Have you seen those nifty black cotton swabs from Muji? They look really cool — well, about as cool as cotton swabs can look — but they actually suck. The whole point of cleaning your ears is looking at the resulting honey-colored gunk, a pleasure that’s wholly denied by the black cotton swabs! But, apparently, we shouldn’t even be cleaning our ears, regardless of the color of the cotton swabs.
It turns out too much cleaning with cotton swabs results in a slow, ever-growing blockage that can result in hearing loss, or worse. So, maybe we should all slow down with our q-tipping, yeah? Not to say we should let the stuff ooze out of our ears and into the view of every person standing next to you on a rush hour subway, because that’s just cruel, and terrifying.
But not as terrifying as clowns. This wasn’t always the case though, as The Atlantic’s satisfyingly thorough history of the clown explains. Turns out, John Wayne Gacy was partially responsible for most of America’s clown-phobic sentiment. But, you know what, regardless of how many people they have or haven’t killed, clowns are just scary. As Stephen King put it on Conan O’Brien, “As a kid, going to the circus, it’d be like 12 full-grown people piling out of a little car, their faces were dead-white, their mouths were red, as though they were full of blood. They were all screaming, their eyes were huge: What’s not to like?”
The idea for the story in The Atlantic was inspired by Twisty the Clown in American Horror Story: Freak Show, and for that I apologize, because we’re all tired of hearing about that show. They should make a New York Horror Story: The Subway, because [NSFL] disgusting shit is going on down there all of the time. The show could just be a live stream of the Times Square station, even. Plus, there’s already a theme song.
Breaking: it’s just been announced that Tom Cruise is making a cameo on Freak Show.
Onto a different type of horror story: the Super Bowl! (Sorry, dad.) You may have heard that Katy Perry is performing between the two halves of the biggest sports game in America, but do you know what those cute football mimes are doing after they throw those precious yellow flags onto the field? Don’t worry — there’s now a handy guide for you. Study up, everyone. You’ve got four months to do it, so long as there are still enough unsuspended players by then. It’s going to be a titanic event, and you don’t want to be clueless while all your friends are watching, right?
Similarly, you don’t want to miss out on this, the alternate ending that James Cameron filmed, edited, and scored for Titanic. I have no idea why it was scrapped, but it is truly great in a truly awful way, and it is perhaps the best way for you to end your week.