Failing on deaf ears
June 8th, 2008 at 23:50

It turns out that having a knackered ear has had an unintended side-effect: it has affected my voice.

I’ve been told by people that I seem to be speaking much more quietly than usual – this is weird because when I speak, I can hear myself just fine. What used to be my normal talking volume has become “talking quietly”, and “talking quietly” is now “mumbling”.

This is especially irritating because of the rate at which I’ll utter witticisms or pearls of wisdom: what if the people around me were to miss an oratorical gem? From razor sharp satire, to biting social commentary – the sort of things I say all the time – all could be lost forever.

What if this is denying me the ability to chip in and offer my opinion when it isn’t necessarily needed because of my… er, temporary disability? This is surely discrimination.

People could be planning to discriminate against me right now – and I’d be none the wiser, as long as they are discussing it quietly. And how can I protest against this discrimination if all they‘ll hear is some faint mumbling? Where’s my orange badge? I want to exercise my right to park on double-yellow lines.

Although this said, I am starting to wonder if this could be some sort of cruel joke to get me to shout at people? People could tell me I’m speaking quietly and I’ll believe them as I can’t rely on my ears to relay accurate volume information to my brain at the moment.

I hate you, hypothetical pranksters.

Comments(0)

‘Ear Ye, ‘Ear Ye
June 5th, 2008 at 19:44

I woke up yesterday morning and immediately I realised something was wrong. All the sounds I heard were in mono.

I was worried that I’d done a John Simm and woken up in the 1980s, prior to the advent of NICAM Stereo – switching on the news and seeing that the Conservative party were actually popular only seemed to confirm this nightmare.

So I switched on my computer, planning to go on to Usenet and claim that I was a time traveller, and warn people about the Gulf War and text messaging slang – my plan was to give these ancient peoples a more accurate vision of the future than that of John Titor.

As luck would have it though, the computer didn’t require me to type “win” to boot into Windows – I was greeted with the welcome sight of Windows XP creaking into life. So I wasn’t back in time – it must have been at least 2001. The mono phenomenon must be caused by something else. Then it hit me: my right ear isn’t working right.

It was horrible – the ringing was nearly unbearable – it was clearly some sort of tinnitus, like you get after going to a loud gig. Only this time, only the right half of my head had been to the gig, and worse still the gig had not actually happened.

This caused me to panic  a bit – I don’t know much about medical things, as unlike my stance on creationism, when it comes to my own well-being, I work from the position that “ignorance is strength”, as I don’t want to know if I’m really ill or not.

I was worried that I was going deaf – which would be a right pain in the arse. I wouldn’t be able to listen to all of my favourite noises: ska chords, video games music played on unusual instruments, or the sound of my own voice.

So I went to the doctors and spoke to the “triage nurse”, whatever that means, who had a look in my ears. I told her about how I turned 21 literally two days before, and asked whether this is it: whether my ears fucking up are the first sign of the long, depressing decline that now faces me. Apparently, it isn’t.

Long story short, I need to put warm olive oil in my ears for some reason. I can’t work out whether this is actually going to be useful, or whether I’m just going to look like a twat. I just hope that if this doesn’t work they don’t move on to recommending ear candles.

So, er, hopefully my ears will be fixed soon. If you want to try and understand what its like to communicate with me at the moment, try reading this again but IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Comments(0)