What is considered "freedom" often consists of whose ox is being gored. Scratch the most ardent supporter of liberty hard enough and you'll find their pet issue. Blogger #9, who normally plays Bomb-Throwing Anarchist to SayUncle's Republican Party Reptile, has found his: Mosquitoes.
Well, not actual mosquitoes as such, but an electronic gizmo designed to reproduce that annoying high-frequency whine like the one emanating from the electron gun in front of me right now. What? You can't hear it? Neither can most adults. To both Lhasa Apsos and a certain subset of people, however, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Of utmost importance to a particular category of business owner is the fact that that subset of people includes the Clearasil Crowd.
Previously in England the only legal way to keep the lobby of your apartment building or swank boutique free of idling skate wanks was to put up signs saying "No Skate Wanks", which was useless, or playing Barry Manilow tunes at high volume, which had the unfortunate side effect of keeping people with both money and unatrophied taste buds away as well as the facially-pierced loiterers you were actually trying to repel. The Mosquito gave proprietors a unique tool that repelled people with neck tattoos and no money, but was inaudible to their target demographic. This annoys #9 who, while being no more skate wank-y than your average blogger, sees it as infringing on the right of teenagers to loiter wherever they please. In his latest post, he asks readers if they are still as sanguine about this barbarous device now that it is making its appearance on our fair shores.
You know what? I am. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. Well, let me rephrase that: The noise the Mosquito makes probably does bother me, but I can remedy that by (and here's a radical idea, folks, so try to bear with me) not patronizing establishments using it. Shocking, no? In a land where we allegedly have freedom of association, that is the proper answer to private businesses that have clouds of cigar smoke, no wheelchair ramps, membership policies that exclude women, "Whites Only" signs, or Britney Spears tunes being played at 170dB. If a business's policies offend you, don't shop there. Encourage friends and family to not shop there. Let the place die on the vine, strangled by their own stupidity. (Or, alternatively, let it thrive but without your help.) Isn't that better than passing yet another damn law?
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14 comments:
Agreed. Same with movie theaters and restaurants with localized cell phone jammers. You wanna text your friends while you gnaw on prime rib? Go to another steakhouse that doesn't advertise a peaceful phone-free amdiance. I, personally, prefer the cell-less meal, and will reward that place with my patronage.
Bravo! Don't snivel,vote with the feet and purse.
I have to confess...I secretly fantasize about installing one of those mosquitoes in the library. We have more than our fair share of skate wanks. Then again I also fantasize about installing a sneeze guard and maybe a desk-mounted mini-gun (you know, just in case.)
tam, i learned about the synthetic mosquito when my 23yrs. son was driven bonkers by my new plasma tv which apparently emitted an excruciating squeal when turned off! of course i at an advanced 53 didn't hear a thing..., then he showed me the 'net article.
but i used the music poison for 15 yrs...my gun and pawn shop was directly across from the sebring, fl high school in the same building with a convenience store, which of course was an afterschool magnet for the ummm, less cleancut young'uns, to the point where the entire front walk and front doors were clogged and inaccessible.
most times, a quiet but serious request would clear my area, but i had to do it every day, and now and then one or two would decide to get mouthy...and a smack upside the head, while well-deserved, might earn me a trip "downtown"...i had to do something, though, because between 3 and 4 p.m. the customers just didn't want to run the piercedfaced, baggypants, pottymouthed gamut.
but, hoisted by their own pitard, their penchant for cranking up the rap "music" in one of their cars gave me the idea to grab one of my big ol' boomboxes off the shelf and position it inside the soffit over the front walk...about a quarter to 3 i would plug that baby in, cranked up and pretuned to the twangiest local country station i could find!
well, about 2 minutes of ol' possum george jones or similar was all it took until they were looking up trying to find the source of their torture, covering their ears, and soon escaping down the walk, clearing a 50 ft. swath for me and my customers, who actually didn't mind the music, and neither did i, at least for that hour or so. and the fact that it alienated a certain subgroup didn't bother me either, since i required id to prove 18 or over to walk in my door.
well, i always thought i was hightech in a lowtech sort of way, and i guess i was a year or 15 ahead of the technos on this one...
i'm sure a whole bunch of those kids would have liked a "law" to protect them from my honkytonk repellent; i wonder how ol' #9 feels about allying himself with that group? you can't be libertarian just sometimes, dude...that's a lesson that fence-straddlin' politicians haven't learned, and probably never will.
jtc
oh, and tam? i guess your ears are a couple more appendages with 20somethin' characteristics...:) jtc
"like the one emanating from the electron gun in front of me right now"
<pedant>
Actually, it's probably the flyback transformer that's doing the whistling.
</pedant>
Back in the days of all-tube TV sets, flybacks would get noisy when their laminations got loose. A "fix" was to pound a sliver of wood between the coils and the laminations to tighten things up.
Those were also the days with no protection in case of horizontal oscillator failure: Dead HO -> no picture, followed by a large cloud of smoke and sparks as the transformer self-destructed. Quite exciting!
Oddly enough, I've been a scratchin fer years and ain't yet found my pet peeve where I think there ought to be a law.
Well, to be fair, while I don't have a problem with businesses installing these things, an apartment complex (unless it's an explicitly child free building) putting them in is probably excessively cruel.
I hear the TV squeal, too. Lord how I love my LCD monitor.
As for putting them in the library... well, if they could be tuned to only bother the annoying ones, that's one thing, but I kinda think discouraging kids from reading would count as truly atrocious behaviour.
perlhaqr - Teenagers who actually read are rarer than hen's teeth. If they do exist, they aren't hanging out in the library, that's for sure.
I used to be able to hear the TV's high pitched squeal.
But then got my DVR. Now I just skip the commercials.
At a certain advanced age the range of sensitivity that the 'Skeeter noise emits-at goes away - you lose the hearing of the bug.
I used to hear and hate them enormously as a kid especially since we lived in a land where mosquito-nets were necessary - I don't/can't even hear them now...
It's tough being a kid these days especially if you're a stupid kid.
Hell ... some kids are even using the noise as a ringtone ... adults can't hear it.
You know if that device could be shown to make the baggy panted, hat-to-the-side, license-plate rattling music crowd, it'd make MILLIONS.
But I suspect I'm going to have to wait for that little hand-held EMP gizmo to be invented that'll shut down their stereos.
Hey Tamara, I just read the entirety of your archive, and finally caught up to the rest of you!
These devices should be perfectly legal, and anyone should be allowed to use them on private property. However, sound waves don't respect property boundaries. As soon as the infernal ringing of a Mosquito hits the sidewalk, the owner is now harassing anyone walking by who can hear that frequency. That is not acceptable.
A far better solution is to address the specific people who are causing the issue. Our culture's phobia of direct communication is getting ridiculous. Just tell the kids to get lost.
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