Justin Cox Presents:

If You Can’t Hear, Read This

Ok, so it’s only been about a month since I last posted an article, and as you can see my esteemed team of authors have not filled in the gap. Well what can you do right? I’ve been busy. But I’m going to hopefully redeem myself with this little ditty–and no, it’s not about Jack and Diane.

I’m here to inform a very select group of my readers about a cool feature available to them. The group? Why the deaf of course. Ok, so you’re deaf right? Yeah, that sucks. You can’t listen to the sweet sounds of Jimmy Buffett’s music, you can’t enjoy a good movie without the intrusive subtitles, and most importantly you can’t make a phone call. Though, thanks to some nifty technology, and some funding from the government, you can now do just that.

A website out there called IP-Relay allows you, my deaf friend, to open up a virtual chat room with an operator designated by a number and an M or F depicting gender. You then type in the phone number you wish to call. The operator connects you and then–and here’s the cool part–relays what you type to the person on the other line as well as what they say. So basically this operator is having the conversation for you. The service is completely free of charge and confidential. You don’t even have to sign up.

Now if you are a clever minded person (and I bet you are), you may be thinking to yourself, “hey wait a minute, if you don’t have to sign up, then can’t anyone use it even if they’re not deaf?” And to that question I say, well, yes you can. Though, remember, this service is provided for the deaf and it wouldn’t be right for you–my able-eared friend–to say, order a pizza at one in the morning pretending to be a female so that the pizza provider allows an order after the store has closed. And it really would be an unfortunate thing if you–again my non-deaf friend–were to call your roommate and tell him that you, the girl he hooked up with over the summer, is now pregnant. Cause that would be a horrible thing to do considering this service is for the deaf, and you, of course, are not deaf–though it could be fun.

But alas, Lone Palm cannot endorse or condone such behavior, to do so would be mean spirited and wrong. Ah, who the hell am I kidding? Get out there and have some fun with this thing, and remember, they have to say EVERYTHING you type into the box and that alone can provide some very fun conversation.