HUMAN WRECKAGE

Artless Noise

There’s a new microwave-convection oven over the range in the kitchen. Its timer dings when its heating job is done. As it should. These appliances appeal to the human instant gratification gene because the stuff inside them gets het up real fast. Excessive heat inflicts pain on the unwary, their fingertips and tongues. It took me a long time and many blisters to figure this out. And so I add an impatient minute to the midnight snack process by waiting for things to cool down before popping open the door and chowing down. The KitchenAid KMCC5015 is one of those modern, ineptly smart machines. It keeps dinging in insistent intervals to remind me I’ve just used it: I know, I know, even I can remember two minutes ago; I’m not that demented yet. The blessing for the microwave (and my pocketbook) is that the six or seven Trini Lopez tools in the Crooked 9 are down in the basement workroom.

Noise. I am so fed up with noise.

The telephone is ringing with yet another Chinese spam-scam call. There’s a Bluetooth head spouting confidential business information on the sidewalk. Even the most primitive of yard implements come with motors. Nattering self-checkouts: welcoming, instructing, thanking. Talking elevators – although I’m not blind to their functionality. Social media dog whistle fish hooks. Excitable sports commentators shouting their enthusiasm! Pundits arguing partisan rhetoric. Hysterical politicians reciting talking points by rote. Self-styled victims whining for special dispensation; everybody else complaining. Experts who can’t keep their alternative facts straight. The visual white noise of advertising – is there any surface left on the planet on which we cannot paste a logo? That dreadful, sinister roar of hate and intolerance. That neighbourhood guy I avoid because he talks too much about nothing; I wish he smoked so he’d be a little shorter of breath.

Would everybody and everything in this world please shut the fuck up for an hour or two? Or at least tone it down. I can’t even hear myself think about losing my mind.  

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