dial ’em if you got ’em

holy crap! for once this site is gonna (on purpose) educate people!

i guess that new ground had to be broken eventually.

we all know “911” gets all the emergency calls (and several “these colors don’t run”-style bumper stickers on the back of trucks, but never mind that now) and “411” get’s you information, as well as being part of the hip-hop vernacular of the modern world (see mary j. blige’s discography) but outside of “4” and “9” there’s still eight more numbers that could have “11” at the end and mean something, right? i found out “011” is just for dialing outside the country, and while “111” doesn’t mean shit here, it’s actually the chilled out version of “999” which is the UK’s answer to “911”. as luck would have it, this left six numbers unaccounted for, so i googled ’em for you and present:

what the fuck is “211”, “311”, etc, etc, etc???

1. 211 – gets information on health and human services…so you call that for more info than “411” and before shit hits the fan and you call “911”?

2. 311 – services, but not so much health-related. more just “i like to bitch” related. most americans use it to complain their neighbors make too much noise when they’re fucking or whatever ’cause they’ve been warned to leave “911” alone for ACTUAL emergencies…which a screaming orgasm or loud rap music at 3am doesn’t constitute.

“411” we all know and barely use thanks to google, so that takes us to…

3. 511 – traffic info. seriously? did anybody know about this? with austin being the most congested mid-sized city in america for over a decade you’d think they’d have billboards up about this shit! fuck it…i’m trying this on my commute in today.

4. 611 – mostly phone company crap…as in mobile providers say to use this to reach them…i just call “*2” in sprint land as that gets me cusstomer service (and yes, i spelled that wrong on purpose to just the the “cuss” part in there given the last couple days i’ve had with them)

5. 711 – mostly for deaf folk, so they can get an operator that will than connect to the number, do the speaking for them, than type the responses back to the deaf individual to reply to…kinda like speaking text messages. in some parts of canada they tried to get it to get a slurpee delivered to your house (get it? 711 vs. 7-11?) which i guess without the obesity problem in america AND the fact that healthcare is free there they can do…but ain’t it awfully cold for frozen treats?

6. 811 – utility digging and what not. as in figuring out if your latest “fence around the garden” project will end in a ruptured gas line explosion. is this REALLY a nagging enough problem to constitute it’s own universal speed dial code? couldn’t movie times be here or something? what’s sad is seeing this on the back of a truck from a natural gas company in traffic the other day (“diall 811 before you dig!”) is what got this bit going in the first place. who knew?