Where Are Your Buccaneers?

Hippies must be killed. Everybody knows it and Cartman has been saying it for a long time, but I can prove it, and it starts with a crossword.

One of the clues in a crossword this week in the SMH was simply, “Cerumen”. The answer had to be (3,3).

I had an ‘E’ at the start of the first word and because of its similarity to albumen, I kept on being falsely led back to the idea that it may have something to do with egg.

It turns out that it means ‘ear wax’. Idly thumbing through my desktop Wikipedia, I looked up cerumen to learn more, and I did!

There are two major sorts of the stuff and different types of people have different proportions of the two. Tracking the differences has been instrumental in anthropologists tracking the migratory habits of indigenous people.

But the first sentence to really catch my eye was:

“The primary components of earwax are the final products in the HMG-CoA reductase pathway, namely, squalene, lanosterol, and cholesterol. It has a bitter flavour.“ (my bolding)

Eeeuuuuuwwwww.

But I read on because this is science. I am discovering without prejudice. I am broadening my horizons… and after the following sentence, I am stockpiling weapons to go out on a hippy killing spree.

“A small but growing fan base, committed to the use of all-natural products, touts its use as a superior organic alternative to other varieties of lip balm.”