Lydia’s Blog

Here’s a bit about me. Surgery’s on May 11. Everybody throw down!

Background: Cholesteatoma is a destructive wound of the middle ear and/or mastoid, a process that produces complications by erosion of the temporal bone. The clinical hallmarks of cholesteatomas, namely: invasion, migration, uncoordinated proliferation, altered differentiation, aggressiveness and recidivism, are traits typically associated with the neoplastic cell.

A cholesteatoma can form in the middle ear by means of an improperly functioning eustachian tube. The eustachian tube is a canal which connects the middle ear to the back of the nose. It is responsible for equilibrating middle ear pressure to the pressure in the external environment. This tube is normally collapsed in its resting state and when we swallow or yawn, the muscles around the tube contract and cause the tube to open allowing the influx of air into the middle ear space. When this tube does not work appropriately, a relative negative middle ear pressure is generated and maintained. Over time the intact eardrum begins to retract back toward the inner ear. Eventually a skin-lined sac forms which continues to grow and cause infection and bony destruction.

Erosion of the ossicles or bones behind the eardrum can lead to a conductive hearing loss. The bone over the facial nerve can also be destroyed and a facial paralysis can result. The inner ear is composed of a bony labyrinth which can also be partially destroyed. This can lead to a sensorineural hearing loss and dizziness. The infection can also spread into the veins carrying blood from the brain to the heart. This large vein called the lateral venous sinus can obstruct and cause excessive fluid to accumulate within and around the brain leading to a condition called hydrocephalus. The infection can also spread to the covering of the brain and cause meningitis. In rare circumstances, a brain abscess can result.

Frequently the mastoid bone located behind the ear must be explored to remove any cholesteatoma that may have spread there through the middle ear. Another reason to perform a mastoidectomy is to improve ventilation of the middle ear. Whether the bony partition between the external ear canal and mastoid is removed or not depends on the extent of disease. Canal-wall-down refers to the removal of this bony partition. Canal-wall-up refers to keeping this bony partition intact. The term modified radical mastoidectomy refers to an operation where this bony partition is removed and the eardrum and ossicles are reconstructed. A radical mastoidectomy is an operation where this bony partition is removed and the eardrum, malleus and incus bones are permanently removed so that the inner lining of the large cholesteatoma sac can be safely cleaned in the office. This operation is done when an extensive cholesteatoma is encountered or one that is adherent to the inner ear or facial nerve.

As I got off the tram coming home from work tonight, I noticed a bright, well-designed restaurant right in front of the stop that hadn’t been there the day before.

It’s a hot dog joint…one of several that have sprung up around my painfully cool neighborhood. The one on the corner of Eberswalderstr. and Schoenhauser Allee is always packed with a line out the door.

So. Hot dogs. Berlin’s latest obsession in the realm of nouveau cuisine.

I find this ridiculous on several levels. First, sausages…ranging from Bratwurst to Knaackwurst, are basically already Germany’s national food. You can buy some sort of sausage at nearly every food establishment in the city (save for asian restaurants….sometimes). Moreover, you can purchase salads, sandwiches, dumplings, and cold platters containing sausage (including Wienerwuerstchen–the common hot dog) literally everywhere.

The hot dog joints feature buns and an expanded assortment of condiments. Hooray.

Secondly, Germans are (pardon the term) retarded for whole foods, you know, no preservatives, no colors, lots of nubby ingredients that make you poop six times a day, etc.

What is less healthy than a hot dog? Eating an eraser?

Thirdly, Germans, especially Berliners, are very scornful of obvious symbols of Americana (despite last summer’s bizarre “everyone do cowboy” phase).

I refuse to believe Gray’s Papaya has influenced this trend at all. It’s not about real American urbanism. No, this is about urban kitschophilia, it’s about getting your Texas chilidog on in the middle of the pomo-”I work in media because that way I can wear velour jogging suits every day”-spitoon I happen to live in.

Picture this: there would be nothing more gauche that a typical midwestern couple enjoying a hot dog at a hot dog joint on Kastanienallee.

No…on Kastanienalle, you chase your hot dog with organic, free-trade espresso.

I got a ride home from the opera tonight. In a car I didn’t have to pay to ride inside.

When this nice male colleague of mine stopped in front of my house, we chatted for a second, then went through the typical “sleep well” or “thanks for the ride” or “see you on Sunday” niceties before I went to step out.

As I was getting out of the car, I cracked a pretty choice fart directly back into the car…at, as it were, approximately the height of his face.

A million thoughts ran through my head at once. Do I just slam the door and run? Do I turn around, crouch back into the car and excuse myself? Try to waft away the odor? What do I say tomorrow? “Hey, sorry about contaminating your vehicle in the vilest of ways last night!”?

Ignore or excuse…always a tough question.

You better believe I just ran off. Still, what would a normal person who wasn’t raised in a barn do? Besides swearing off broccoli at lunch time, that is.

I met a mystic from the future today. That’s what he told me, anyway.

He wasn’t kidding, not even a little.

He needed to use my cell phone. He said he needed to use mine (even though he had one) because his matrix was overloaded.

I let him.

Okay…I have a new one.

Pfuetze=Puddle, Fotse=Pussy

I accidentally told a guy at a convenience store, late at night (after he remarked at my soaked pants leg).

“Yeah…I sort of stepped into a pussy” (the word for stepped can also mean kicked)

He kind of paused for a second and then said…”that wet, eh?”

I fucking hate this language.

I have writers block.

Basically, there’s so much shit coating the walls of this cramped room I call a life, that I can’t edit any of it down into manageable, blog-sized nuggets.

There’s work. And there’s…well, no…there’s work. 6 weeks of Orest, then 6 weeks of Rosenkavalier, during which time every spare moment is devoted to the Grazer Grand Macabre.

Le Grand Macabre is the greatest opera ever. My luck is that I get to remount the greatest production ever of the greatest opera ever in a fatty opera house in a beautiful Austrian city during springtime.

Get this: Graz is in Steiermark. Beat that.

The staging is INSANE. The Berlin cast was young, game, and generally fabulous in every way. The cast in Graz is almost entirely new. I looked up the individual singers, photos and all on the Graz website.

The two gentlemen playing two particularly athletic and nasty roles (I do distinguish) in Graz are, well, considerably older than the Berlin cast. Considerably.

I just wrote to the wigs down south to confirm with these two gentleman that sucking each other off and anally raping others on stage will be okay. Not to mention doing the can-can, push-ups, speaking Swedish, and spending long periods of stage time with their pants around their ankles.

God, what else.

Tonight at dinner I noticed how tall my favorite sister Toby is when he beaned the shit out of himself going through a doorway in a Mexican restaurant.

I decided to go greasy today withOUT the do-rag.

My apartment is a shithole.

Last week, the most gorgeous pair of chocolate-brown leather vintage 1970’s harness boots came into my life via global priority via some woman in Oregon via eBay via my much-abused Amex via my boot addiction. Looking at, or even thinking about them really helps rehearsal go by faster.

My eyebrows look like bike-squooshed caterpillars.

That’s about it.

I’m out of juice.

In every way.

I got home from work really late today, and for some reason decided to try krumping.

Wow. I think I really hurt myself.

I have to translate a lot in rehearsals these days…due to a British Marschallin. This is made extraordinarily difficult by our very literate director, who pulls no punches when it comes to descriptive language.

So I’m caught trying to translate intranslatable German word play…equivalent to such English terms as “wet behing the ears”, “caught between a rock and a hard place”, “the grass is always greener”, etc.

He whipped one out today that literally translated into something like “putting the fist behind the ear”, which in hindsight, I guess means setting out to upbraid someone, and then pussying out.

By that point I was so tired, I think I said “…it’s like you’re fisting him in the ear.”

The British soprano stared at me for a while. “Okay then, what’s my motivation”.

There is a cool feature on Friendster Blogs that lets you see how certain searches lead people unwittingly to your own, innocuous blog.

Some search engine favorites from my blog have been:

“guy jerking his cock” (from the entry The Agony and the Ecstasy)
“cazzo porn” (from Che Cazzo)
“orientalische porn” (from The N word)
“skinhead songs” (from Skinheads, Barbra and me)

I’m actually pretty vain about my blog, and am searching for ways to have people other than my mom and fiance read it regularly. At least I have an entire world of pervs out there checking out my neurotic ramblings.

Until this silly thing brings me legitimate fame, however, I guess it’s golden showers, foot fetish, eva longoria naked, pregnant sluts, hairless pussy and norwegian mohammed cartoon for me!

It’s been a pretty rough week for me for several reasons. One exception to this rule was the installation of my new toilet, about which I am seriously excited.

I’ll give a bit of backstory. At 3 am on Monday night, I heard a knock at my door. The mildly retarded woman living in the apartment directly under mine wanted to show me something…

…it was raining in her apartment.

Sure enough, my toilet had exploded. The building’s administration wouldn’t be open again until Thursday. Awesome.

So, I threw down every towel and sheet in the apartment, and spent the next two days peeing in the bathtub and shitting at the Thai restaurant in my building’s storefront.

On Thursday a plumber came, took one look, and said he’d come back with a new toilet. Before he had a chance to get out of the door, I grabbed his sleeve, and hissed one very important word into is ear…”Tiefspueler” (deep flusher).

The standard German toilet is a very strange thing. It’s built with a viewing shelf. Not to be totally crass, but well, it’s unavoidable. Here goes.

Once you pinch off a log, it basically just sits there, dry, five inches under your ass until you flush. Accordingly, when you do flush, your….uh…product is not whisked cleanly away…rather, you are expected to use the brush next to the toilet to erase any streakage (of which there is always invariably some). The day after an especially dense meal, you can pretty much expect to use that same brush to gently coax your nutty load off the shelf. It’ll get stuck.

Upon coming to Germany I developed a technique called “The Magic Carpet” in order to mitigate the total and illogical nastiness of the viewing shelf system. If you place a sturdy layer of toilet paper on the shelf as a lining of sorts, turds sail happily and cleanly from the shelf as a unit.

Still. It’s just fucking foul.

I’m told that the theory behind the viewing shelf has something to do with the practice of checking one’s stool for color and consistency as a measure of diet and general health.

Let’s hope that’s not true. Germans have enough going against them.

Anyway I asked for what amounts to a German rarity…an American-style toilet in which shit falls into stench-mitigating water, after which it is quickly and tidily flushed away.

The rest of my bathroom has pretty much been destroyed by this incident…the plumber couldn’t screw the toilet into the ground, for example, because the floor had been so badly rotted out by water and other fun substances.

So he threw down a slab of concrete in order to give the new toilet a solid base.

I see it as a pedestal.