WaxVac Sucks! (Does Not Work)

Wax Vac Sucks! (Does Not Work)

Actually, it doesn’t suck. Which is part of the problem.

Boy, this is embarrassing. I can claim to be a consumer products advocate or freelance writer or say that someone gave me it as a gift, but there’s really no escaping the rather personal nature of the problem. It’s disgusting. It’s almost a crime to waste words on it.

Am I really writing about EAR CRUD? Am I really admitting to an EAR

CRUD issue? What’s next? Skid marks? Boogers? Nail clippings?

I think we can all accept as a given that the human body is a rotting, excreting, smelly thing. And we should probably just get over it. Every single product which is meant to disguise or distract from those loathsome facts constitutes a waste of precious resources. Money spent on no stick deodorant represents a theft of social effort better deployed on blowing bad guys up with drones. And the best part of blowing bad guys up with drones is that their rotting, excreting, smelly bodies wind up in other countries.

That said, however, there are personal crud accumulation problems which can severely impact your activities of daily living and overall quality of life.  This is the falling arches, incontinence,  inadequate weenie function, hair loss, wadding ear crud category of common ailments that are the subjects of so many  quack inventions and new age bogus cures. (You can add back problems, hair removal and the heebie jeebies to the mix, if you must. ) All can be conjured as excuses to sell you crap which does not work.

And Wax Vac is more of the same.  In fact, Wax Vac is the poster child for bogus products. It can’t work. It is not designed to work. No effort has been expended on making it work. For bonus points, it is thoroughly cheaply made.

EAR CRUD can be a problem. It can cause people to become temporarily deaf. Treating it using the poking and mashing method (serially deployed by every member of the human race) causes it to wad just beyond the reach of said poking. This is when said EAR CRUD then becomes problematic, impairing hearing and inspiring folks to take all sorts of drastic measures that they know they shouldn’t.

Thankfully, there are several albeit imperfect treatments for the EAR CRUD WAD problem. All treatments have as the action verb part of the process the low manual velocity injection of a quantity of warm water into the ear canal. With repeated effort, this dislodges the crud while spewing mess over your torso and bathroom.  Effective, but not neat.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if here in the push button world of the 21^st Century we had some sort of magnificent vacuum which could safely and completely unclog the crud in one painless and mess free action? That’s the selling point behind the Wax Vac. Sadly, the Wax Vac is not the answer.

Wax Vac’s failure is caused by a simple medical engineering problem. Any vacuum strong enough to dislodge EAR CRUD WADS is also strong enough suck out your ear drum. (Slight exaggeration. But EAR CRUD is really sticky.) It’s also the reason you should never use your Water Pik to clean your ears. Mechanically created force and your ear drum must never meet.

The people who make Wax Vac know this, too.  Wax Vac is too weak to remove anything but the most loose ear stuff—the type that falls out on its own. The EAR CRUD that forms WADS it has no chance with. Unless your ears accrue loose chalk powder for some reason, the Wax Vac has no utility whatsoever. It is a cheap fan mounted backwards in a cup. The power supply is un-moderated from the dry cells and controlled by a simple three way slide switch, one setting of which activates the also useless light. It has all of the electrical sophistication of a K-Mart flashlight. Moreover, the battery covering is of the one pass extrusion manufacture type—the cheapest money can buy.  Not only is it a useless toy, it is a cheap useless toy.

Like the manufacturer of weenie pills, my guess is that the people behind Wax Vac are counting on consumers being too embarrassed to return the product. Please allow me to be embarrassed for all of us. As for you, don’t buy the damn thing. Back to the bathroom with the little hollow rubber onion  with you!

This just in: Per a medical professional I recently consulted (at considerable expense), EAR CRUD is a problem best endured if not ignored. The removal of such, should it become a real impairment, is best left to professionals. You can injure yourself with the acid and bulb over the counter procedure. (As I recently have.) So leave it to a doctor or doctor-like person if it really is a problem. 

Brita Water Filters

The water that comes out of your faucet is fine. It should be. It has passed many miles becoming clean before it wended its way to you. Bottled water is a horrible waste of money. And it’s probably no better than what you get out of the tap.

There, I’ve said it. It’s probably even true--in that statistical sense in which things are true. But just as I lock my car doors when going through bad neighborhoods, every flat I have ever dwelled in has had funky water. It tastes bad. It smells. It is unclear and unclean. It must be bathed before I make ice with it.

Also, currently, per my new humidifier, the water has brown crud in it. Which is to say that the water is hard.

My answer is the Brita Magnum. (Not its real name, which is actually Brita UltraMax.) Damn masculine and superhero sounding for what is, in its civilian identity, a clear plastic goldfish worthy covered tank thing. I’ve had it for a number of years now. I can report that in two years none of its non moving, welded together parts has ever malfunctioned. Funny thing about machines with no moving parts—they seldom break.

Does it work? There has been no detectable funk in my water since the start of deployment. Does that count? Is it worth the some twenty-five dollars I send to Witch Queen Brita via installments through Target every year? As I sit here drinking my well iced, funk free Dr. Pepper, I would have to say so.

Please note: the gravity fed carbon activated filter does zilch against real poison. So if you are living in a fracking area or have arsenic in your water, Brita will be of little help. You need to leave. It also won’t turn wine back into water or make Pine Sol potable. What goes through the Brita filter needs to be mostly water or it won’t come out as water. So you survivalists and alchemists need to look elsewhere.

Swiffer WetJet Mop and Clorox Toilet Wand

No, I am not just rating random household products this evening. I am, rather, actively avoiding writing the conclusion to my no doubt about it future prize winning and best selling science fiction novel, thank you. Actually, both these objects and the Wax Vac share a common marketing theme, which is what brought them to mind.

The pitch on all of these products is that they are helping you avoid using a tried and true but messy conventional procedure. In the case of the Swiffer WetJet and Clorox Toilet Wand they do this through the magic of creating more landfill—and the demand for additional products also designed to be destined for disposal. I’m no Green, as you will soon find out.

Oh, I have Green aspirations. We all do, up until the point the unfluffy non scented one ply chafes our rears. And I also have aspirations of cheapness, of thrift, of not wasting money that I could give to the Burger King. Like most folks, I know that a regulation mop is going to run me eight bucks and two pails about the same. With these things and yearly two dollar infusions of Pine Sol, my floor cleaning needs are fairly much set. If you wash certain floors every week, as I do, your total outlay per application is pennies. And the results are wonderful. Moreover, beyond cleaning, the mop is useful for dry mopping and mopping things up.

The same cannot be said for the Swiffer WetJet, which is degenerate in several ways. It does not mop up spills and it requires an influx of materials, including batteries, to function. What it does save on is the time spent cleaning the mop itself. It does this through the magic of mopping with a tampon. And it doesn’t do this particularly well. Unlike a real tampon, the Swiffer pad isn’t very absorbent because it isn’t all that thick. It mops as well as a mini pad can. For further convenience  and weirdness, it’s armed with duel automatic squirt guns full of soap priced at the cocaine level. Price per application wise, it’s something of a non-starter compared with conventional mopping.

I do, however, have better things to do with my life than mop. It is damn fast. For this reason I have allowed the dual soap gun armed tampon to rob funds meant for the Burger King. But I haven’t thrown out my mop or my dust mop.

Time savings is hardly the issue with the Clorox Toilet Wand, although avoiding cleaning something disgusting is. For those of you unfamiliar with the Clorox Toilet Wand, it is a conventional toilet brush with a detachable head. (For those of you unfamiliar with either toilet brushes or heads, my words will cease to have meaning right about here.) The head is encrusted SOS pad style with SOS pad stuff, making the entire affair essentially nothing more than an SOS Pad Lollipop.

And it’s great. No matter how well maintained your toilet brush is, it is always disgusting. Moreover it is disgusting to clean or have about, even if you have a pastic cozy for the thing. With the wand, you just pop the top off over the trash can and it goes away. It goes away to a landfill where the bluebird of happiness will find it and bring it back to her hatchlings to choke to death on. But at least it’s not in my house and that’s what I want.

Just remember to keep the thing armed and obviously available. Which is strange advice when one considers the subject. 

Better LateThan Never Department:

Coming Soon!