‘ ‘ ‘ Have you ever thought Big Tobacco was wicked for helping people unwittingly kill… ‘ ‘ ‘ Have you ever thought Big Tobacco was wicked for helping people unwittingly kill themselves? Legend has it that at Big Tobacco HQ in Virginia, there is a smoking patio ‘mdash; but no one smokes. Turns out the people that sell you the coffin nails know better than anyone how your favorite way to kill five minutes will kill you. ‘ ‘ ‘ In fact, I hear right at the top of the agenda when you get hired for a job at Big Tobacco ‘mdash; even a custodial position ‘mdash; is a week of Japanese brainwashing that immunizes you to both the allure of cigarettes and the cancer troubles of others. They fix you with that ‘let them eat cigarettes’ attitude. ‘ ‘ ‘ That’s old news. Let’s consider a more shocking revelation. The most nefarious schemes to enable your self-destructive impulses are not to be found at Big Tobacco, but at Big Q-tip, which acts like it doesn’t know why you’re buying those Q-tips. Everyone knows the real reason: You want to stick them in your ears.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ It feels great to stick a Q-tip in your ear, to twirl it around, to scratch the sides of your ear canal, to unblock the earwax and let the summer breeze reach in. Sticking a Q-tip in your ear combines the satisfaction of a back scratch and eating a peppermint pattie into one experience. That’s why everyone knows you are buying those Q-tips to stick in your ears. ‘ ‘ ‘ The uncomfortable truth is manifest in the great precautions Big Q-tip takes to cover its tracks. On the back of the Q-tip box is a list titled ‘A Houseful of Uses.’ There is no mention of ears in that houseful, although the box does recommend using Q-tips to ‘delicately care for newborn’s umbilical cord.’ A smokescreen. ‘ ‘ ‘ Another use is described under the heading ‘Sparkling Eyes.’ You’re supposed to get the Q-tips wet, put them in your freezer, and then, when your eyes get puffy, take the Q-tips out like little popsicles and dab your eyelids. I followed the Sparkling Eyes plan, and it is not as satisfying as the standard operating procedure. Anyway, it’s hard to argue that poking icicles at your eyes is an exercise wholly free of risk. You could deafen yourself with one end of the Q-tip and then turn it around and blind yourself ‘mdash; a two-pronged attack. ‘ ‘ ‘ In any case, the Houseful of Uses rings less than sincere. The idea of a common bathroom staple telling you what to do with it is pretty suspicious. Does toilet paper try to explain what it’s good for? Big Tobacco, at least, never acts shocked that people are outright lighting its products on fire and sucking on them in like wild men when the things are really meant for building tiny cabins. ‘ ‘ ‘ It might interest the empiricist in you to know I did an experiment comparing a Q-tip box side by side with a bag of cotton balls. The Q-tip box suggests 1,400 percent more uses than the cotton balls bag, and this is only after I generously tallied ‘great for sensitive skin’ as a suggested use in the cotton balls column. What’s really noteworthy is that consumers seem to know what to do with cotton balls, but once the cotton migrates to the end of a little stick, we’re at a loss. ‘ ‘ ‘ The whole affair masks a deep insecurity, a thin cotton coating over an abysmal well of moral evasion. Maybe Big Q-tip isn’t so much telling us, the customers, what we’re going to do with the Q-tips. It’s telling itself ‘mdash; assuaging its conscience, trying to rationalize what it knows deep down is cardinally wrong. The old ‘we’re just enablers’ line doesn’t pass muster for fat-cat Q-tip execs anymore, so they’ve taken to flights of fancy that, in proportion to their infantilism, center on umbilical cords. ‘ ‘ ‘ Or maybe ‘mdash; and this is the really disturbing angle ‘mdash; the lie is manufactured part-and-parcel for our own sakes. Without the Houseful of Uses, we’d feel an indignant outrage ‘mdash; who would buy from people who sell to people who buy a product just to stick in their ears? It lets you face the cashier without feeling like an idiot; it lets you face yourself: ‘If I do stick the Q-tip in my ears now and then, on a lazy afternoon, it was spur of the moment. I’m out to clean violins.’ The Houseful of Uses is a lie bought and sold, and we are the willing buyers. ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ ‘ Once, as a guest in someone’s home, I found a sort of Q-tip dispenser by the sink. Lifting the chrome lid revealed a delectable spiral of Q-tips not unlike a ‘Bloomin’ Onion’ at Outback Steakhouse. Later, when I told the lady of the house how much I loved sticking Q-tips in my ears, she warned it would break my eardrums. But what else could she have had in mind for those Q-tips? Applying hot glue and wiping away excess? I guess the immaculate chrome dispenser, like the fine champagne at a ‘gentlemen’s club,’ is supposed to somehow redeem what is going to take place. But can anything really wipe away such excess? ‘ E-mail Lewis at’ [email protected].