As long as we are being honest with eachother

I have made a disheartening discovery about myself recently...I seem to be entering the stage in a man's life when ear-hair becomes a problem. I thought that I wouldn't have to face this kind of obstacle until middle-age or even beyond, but I was wrong - 25 years old, ear-hair. Now, I don't look at myself in the mirror much, but the other day as I was shaving (which, by the way, is not very often due to my lack of ability to grow real manly facial hair) I noticed a couple little hairs in the ear. I thought they must be transient, so I tried to brush them away - but no, they were connected. I proceeded to angrily pluck them out as best as I could - painful, I might add. So explain this: I can't really grow sweet sideburns, but I seem to have no problem in the ear-hair department.

Mostly the issue seems to be focused around the tragus. Anatomically speaking, the tragus is that little cartilaginous protuberance on the anterior edge of your external auditory meatus.
Right about here:


And here is what it looks like in microscopic cross-section:


As you can see, it is characterized by superficial keratinizing stratified squamous epithelium, with underlying papillary and reticular dermis surrounding the central elastic cartilage. Most notably, you can observe those pesky little hair follicles. Sorry, I just can't turn it off sometimes. (But seriously, to all the nerds reading this - and you know who you are...you can admit it...come on, I'm telling the world about my ear-hair here - check out Virtual Microscope. It's my school's interactive histology website, and I'm pretty proud of it. It's like playing with a real microscope without the risk of breaking glass slides or squirting your lab partner with safranin stain - I've done both).

Ok, for all the normal (and obviously extremely bored) people still reading this, sorry about getting sidetracked there for a second. I guess I might be trying to distract you all from the fact that this blog is about my disgusting ear-hair. But that's Ok. Because honestly, what good is having a blog if you can't share personal things like this with your closest friends?









...and anyone else in the world with a computer?





















I guess it shouldn't come as any suprise, considering my genetic predisposition to male pattern ear-hairiness...






Marty, my second cousin































Uncle Punjab





































Just kidding, this guy isn't really related to me - I just found his picture on Google.







Bonus info/fun medical fact of the day: The other parts of your external ear have names, too:




Impress your friends. This is the kind of stuff that I get to learn and spend so many hours studying every day. So in a lot of ways, to answer all those questions - yeah, I guess my life really is like "Grey's Anatomy". That's that TV show where people just sit in a library and study all the time, right?

Stay tuned for future blog entries where we will explore the world of the middle and inner ear...and my earwax problems.