Dogs are not naturally creatures of water nor of air. However, being earth creatures they adapt well to their world. It takes little training to adjust a dog to water. In fact, the mixing of earth and water creates a dog bather's most common enemy: mud.
Well, I had an appointment with an audiologist this afternoon. During the cold snap we had a little while back the tubes on my hearing aids got so hard and brittle that they both snapped. For the past few weeks they've been held together with tape and super glue. Definately a sign that they were due to be replaced.
But before they can actually sell you hearing aids, they have to give you a hearing test. Yes, I am still deaf as a post, more or less. The right ear, the one that hasn't been operated on, now requires over 100 decibles before things register. How loud is that? Pretty damn loud actually. At that level you're talking about things like leaf blowers and rock concerts. Bad, yes but still just barely on the chart.
Unfortunately, hearing in both ears has slipped a little bit since my last test back in 2000. But to be perfectly honest, I already knew that was going to happen. It was one of the things they warned me about before I had the corrective surgery so no real shock there. In fact, the only thing that really came as a shock was how high my comprehension score was in the right ear. Once the volume is pumped up high enough, I can still understand almost half of the words I hear. I was expecting MUCH worse.
Anyway, I now have two new hearing aids on order. They'll be in by the end of the week and I'll pick them up on Monday.
Want some idea how much stuff like this costs? Well, for a pair of digital hearing aids with enough power to work for me, $5000. That's right, five thousand dollars. I didn't go with digital though. Too delicate. Remember, I bathe dogs for a living. I need hearing aids that can take a little punishment. That means analog. Not as many fancy parts. Still an upgrade from the ones I have now though and every little bit helps. Oh, in case you were wondering, my pair cost just under $2000. Quite a bargain compared to the digital ones.
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I was talking to my friend Judy earlier today and she was telling me about this play she'd seen while she was in Houston recently. It was set in WWI, in the trenches, right before the big push. One of the things they mentioned was the general effect of all the shelling that went on. According to this play, the main problem was that it made people sleepy. You might think it would be the opposite but not me. When she told me that I knew exactly what they meant.
See, when I'm wearing the hearing aids, I'm getting the entire world turned up to some pretty high levels. In the right ear, as I said earlier, 100+ decibles for me to hear it. I've noticed that something similar to the shell effect happens to me. The longer I wear the hearing aids, the more likely I am to be sleepy. I'm thinking it must be something similar. My ears are under a constant barrage of sound, similar to what the WWI soldiers went through. Must be some weird quirk the body uses to deal with it.
Pretty interesting stuff eh?
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And finally, you knew I had to say SOMETHING about the Oscars. I didn't watch them this year. First time in a long time. It was a protest of sorts. I'm not a big fan of Jon Stewart, the host. His show on cable is pretty lame and I've never liked it. The other reason, the more important reason, was the movie 2046 NOT being nominated in the foreign film category. How on earth they could over-look such a great movie is beyond me. I guess they were looking for more gritty stuff about the Iraq war.
That being said, I figure most of the awards went to the right place. It was nice to see that Ang Lee got another Oscar. He's a great director so even though I'll never see Brokeback Mountain, I know it was very well done because I know how good Ang Lee is. I was also glad to see that Memoirs of a Geisha picked up a few Oscars in categories it clearly deserved them. You'd be hard pressed to find a better job of costuming or art direction among this season's movies.
I'm not quite sure what to make of Clooney's Oscar. My guess is that he got the supporting actor Oscar because he just doesn't have enough experience to get the directing one. Or maybe it's a case where they wanted to award Brokeback Mountain and at the same time throw something to Clooney for Goodnight and Good Luck. Something similar happened the year Gladiator and Crouching Tiger went head to head.
The two that make the least amount of sense to me are best song and best picture. Now, I'm one of those people that thinks the best song Oscar should be eliminated entirely. It had its place back in the 30's and 40's when we were making big musicals but let's face it, these days the award goes to something that usually plays over the closing credits. And just to add more evidence that the award should be retired was this year's winner. Come on, the pimp song? 3-6 Mafia has an Oscar now and Martin Scorsesse doesn't. That's just wrong on SO many levels.
Best picture, big disappointment. Crash? It didn't win anything else did it? There were no acting Oscars from it. If it did win anything else it certainly wasn't major. And by most accounts, it was a pretty unimaginative, typical Hollywood movie. Very predictable, very boring. All the right buttons pushed. All the right emotions displayed. Formula stuff. And this wins best picture? This movie is, according to them, as good as Gladiator, Braveheart, The Godfather, Casablanca, Lord of the Rings? I don't think so.
Maybe next year it'll be better. Maybe they'll have a better batch of movies to choose from and who knows, I might even watch the ceremony. From what I hear though, I didn't miss much.
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