TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE

TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE:

A blessing for contractors, workers and neighbors.

Sound dampening earphones are now available so that workers can protect their ears from screeching cement saws, stuttering jack-hammers and other necessary but peace disturbing implements. Of course home owners and good neighbors must accept those noises, (plus lawn-mowers, chain-saws and the god damn whining weed-whackers) as necessary and unavoidable sounds of progress and beautification.

But the blaring radios that workers bring along are salt in our bleeding ears. So here is the best news of all: with the same wonderful earphones, workers can hear their own choice of music from a variety of pocket devices without subjecting residential neighborhoods to their personal musical agony.

We are a sophisticated musical nation with a range of styles and sub-styles from soothing to corrosive. Naturally each worker takes personal pride in his style choice and presumes that all enlightened citizens will admire him for it. And everybody knows the irrevocable First Law of Musicology: If a song’s irritation value is doubled, the pugnacious pride of the radio owner is tripled and broadcast volume must be quadrupled. So each union group proclaims its choice from rooftop and scaffold in confidence that right thinking neighbors are gratified by the free concert.

Alas, every community has its holdouts for a rival style of noise, oops, I mean music, don’t I. But those miscreants deserve to be punished by having proper music generated through their walls and windows into their homes so they can learn what is best for them. And modern portable radios are up to that task all day thanks to powerful and enduring batteries. Some lovely days in the neighborhood are bathed in competing musical offerings as workers from several home improvement sites vie for amplifier supremacy.

And there are all sorts of workers who blissfully usurp the sound environment inside our homes. For them, peace and quiet in a house is a shocking vacuum that they are certain we want filled. They don’t even ask us, “Would you like rap, bap, hop, bop or full metal gospel?”

But the technical ingenuity of man is up to every challenge. For us lucky moderns unwanted thump-thump and bam-whap* will soon become history thanks to the blessing of modern sonic science, the earphone. Insist that your contractor invest in these miracles.

Copywrite March 2004 by me, (name withheld to protect an endangered subspecies)

* I don’t want to suggest here that percussionists are the only source of musical abrasion. Oh, Golly, No. They are just the most cheerful offenders; don’t they just love to hit something resonant or scrape something rasping! But they can usually do their damage without the electronic boost that vocal screechers and guitar twangers love so much. So I say don’t crucify percussionists by them selves; nail up an amplified rap singer along side.

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