I thank everyone for trying to help me with the Tomato bug problem. I suspect the bugs to be pests. I had noted several tomatoes deformed and damaged in this plant before I saw the bunch of these menacing insects with two separate dark spots on its abdominal region and orange yellow skin color as seen in the image. After reading your answers I took some more photos, pushed some of the insects into an oiled container for closer examination and plucked one tomato with several of these bugs crawling on it. On that tomato, I saw a dark and an orange-yellow insects joined in copulating position while a dark one was seen crawling a little away. I also saw a round depressed scar and a thick linear scar extending from it. Are these bugs the cause of the damage? I will try the Metro DataVac Electric Duster Vacuum cleaner method to physically remove the bugs. I will post back the result after a period of observation.

For many years I followed the old "don't use soap on your face" mantra. Well, here comes my 30's and I'm still getting horrible breakouts. My insurance wouldn't cover the Rx creams from the dermatoloist any more. Some older woman told me to use a mild unscented plain homemade lye soap. I was scared but honestly after the very first use I never looked back. I started making my own and have no regrets. I wish I had the money back I spent on all those expensive acne treatments and face washes. I get a pimple or two during that time of the month or if I get hairspray on my face. A simple benzoyl perozixde cream from the drug store will help.

n2cookin, it sounds like what you have is a pilonidal abscess. If that's the case, the cause, treatment, and prevention is different than that of regular recurring abscesses. There's a lot of misinformation about pilonidals, but there's a lot of evidence that it starts from an enlarged hair follicle. Repeated trauma and stretching of the skin from prolonged sitting, riding a bike or motorcycle, etc. caused the follicle to stretch. Sweat, hair, lint, dead skin cells, etc. then collect in the little pit. Even more stretching and trauma eventually causes the wall of the pit to break. The body then starts an inflammatory reaction, forming pus, redness, and swelling. Pilonidal disease was first really studied by the military, and it was termed "Jeep driver's disease" because soldiers who drove in Jeeps all day were much more prone to the condition. Historically, the treatment has been to carve out a large excision to remove the "cyst." There's a lot of problems with doing that. The skin in that area of the body isn't very vascular, and doesn't heal well. There's also a lot of tension and movement to the wound. As a result, the wounds either take a very long time to heal, or may never heal completely, creating a chronic, open, draining ulcer. The biggest problem is that excavating a large area of tissue isn't usually neccessary at all. Remeber, we're talking about a HAIR FOLLICLE that started the whole mess. A one time episode of a pilonidal doesn't mean your skin is dirty or that you don't bathe enough. It also doesn't mean that you need a surgery, or that it will ever happen again. If it does, I'd do a little more research and make up your own mind about what would be the best treatment plan for you. A good resource is www.pilonidal.org.

I understand the concerns about using dish soap if it tends to dry your hands. That hasn't been a probelm for me, but I do have a child with OCD who tends to wash more than necessary, so for a while I switched from the antibacterial dish soap to a dish soap that was not antibacterial. It was gentler on the hands, and kept my child's hands from cracking (and sometimes bleeding) as they had with the antibacterial soap. Since then, I've diverted my child from constant hand washing to using hand sanitizer in between a normal amount of hand washing, which has solved the problem. Now I can use whatever kind of dish soap I want. But if it doesn't bother your hands, dish soap is a perfectly good hand soap. (My grandmother even used dish soap for shampoo, which I do occasionally for a super cleansing of all hair products from my hair, with no discernible harm.)