', over time the drugs lost their potency (though that's probably due to all the antibiotics pumped into fish, chicken and carrots to make them grow faster and bigger and to have a shelf life of approximately 100 years).  So all of a sudden it's NOT cool to prescribe antibiotics, meaning doctors have had to find a whole new way of getting rid of patients fast.

They do this by shaming them for even thinking of asking for antibiotics, no matter how sick they are.

One of the more disgusting features of this bug was an eye infection. Pus was running out of my deeply-bloodshot eyes, which were stuck together when I woke up in the morning and had to be pried apart.

"They look fine to me," she said.

I begged; I pleaded. I could not see. Things swam before my eyes, which felt like they were on fire. Finally, with a purse-mouthed look that seemed to say, "well, OK, if you want to be a total hypochondriac about it", she dispensed a tiny bottle of drops that cleared it all up in two days.

But the ear problem, it goes on, along with a raw patch in my throat that migrates around like a storm system. At the height of this illness, which my doctor describes as a "summer cold", it was lodged in my larynx and I could barely swallow or eat.

Too bad it didn't last long enough for serious weight loss.

Anyway, looking up the billion or so foolproof home remedies on the internet, I found lots of wonderful things such as drinking apple cider vinegar and painting iodine on the inside of your wrist. It seems anyone and everyone can assume the demeanor and expertise of a doctor on the net. When I got reading this one, I had a "huh?" reaction followed by a "Jesus God" one.

This essay, which turns out to be written by some guy named Julian, is posted on a site called Publc Health Care Option. Sounds good, eh? Sounds reputable. So why not just get a Q-tip and start rooting away inside your infected ear? Never mind that any doctor worth his or her salt would say you should NEVER try to clear up an ear infection with a Q-tip or anything else that is smaller than a baseball bat. It pushes wax and debris deeper into the eustachian tube and may even rupture the eardrum.

But hey, this Julian guy. . . I like his confidence, not to mention the fact that he doesn't tell us to pour iodine in our ears or wave a dead cat over our head at midnight. Instead, he gives us the Valsava Maneuver, which apparently is at least three different things, none of which make any sense. 

I honestly don't know what language this was in originally, as obviously it's one of those automated internet "translations" that completely destroys meaning and syntax. Or maybe it's in English after all, which makes it even worse. In any case, it sure is repetitive, as if Julian is trying to pound his medical points home.

WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! But do read it as sheer entertainment, and as a cautionary tale about trying internet home remedies. I'm thinking of making one up myself, a warm horseshit compress maybe, to see how many people respond with, "Hey, this really works!"


(Please note. I have encountered English even more badly-fractured than this in medical doctors who were foreign-trained, not that it makes any difference now that  medical schools require a course in Indifference 101.)

Listening to a consistent crackling sound in the ear might be a trigger for concern. A lot of of us usually disregard modest afflictions like ear challenges in the hope they will just go away, or because they are not debilitating enough to disrupt a everyday regimen. Nonetheless, it can be constantly superior to handle a symptom rather then a affliction, and arrest it in advance of it gives rise to supplemental problems.

 

Crackling in Ear – Leads to Listed beneath are some triggers that could bring about a crackling sound inside your ears. Ear wax This is certainly amongst one of the most common brings about for listening to a crackling sound in your ear, and quite possibly the easiest to solution. Use an ear wash from the neighborhood drugstore to get rid of the excess ear wax and unclog ears.

You could possibly even use a Q-tip to remove any wax buildup within your ear. The ideal time for you to use a Q-tip is immediately after a sizzling bath, if the warmth and steam have had a softening effect within the ear wax. Keep in mind to get very watchful when inserting a Q-tip into your ear, taking care not to push also deep as this could induce severe damage like a ruptured ear drum.

Congestion/Sinusitis You could possibly experience crackling sounds inside your ears if you have inflamed sinuses or chest congestion. These signs often display up together along with the quickest approach to get relief is always to use decongestants. Often, it’s possible you’ll hear a crackling sound in your ears when swallowing, which can be the consequence of fluid create up as part of your ears. Untreated, this may lead to ear infections.

Steam inhalation might also offer some reduction, and is also advisable for folks who may have weak chests or simply a tendency to endure from congestion. To the right way inhale steam, use hot, although not boiling water.

Valsalva Maneuver


Area the bowlful of drinking water on a secure floor, cover your head having a towel and inhale through your nose. In case your nose is blocked, you might come across it less difficult to inhale by your mouth. Once you will get some relief from congestion, you might discover that the crackling in your ears when chewing or swallowing has ceased. Eustachian Tube Dysfunction (ETD) It is a ailment wherever blockages build while in the eustachian tube. The eustachian tube is actually a thin tube which connects the center ear to the throat. For clarity, have a search at a human ear diagram.


Construct up of fluid while in the ear can cause Eustachian Tube Dysfunction, among the indicators of which can be hearing a crackling within the ear with loud noises. ETD could also come about as an extra situation if you have a cold, and the signs or symptoms of crackling sounds in the ear will proceed till the chilly has run its course. It’s possible you’ll acquire a blocked Eustachian tube like a end result of fluid or mucus, which prospects into a assemble up of pressure on a person aspect in the ear. This strain will get released once you stretch your jaw, yawn, chew or swallow.

Valsalva Maneuver

It is an additional cause you may listen to a crackling sound or a popping sound within your ear whenever you conduct these steps. Crackling in Ear – Solutions Some simple approaches to tackle crackling seems within your ear are as follows. Yawning or stretching your jaw: Often this uncomplicated motion can cause a popping sound within your ear and put an close into the crackling sound you hear. Chewing gum/sucking on the lozenge: It really is widespread for the ears to receive blocked or to hear a crackling sound when you are in the substantial velocity elevator or with a flight. Some individuals also knowledge ear soreness when with a plane for the duration of consider off and landing. This can be as a result of stress fluctuations that occur. Chewing on one thing can assist relieve this ache.

Valsalva Maneuver

This really is to assist release any pressure made up in your ear. The Vasalva Maneuver includes pinching your nostrils collectively when your mouth is shut after which attempting to exhale with power. Properly doing this workout will crystal clear your ears and stop any crackling seems. The Valsalva maneuver is very powerful in conditions the place higher altitude results in the sensation of blocked ears. In case you find that the solutions over will not offer considerably relief, it truly is suggested that you stop by an ENT professional, who’ll be greater equipped to diagnose your difficulty. Though ‘crackling in ear’ could be a significant irritation, quite a few usually dismiss it or postpone seeking help. Nevertheless, correct care may offer substantial relief and assist in arresting it easily.

Post-post-script. I don't know what I did wrong, but it appears that I have stepped on an internet minefield. I never in my born days wanted some sort of obnoxious pop-up ad on my blog - I didn't willingly make it happen. Maybe it was that link to the Valsalva Maneuver (which, by the way, was a severe warning not to do it), or the fact that Julian's medical treatise came off a bizarre and totally shitty site featuring people who have about as much medical training as Abbott and Costello. Never mind: I just want this OFF me! I tried going on the net for information about this and got so much gibberish and arcane bafflegab that I became totally depressed. I don't know what any of it means. Makes me feel like an obsolete old horse.

If this is a one-time thing, then fine, I will bite the bullet. But perhaps my blog's immune system has been violated by some virus: ironically, in a post about trying to get rid of viruses.

Hosting these things is spozed-ta earn you all sorts of money, isn't it?, but you can't do that if you don't even know it's there, can you? If you have it forced on you? Someone else is making all the money, obviously.

Now I have TWO viruses to get rid of.