Thanks for the tip about the air in a can. That might be
worth a try, but it might also stir up a lot of dust elsewhere
in the printer, so that the strip would get dirty again.
Incidentally, when I posted this on a computer-club listserve,
one of the members wrote back saying he had tried this once, not
with water, but with alcohol--and it erased the markings on the
"linguni" strip!
So...don't clean your printer while you're boozing.