Letters to the Editor
Sandy Yago
Published Letters: 86 Editor's Choice: 3
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Noise is the new smoking.
[Read the article: Stop the noise!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This is not my idea really, I read it somewhere that public attitudes re the annoyance and health problems caused by noise are at as low levels as awareness about the dangers of smoking stood at in the 1950s. It was cool and hip to smoke then as it is not to "make noise", "be loud", "disturb the peace" - just see some of the ads for audio systems.
But the article brought back memories as well.
I used to live in Astoria and car alarms were a constant menace. The place was 19th street, near the park. 2 story row houses. I remember one night at about 2 AM an alarm went off. It was a loud pitched howl, just like my car's alarm so I ran down to the street with the alarm thingie. I stopped at my car - the howling almost broke my ear drums.
We did not have a driveway so my car was parked in the driveway of my across-the-street neighbor who was an old lady and nice enough to let me use hers - in exchange I did little favors for her. The house to the LEFT was larger and created an L shape with the lady's house. In the inner corner of that L parked my car.
I got nervous - a few months earlier someone else's car got vandalized under similar circumstances. I pressed the button but no matter how I tried, the alarm just went on. I kept pressing the button - nothing. I opened the door with the button so there was obviously juice in the battery. The noise was maddening.
So I decided to disable the alarm in other ways. I had to open the hood of course and take off the cable from the battery. Needed tool, had to run upstairs, back down, took cable off - nothing. The alarm just went on. I took out the battery - the alarm went on. Ran upstairs again with the entire toolbox, and wife in tow this time, determined to find the cables going to the horn, and disconnect them - obviously, I thought, there is a reserve battery for the alarm somewhere. With frantic work, after removing some pipe, wife holding light, I got to the horn and cut the wires. The howling just went on.
I started questioning the laws of physics. I was besides myself. Now at least 45 minutes had passed, my car was disabled, my ears were ringing, and the alarm just kept going.
Suddenly I hear a window open at the second story of the house to the RIGHT of my old lady's house. A hand reaches out - the lights on the car next to mine on the that hand neighbor's driveway flicker and the noise stops. The window closes.
The kinds of words I started yelling on the top of my lungs, in the middle of the night, while attacking the right hand neighbor's front door with my toolbox are not fit to print. It was my wife who saved me from winding up with a rap sheet by dragging me back, kicking and begging, into our house.
The reconstruction of the of the events is that the neighbor's alarm went off (obviously) but I thought it was my car because the origin of that loud, high pitched noise could not be localized in that corner, the sound reverberating between the 2 sets of walls. Add to it that I was socialized trying not to be a nuisance to others, while the guy was a drunkard Italian redneck, who called his neighbors "goddam Greek"-s (in Astoria!) and for whom my Pakistani contractor was "a fucking nigger". I therefore doggedly assumed that I was making the noise, while Ricky wallowed in self-satisfied stupor. He probably heard the noise when the pressure in his guts woke him up to vomit. By the time I was at his door he was probably unconscious again.
My dear wife saved me one more time when I got a $115 parking ticket as I was trying load into my car a huge bucket, filled with water, for our two large kois that we were donating to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden before our move out of this godforsaken city. But that's a story for another day.
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There is nothing like Salon if one craves reading narcissistic tripe written by spoiled whiners
[Read the article: Why I hate summer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I mean, summer sucks, big time. Really ...
I do live in San Diego but we have heat here too! Are you kidding? It was almost 80 degrees in Downtown. EIGHTY! I had to put the fan on! Would you believe that?
And the humidity! Holy crap! Honest to god, I was close to sweating after I crossed Harbor Drive to get to Anthony's where I had my lunch. Of course I got a seat with a view to Point Loma and all those horrible sailboats in the bay, AGAIN, after I had to sit there yesterday, thankyouverymuch!
And, yes, I too suffer from overabundance of certain body parts. I feel your pain, lady. Oh, the suffering we well endowed must go thru during our lives. We are a bona fide discriminated-against minority! Endowism runs rampant in our society, it is true, kick me in the butt and call me a dog if I'm lying!.
Women look at my bulging pants and go "yecchh!". Yes, my dick is the Schwarzenegger to my Hulk Hogan, whatever the bloody hell that is supposed to mean, a dong the size of a carintas burrito at Colima's in Chula Vista. Woe to me, bwaaaaaahahaaaaaaa!
My mother had said once, son, maybe one day you'll get a penectomy, heck, I'll do it for you if the evil repuglishitfucklicans steal your health insurance, what is a mother for after all, no?
OK. So there is a silver lining in everything. Life is good, we can exhale.
But that is a topic for a different website altogether.