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Add one part satire to two parts sincerity. Sprinkle on a couple of rants. Stir liberally.
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Who are you?
I'm the newly-appointed Future editor at Business 2.0 and the former San Francisco correspondent for Time Magazine.
Wow, so does this mean everything you write reflects Time Inc's opinion? Or do you perhaps have some sort of standard disclaimer to the effect that it doesn't?
Naturally, the opinions contained in this blog are not those of my employers. In fact, some opinions may be the polar opposite of my employers. Some may be the same, for all I know. Hey, it's not like I ask my employers their opinions about everything in the news, okay? Let's just say that if this were a Venn diagram with one circle marked "my opinions" and the other one marked "my employers' opinions", there would doubtless be some overlap. But neither I nor my employers are able to pinpoint exactly where that overlap is.
What is this Daily Blah thing?
An experiment for a column I wrote about blogging back in December 2001. All these years later, I haven't been able to kick the habit.
If it's called Daily Blah, how come you don't ... hey, wait, you're writing every day!
See? Told you I'd try harder.
Mister, you talk funny. Are you one of them furrners?
Why yes I am, as it happens. I was born, raised and educated in Great Britain. I've been living in the U.S. since 1996 and identify as British.
I say, old chap, you forgot the "u" in "colour."
No I didn't. I may identify as British, but I am also an American journalist writing for an American audience about mostly American issues. These two different sides of me are a constant source of tension. Nevertheless, Daily Blah will adhere to American English grammar and spelling.
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Daily Blah for... Thursday, March 14, 2002
If Ears Had Walls
Ugh. That flu I had last week has mutated over the last five days into a debilitating deafness -- in other words, my eustachian tubes, the bits behind my eardrums, are blocked with fluid. You really wanted to know that, didn't you? Stay with me, because it gets interesting. I should point out that this is karmaic revenge: when my sister was hit with the same problem a month ago, my first reaction was the offhand remark: "ever heard of a Q-tip?" Now I'm paying the price, and I'm quite happy to do so; that was a rotten thing to say (and before you write in, yes, I know you're not supposed to use Q-tips in ears). Nevertheless, I've gone to war with the condition. And the most useful thing I've done was not my trip to the doctor; it was doing research on the Internet. Antibiotics and Allegra are all very well, and I'm sure they'll help me get through this thing in the long run. But you would not believe the things I've discovered. Most of it masquerades as advice to divers and air travelers (who often get afflicted with the same kind of muffling deafness, especially if they dive or fly with a head cold). Divers call it "middle ear squeeze," and there are a number of named maneuvers to get around it.
First off, there's the Valsalva maneuver, which in my uneducated state I called "pinching your nose, closing your mouth and blowing really hard." (How hard is it to come up with a maneuver to put your name to, anyway? That Heimlich idea was pretty simple, too.) I was doing Valsalvas before I knew what they were, but it turns out I was dead wrong. I was blowing too hard, thus closing the end of my tubes. The harder I blew, the tighter they shut. What I should have been doing was a modified Valsalva -- blow gently. Second is the Frenzel maneuver, which, since it was invented by a Luftwaffe pilot who aimed to more effectively dive-bomb the British, I'm a little wary of: "with nose, mouth and throat closed, use the tongue as a piston, driving the mass of the tongue backward." I haven't quite mastered this one yet. How do I close my throat, exactly? Then comes my favorite, the Toynbee maneuver: swallowing with nose pinched and mouth closed. This works inasmuch as every time I do it, I hear something moving. Finally, there are a couple of unnamed maneuvers (can I claim them?): open your jaw and swallow, which is much harder than it sounds, or raise your soft palate. I'd try that if I knew what the hell my soft palate was.
Of course, these are all just weapons in the wider war against Terror, or at least against whatever terror is in posession of my eustachians. I'm off to the top of Mount Tam, where I'll suck some Jolly Ranchers while doing a couple of Toynbees and a Frenzel.
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