Yup. There's a Jonathan Coulton song that is rather....NSFW (and definitely NSFchildren in the room) about a particular outdoor activity that starts up on "First of May" (the song's title)
(No link, because of NSFWness, but some of you are doubtless familiar, and I assume the rest of you know how to search YouTube if you're really curious).
But yeah. The other big activity that starts up here in spring is NOISE.
Yesterday afternoon, driving home, I got in front of someone with boomy bass music. I was sort of tempted to turn the Brahms on Sirius XM up to "11" and roll down my windows just to show him what it's like to have to hear someone else's music that you might not want, but I figured that wouldn't solve anything.
But yeah: do not want boom cars.
Especially not late at night in my neighborhood. But spring tends to bring them out.
And motorcycles. I don't have a problem with MOST of these, but there are one or two people in town who apparently have got muffler cut-outs or some such installed and they are SUPER LOUD. Like, car-wreck loud. One drove by me last afternoon as I was walking into the Green Spray (to buy lettuce for feeding the college students - I had bought sandwich makings but wanted fresh lettuce). My immediate reaction to something that loud is to freeze in fear: What is the immediate danger to me? What do I need to do, where do I need to run? I don't like my fight-or-flight response being triggered that way (which is why I would never, ever live in a big city again: too much of that noise). But it was just some dude doing the "Hey, look at me" on his bike. Ugh.
(Again: this is a specific way in which we have gotten very crazy in 21st century America: we need people to notice us, so we make loud noises or do other outrageous things that impose on other people's brains, in order to get noticed)
But yeah. I don't care if you want to do some....lovin' outdoors (to make the Coulton reference as gentle as possible) as long as you're not doing it on my front lawn, but I'd prefer you not drive your loud motorbike or boom car during my study time or sleep time or in such a way that it scares me when I'm going about my life....
2 comments:
Some would-be boom-car owners are now asking for a package called "muffler delete," which seems to be a pipe with no sound-absorption qualities at all, which is installed in place of the muffler. Not all of them are motivated by noise, however; some of them seem to think that this will give them MOAR POWER, because that's what happened when Great-Uncle Henry took the muffler off his '61 Pontiac.
I hate loud motorcycles too but there is one legitimate reason for them. They're safer to ride in traffic. Drivers of cars who might not see a motorcycle will be more aware if it's obnoxiously loud.
Boom cars on the other hand... as far as I'm concerned there's no excuse for those.
Post a Comment