So I’m spending a few months partially (and temporarily) deaf in one ear, thanks to evolution’s apparent inefficiencies in constructing working ear canals in my ancestors. (Or alternately, its inefficiency in preventing them from breeding, which implies I shouldn’t bitch too much about it.)

I’ve written the following extremely simple AppleScript to act as a tester to see how my ear is doing from day to day:

repeat with i from 1 to 7
	set volume i
	say i
end repeat

In my left ear, which is apparently working at full Jeff audio input capacity, I can easily hear “one”. In my right, I’m usually coming in between three and four. Trying to find a reference to translate “set volume i” into decibels so I can figure out exactly how bad my hearing is, but in the meantime relative results have been useful for comparison.

In any case, my hearing is bad enough that I have trouble with dialog at movies, so here’s the checklist for getting decent service with assistive devices, for those of you who also find yourselves temporarily needing them.

1. Get to the theater early. The listening devices will be in a big box and tangle of wires near the ticket booth, and there will be a delay while they fetch one that might work.
2. Different theaters use different devices, so you’ll want to spend some time figuring out what dials and switches to use. Ask for a manager if you need help; the box office won’t know diddly about these.
3. Insist on fresh batteries; I’m currently hanging at Starbucks waiting for the next show because my gizmo fritzed out right after the previews.

Taking a moment to vent: when I stepped out of the theater to get a new unit, the box office took the unit, took old batteries out of another one, and gave it back to me with those. I turned it on and got nothing; handed it back to her and said, “I’m deaf—can you hear anything with this?” “No.” “Then give me a new one like I asked you.” By this time, I’ve missed five minutes of archeological exposition and they’re looking at me with a bovine expression, not quite understanding that when I pay for a movie, I want to see it.

Incidentally, this is reinforcing my general belief that this is why movie theaters—and Hollywood—are in for a very rough time; when you pay ten bucks for a movie, what I believe you’re paying for is the experience of seeing it with theater-level quality. I caught Iron Man the other day, and most of the film was pocked with threading and other signs of wear. Now I’m seeing a movie I can’t hear. In both cases, I’d get a better experience watching the film on my laptop; my headphones are built-in audio assistive devices, thankyouverymuch. Theater number 1 was out of popcorn “butter”, theater number 2 treated me like crap when I complained about the audio; both are generally considered flagship theaters in the DC region. This does not exactly reinforce my desire to go to theaters.

My alternative is to wait twelve weeks and rent the DVD, or wait four to six weeks and download the DVD off the Internet. Oops, strike that—a DVD-quality version is available already, months in advance of the legal DVD release. A good theater can compete with this, and can continue getting their twenty bucks on a regular basis for admission and popcorn—the problem is that the industry seems to care so damned little about providing good theaters.