Talk Louder, My Ear Has Holes

We are bombarded every day by new and incredible ways to lose weight. There are commercials for diets, pills by the thousands, surgeries, and tons of machines that all claim to have found the secret to weight loss. And I suppose that there are people who lose weight with each and every one of those.

Lately, though, I have been hearing quite a bit about “ear stapling”. For those of you not in the know, this is a process where they take a metal staple and poke it through your ear. According to all of the literature and testimonials, the pounds then just fall off. Whether it works or not I have no clue; but it does make me wonder about a few things.

First, how do you know that the person who is stapling your ears is really a professionally trained ear stapler, and not just some redneck who used to tag cattle? Does anybody police the Ear Stapling community? I’d hate to go through all of the pain of having my ears stapled, only to find that Bubba accidentally stapled the wrong place, and I was gaining weight instead. And I don’t ever recall Matlock threatening to report anybody to the AESA (American Ear Staplers Association).

Second, what kind of staples do they use? If you go to the local office supply or home improvement store, you will find all kinds of staples. Some are for stapling papers, some for wood, and some are for stapling metal things together. So which do they use? What length? Do they use a blunt or a chisel point?

Next, are there other solutions for those of us who want to do things on a not-so-permanent basis? Like, suppose I just need to lose enough to get into that particular pair of jeans for Saturday night, can I just use a paperclip? What about a bobby pin? If I use a nail, will I lose half as much?

Finally, if you walk into work, and someone is chasing someone else with the stapler, how do you know if they are trying to help the person lose weight, or if they have simply gone mad and want to staple their head to the printer? Should you intervene? Will this lead to “Stapler Anxiety” and possibly years of therapy?

All of this lead to one simple thought: who was the first person to think of this? Did they accidentally staple their ear and then figure out 2 weeks later they had lost weight? Or did they first staple their nose, and when that didn’t work, they move onto their cheeks, and so forth until they found a place that worked? Supporters claim this comes from thousands of years of acupuncture, but is it possible that is was accidentally discovered at a punk rock concert?

Hmmm. Maybe that’s the reason them punk rockers were so skinny in the first place.