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Last Update: 10.30.03

When you're deaf, nobody can hear you scream

I had this great idea for an invention once. It was a machine that used voice recognition software to transcribe words from a telephone call. Then it converted those words to Braille. That way, even blind people can use telephones. I thought that I would be rich in a heartbeat, but it seemed that there just wasn't any demand for the product, and my patent soon lost its value. Now, just a short few years later, we're seeing an idea far inferior to mine suddenly becoming huge over the internet, and I can't understand it. That's right, I'm talking about Winamp skins.

Winamp skins are about the 17th worst idea ever. Ranking below it are ideas like putting neon lights on your car or glow-in-the-dark stickers on your computer case. Another idea worse than Winamp skins is being a huge moron, which, strangely enough, is even more popular than Winamp skins are.

As far as I can tell, the only justification for Winamp skins is so that now deaf people, too, can enjoy Winamp. Now deaf people don't have to wait on the sidelines, just reading words as they scroll by: "My House Is Made Of Solid Gold - - - - R&B / Hip Hop - - - - The Phunkytown Trio of Huge Morons - - - - Why are you reading this, it's a song not a research project." Now deaf people can jump into the crowd and enjoy music like the rest of us by being awed at your Anna Kournikova skin, or by watching the bars on your awesome equalizer, and then by being run over by a truck since they can't hear it coming.

Congratulations. You've given deaf people a purpose again. So what? Next you'll be telling me they have a soul or something.