Ear Foam

I received my Blue Yeti microphone today.  It’s huge, capable of crushing lesser microphones as well as the computers attached to them and has some sort of technological juju such that every computer I’ve connected it to recognizes it.  I was in Totem, doing test recordings when I removed my earbuds and a foam pieces decided to stay in my ear. Mr. Anderson quickly volunteered his pen knife to removing it and Dan Rowley recommended a bamboo skewer but as the foam piece wasn’t actually visible from the outside. The next idea ventured was using a fire extinguisher held to the other ear as a way of forcing it out. This was confounded by the fact that I’ve grown rather attached to my tympanic membranes and the foam piece was hallow, that and the ears not being really connected.

Mike Engler provided a pair of plastic forceps that didn’t quite have the gripping strength to pull out the foam piece and I called in the medical big guns of Bridget Kelly who due to a mishearing though that I had a phone stuck in my ear rather than a piece of foam. She was unavailable so I went back to work with the plastic forceps. This is where I learned that if I leave the forceps in my ear and then raise my eyebrows, the forceps point up. Another staffer happened to have a pair of steel tweezers. I eventually met victory during the staff meeting that evening and proudly windmill-slammed the wax-covered foam piece. My ear has never felt cleaner.