In Japan there is a whole culture of ear cleaning. Children and husbands will often lay their heads on the mum’s/wife’s lap as she cleans their ears (shaves the kids’ faces as well but that’s another story).
They use an implement called a ‘mimikaki’ - much more useful than a cotton bud/cutip, pencil or pen and as it has a specific purpose, noone is likely to pick it up and try to use it for other things or GOD FORBID absent mindedly put it in their mouth whilst thinking about what to write.
So for those with ear cleaning fetishes, try and find a Japanese person and ask them to get you a mimikaki - I bought my Dad one and he proudly uses it when necessary. Oh, and they’re cute too, come in all colours and usually with a little ornament on the end.
heh. I’m Korean and my mother cleaned my ears with one of those long things with a little tiny spoon on the end. Man, that felt good. My mother says that when she scratches the dog behind his ears and he leans in and thumps his legs…it reminds her of me as a child getting my ears cleaned and damn near thumping in bliss.
Tibs.
I believe you are describing an eargasm…
Try the drugstore. There is now a little cleaner with a loop on the end specifically for inducing the eargasm. $4.99 well spent…
Speaking of the drugstore, you can also get a special device for cleaning whiteheads/blackheads. (Revlon makes one, and another brand whose name eludes me.) It looks like a little spoon with a tiny hole in the middle (the other brand, which I prefer, is more of a wire loop). You center the hole over the whitehead, push, and it squeezes just that one pore. It’s on my official list of simple, yet amazing inventions.
As for cleaning my ears, part of my regular morning shower routine is to put my shower on the “massage” setting so it only shoots our about 4/5 streams in a pulsating action. I then put my ears in the stream. My family Dr recomended I do it. Seems to work fine.
Bleh, I used to love swimming but now I cannot even go in the water because my ears NEVER let go of the water at all. 
I have to do a quick ‘sop up’ with q-tips whenever I get out of the shower or else I have this KILLER ear ache for weeks on end.
Peroxide DOES help with tons of ear things though, generally doing a good cleaning once a year or so tends to have oodles of gunk pouring out, heh.
Peroxide does indeed dry the ears up to heck though (as it does almost anything else it comes in contact with, Hydrogen Peroxide being an astringent and all), but if also reacts with lots of various forms of gunk and can actually cause them to come shooting out of the ear. 
c-of-cyn, if ear wax is supposed to keep insects out of the ears, why doesn’t it? I’ve had moths (little ones about 1 cm long) in my ears twice. They flapped around in there for an age each time, very very unpleasant sensation and noise, eventually died and came out in bits over a very long time. Went to a doctor the first time but he took a look at the outer ear canal, didn’t use his otoscope or whatever its called to look deeper, said he could not see anything and next patient please…
When I was a kid I used to get blockage in one of my ears. Sometimes due to lying down wrong or jumping. One time I used a toothpick to try and clear it and I pried out a round ball of wax about 1/4 inch diameter, no kidding, it was gross, I can still remember it from so long ago.
I clean my ears religiously now with a Q-tip (try the baby Q-tips sold in the babies section, they are smaller) after every shower. I stick it in and twist it, I usually get yellow gunk out. And when I’m sitting at the computer typing and my ears itch, I stick in the back end of my Bic and twist it. I usually get some yellow gunk out too. That’s a lesson for you guys not to steal other peoples’ pens, who knows what other gross stuff they do with it.
I also love squeezing whiteheads out of my face. That white plug blocks your pores and causes zits. You have to squeeze it out. It’s like clearing a blocked drain, how can you not do it? Just like picking scabs. And if you’re not getting enough zits to squeeze, try eating a lot of fried food.
Squeezing zits, picking scabs, twisting Bics in your ear, back scratching, nose picking, toe jam clearing, these are just some of the bonuses in life. Little things to up you when life is down.
I thought that I just thought so, if that makes sense.
Thanks again for your contributions to this thread – professional (or even just outrageously informed) dopers make the world go 'round for me.
Hoping this doesn’t repeat…I tried to send before but it didn’t work
c-of-cyn & Larry Mudd,
I might add to your comments that this happened to me this year. I was flying during the holidays and simply glad enough to get a flight (airline employee, we have to fly standby). So glad I ignored the cold & sore throat I had.
NEVER AGAIN!
I came home and went to bed for a week, nursing what I thought was the flu. Turns out I had another problem. Yes, I went to the airport apothecary and the doc gave me medicine for clogged ears and sinus infection.
This wasn’t the problem. I finally got to see me regular doctor (remember, this was the holidays, they are generally out of the office) I had a middle ear infection. I took the meds for about a week but kept thinking, “Ah, it will go away.” I had this REALLY NASTY liquid seeping from my ear (which I thought was the ear drops).
Finally, about two weeks after my flight , I woke up to find my face was frozen…well, droopy is more like it and I was deaf. The pressure on my inner ear had pushed against the main nerve in my face. The air-filled space that c-of-cyn mentioned had liquid build-up and this liquid was loaded with bacteria from my original cold.
Needless to say, I was hospitalized for 10 days and had to have surgery on my ear (for those gross-out people, they stick a needle in your ear and make an incision in the drum to relieve pressure and yes, even thought you are anesthetized, you are awake during this procedure).
The recovery was worse. I had to go through daily hearing tests, spatial balance tests (the spinning chair thing), electro-shock thereapy to get the muscles to respond, physical therapy (I had to learn how to blink again, for pete’s sake!), etc. I couldn’t eat and drink properly because I could neither close my lips nor wrap them around a straw. I had to hold my mouth closed so the food wouldn’t fall out.
It was a bit extreme, but I learned my lesson in the very, very hard way. Don’t fly with a cold.
Oh. My. God.
Hey, did you try standing in a dark room and shining a torch in your ear to attract the moth?
KW:
I didn’t explain that point correctly. My mistake. The wax won’t exactly keep insects out of one’s ears, but it will prevent them from thriving in there - that is to say, having a family. The wax is like that mosquito tape many a summer camper applies to the ceiling of their cottage - it traps insects until they die. It’s gross and morbid, but nature is funny like that 
The wax also makes it MUCH harder for biting insects to get down to outer ear skin level, or even worse, your eardrum, to do their biting damage.
TPWombat:
No, but on one of the occasions I was crawling around a tarpaulin that had moths under it. Long story. Better not to ask what I was doing there.
New experiences are good, but if you live a long life and die in your bed without ever getting a moth in your ear once, let alone twice, do not feel any regret.
c-of-cyn:
Thank you, now I know why they did not start a colony.
Ok, I’m confused. Are we talking about zits (blackheads whiteheads and all) or did someone mention something squeezed out of the nose?
I think they’re talking about whiteheads and blackheads.
I have these in my home, and I used to love, when as a youngster, my mother would clean my ears for me. remembers warm fuzzy feeling
Okay, about the nose-squeezing thing: my boyfriend can do this every day of his life, and gobs of the stuff practically shoot out. He has very large pores on his nostrils, and from what I’ve read, this is actually an accumulation of dead skin cells, dirt, sebum, etc. that clog up in there and have to be removed. Strangely, the rest of my b/f’s skin is perfectly clear, but if he lets the nose go for a few weeks, big juicy blackheads start filling up the dilated pores.
I know this is generally held to be reprehensibly foul, but I actually kinda like popping zits. I like digging in my ears, too, but it seems like a lot of people here enjoy this. And why does it feel so good when I rub my eyes really hard?
“Also, is cleaning your ears with q-tips every day really necessary?”
c-of-cyn is right, “It is not necessary to clean one’s ears with a q-tip.” In fact, is is almost never necessary to ‘clean’ one’s ears. People make different kinds and amounts of wax (red, yellow, gooey, dry, etc.) and there probably are people who produce so much sticky wax that they need an occasional reaming out but most people don’t. There is nothing dirty about ear wax.
Referring to white gunk squirting out of the pores: “If you have the opportunity for a good sweat on a regular basis, (exercise or sauna) then that’s as good as squeezing the gunk out.”
Not true at all. The white gunk is oil and old skin cells in sebaceous glands. Sweat comes out of sweat glands, two different things.
If you want to shrink the pores (whiteheads, blackheads) without the joy of squeezing them, you might try benzoyl peroxide.
Referring to putting oil in the outer ear to treat a middle ear problem: “Did it likely help?”
c-of-cyn is correct It was a coincidence. (After all, how many acute hearing losses caused by upper respiratory infections last more than a week?) Fortunately the middle ear (where the problem was) is separated from the outer ear by the ear drum. I say fortunately because you would NOT want to get oil in the middle ear!
“This alcohol treatmet is just not necessary. It wasn’t even necessary when you were an avid lake and river swimmer. whatever bacteria that may have gotten into your ears through that experience stayed in your outer ear (I’m assuming you didn’t have a eardrum perforation here) which is not very prone to infection. Infection IS possible, but not likely since the outer ear has been built to be ‘exposed the elements’.”
Clearly, c-of-cyn has never had swimmer’s ear (otititis externa). It is associated with swimming but is a mystery to me why some people get it and some don’t and why some people swim for years without getting it then get it and have a lot of trouble with it for a few months or years and then don’t get it any more. There are a lot of products sold in the USA to prevent or treat swimmer’s ear. They are concoctions containing various combinations of vinegar, steroids, antibiotics, alcohol, and other things. [Medical Tip: When a lot of completely different treatments are recommended for something, it is usually an indication that none of them work very well.]
“Peroxide does indeed dry the ears up to heck though (as it does almost anything else it comes in contact with, Hydrogen Peroxide being an astringent and all),”
Hydrogen peroxide is not astringent. It is a bleach. It is no more drying than plain water (which can be drying).
“It was a bit extreme, but I learned my lesson in the very, very hard way. Don’t fly with a cold.”
I don’t think that a single case report, even from a Doper, constitutes solid evidence that flying with a cold increases the risk of complicated otitis media. Lots of people with colds fly and don’t get middle ear infections and lots of people get middle ear infections who don’t fly.
“There is now a little cleaner with a loop on the end specifically for inducing the eargasm.”
This site has pictures of various cerumen spoons (AKA ear curettes): http://www.miltex.com/surgical.htm
"Speaking of the drugstore, you can also get a special device for cleaning whiteheads/blackheads. "
And this site has pictures of comedo extractors:
http://www.sic.com.pk/assorted2.html
The official recommendation from Ear Nose & Throat specialists is …
“Never clean you ear canals with anything smaller than your elbow”
So I guess that’s a DON’T then. (Even though it does feel good.)