Bright Bird Mornings

June 9th, 2023

June in the Pacific Northwest: the month when days are the longest, and so much of the night is too bright.

Is it my imagination, or is the moon brighter than it was when I was a kid, or even just twenty years ago? PAINFULLY bright … like staring at the sun. A reminder that’s what it truly is: SUNLIGHT bouncing back to us. Reminding us it we’re about to be penetrated to the point of blindness and subjected to inescapable heat.

I am afraid. We’re all on The Raft of the Medusa, in a burning hell of our own making with too many people fanning the flames … adding more fuel to the fire. People who literally would not piss on you — their neighbor — if you were on fire. Cannibals, bullies, and tyrants.

Four in the morning and the birds are SO LOUD. But it’s the time of the year where a lot of the birds have moved along to cooler pastures, so the variety of songs and birdcalls has diminished. Replaced by One. Shrill. Repeated. Warning. Like this one bird stayed behind to sound the alarm, and is only quiet for perhaps six hours per revolution. Over and over, through the smoky-fog, the unending bright blue light in all of its harsh near-solstice permutations, this bird repeats the the same shrill message and I can’t close the windows against it because it’s already too hot and stifling.

“Boundaries are not real”, people are saying, pointing to the wildfire smoke from Canada choking MORE PLACES THAN TREELESS NEW YORK CITY / MANHATTAN.

Right now the boundary between night and day feels unreal. Non-existent. A former figment of my imagination that I can’t pretend to believe in anymore.

Only a shadow of night remains, cast by the big bad sun’s rays, bouncing around the corner where AM meets PM. When I get up after midnight to pee I step outside in bare feet to catch it, wondering why nobody else seems to hear its rhythm, but grateful they are so willfully deaf I can still enjoy some semblance of privacy. Taking sun spots back into bed with me, laying face-down in my sooty pillow. Suffocating to block out the light.

(NOT) Truly

Written on April Fools' Day last year, but not a joke; just publishing today:

Of course. The day after Easter Sunday. Sun shining warmly. Spring in the air. Birds singing.

AND THE SHITHOLE NEIGHBOR TURNS ON LOUD TALK RADIO OUTSIDE RIGHT ON THE OTHER SIDE OF OUR FENCE.

Without pausing to consider, I fumed out loud, "TRULY, DIE IN A FUCKING *FIRE*".

Immediately following saying those words, the radio was shut off.

*****

While I'm grateful their self-centered, insensate, inconsiderate noise ceased, I still felt stressed out. Why does one have to complain at all for somebody to stop and consider the unwanted negative SPREAD of their noisy disease and its impact on others, and choose NOT to do that?

I do not actually want to have confrontations with neighbors. I do not actually enjoy verbalizing and spreading unpleasant feelings. I just cannot comprehend how so many people do not see forcing noise on strangers or people living in close proximity as a deeply upsetting personal attack and openly hostile display of not giving a fuck about anyone around them.

People who shit on others without shame are NOT TRUSTWORTHY. That is how I feel, anyway. But I know with my rational mind that many, if not most, of these noisemakers are not intentionally shitting on others. They are mostly oblivious, or careless, or do not process sounds and other stimuli the same way as those of us who hear and feel it like hammers pounding in our heads and guts. They do not care about birds, nor are they capable of enjoying sunshine in silence.

*****

I do not truly want our new shithole neighbors to die in a fire. If I saw them on fire I would rush to help them. I would even rush to help them if their house was burning even if I knew they were not in it.

Probably the worst I really wish for is the ability to blow up their stereo using the power of my mind and melt its surrounding container into a pool of angry lava without actually hurting anybody. Okay, maybe I do want a cinder or two to land on their crotch and singe their jeans and blister the head of their hipster needledick just enough to raise a single blister and leave a tiny scar.

Some Noises I *LOVE*

 I complain about noisy people a lot: people’s noisy machines, people’s noisy dogs,  people’s noisy fucking phone calls, and people’s useless fucking alarms. I fucking HATE that shit. It’s distressing, distracting, rude, self-centered and tyrannical.

But I don’t actually hate *people* in general or even all of the noises we people make. Even though I might say I do, that’s usually an exaggeration made in defensive frustration.

FOR INSTANCE:

I love the sound of church bells - any time of day or night.

I love the sound of a clocktower bonging on the hour. 

I love the sound of people fucking.

I love our town’s weekly tsunami “siren” test that sounds like a Close Encounters of the Third Kind alien communique.

And (this may come as a big surprise, but) I actually love the sound of children at play.

FOR INSTANCE:

We live near a daycare. Run by an old-fashioned woman who DOES NOT ALLOW THE KIDS TO SCREAM. They make a lot of jolly noise, but none of those piercing emergent injury or stranger danger types of blood-curdling bullshit contemporary breeders seem to encourage and/or ignore while they’re busy on instagram and texting their polyam prospects.

So the other day as the garbage truck was making its rounds through the neighborhood, I heard it down at the end of the block HONKING … followed by the daycare kids CHEERING and LAUGHING. BEST SOUNDS EVER!

I could picture exactly what was going on: the kids waving maniacally at the garbage man, begging him to honk the horn … and the garbage man waving back and making the merry foghorn blasts they requested, and them being so delighted to be acknowledged and honored by the neat-o garbage truck man.

LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE  LOVE 

Small Dog Yapping

Our other new neighbor must have just moved in for real. His lights are on at night for pretty much the first time.

It is Labor Day weekend. The Sunday night before the actual holiday. about 9:30 pm.

The whole neighborhood, for once, is actually very peaceful. Except for one thing:

HIS FUCKING LITTLE YIPPING LAP DOG. It just. Won't. Stop.

I don't know if it's a situation where the dog is not used to the new neighborhood or if the people are just not home and left the dog outside with the lights on inside. Or if it's a situation where people just don't fucking care about anybody around them OR their dog.

It's the end of the summer and quite warm, so we need to have windows open to keep air circulating, not get overheated, and be able to sleep. HOW LONG IS THIS PIERCING YIPPING GOING TO CONTINUE? It's fucking INSANE.

I hate people.

The May Day Drone of Lawnmowers

May Day might be my favorite holiday. In a perfect world, that is, where people recognize, respect and honor nature, the seasons and revel in the outdoors: specifically this time between spring equinox and summer solstice (Beltane) when the natural world around us is beginning to flower, the birds are singing, baby animals are exploring their new-to-them worlds on their own young feet, and the sunshine is almost in full bloom.

Or the old-fashioned anonymous flower-gifting tradition. Quietly creeping onto your neighbor's porch and leaving a bouquet of flowers. I LOVE THAT - it is my FAVORITE!

It's not a perfect world, though.

Instead, May Day was filled with the buzzing not of bees, but of people's gas-powered lawnmowers. Violently cutting back the green. The dandelions THAT SHOULD BE HONORED AS FOOD. Imposing this conformity of pollution and death on one another, violating even our eardrums. Making sure we drown out the small sounds of of life all around us that we should be celebrating.

HORRIBLE VIBES

 From one of my fave tweeters, Vinny Thomas @vinn_ayy

preventing ppl from sitting next to me at a stadium event by emanating HORRIBLE vibes

— Vinny Thomas (@vinn_ayy) May 10, 2023

*****

Screamed out the window at construction crew next door and their shit radio and their pack of HALF A DOZEN RELENTLESSLY BARKING DOGS today.

Those dogs were LOVING it.

The crew was positively STUMPED -- frozen, looking around -- by the shrieks of a burning angel seeming to come from behind a canopy of spring-leafing wild cherry trees.

*****

Sometimes it works. Probably because sometimes people truly are clueless about how terribly loud they are, and not actually intentionally inconsiderate.

*****

I don't expect the other neighbors impacted to thank me, but I sort of fantasize that somehow they do.

Four Signs of the Fall of the U.S. &/or Civilization

Okay it's not a good title. But here are four things that signaled everything was going to a special kind of shit and continue to contribute to our decline:

I'm just going to list them for now:

• birth of "Young Country" as a music genre
• car alarms
• inviting and allowing unmoderated comments on news sites
• the loss of phone booths

I just outlined these to my friend in an ice cream shopPE, so I'm feeling extra confident and focused on these points tonight, and it's a full moon, and this is how bitches like me "wolf out" and ruin a perfectly pleasant evening of treats and companionship.

CLAIMED: Whole Entire World is Other People's Phone Booth

I fucking hate people who exist EVERYWHERE on their phones with zero consideration of others, complete lack of self-awareness, no respect for space, and/or outsized pride at broadcasting their private and/or totally fucking boring phone calls. EVERY WHERE YOU GO, it's like trying to buy a .com these days: THIS DOMAIN IS TAKEN. How about (dot)crusty instead? How about you just relegate yourself to a SUBDOMAIN of the paradise that we *could* enjoy or create?

I know I've bitched about this before but summer requires revisiting it. The season of open windows in Washington state where most of us still don't have air conditioning but all of us really fucking need it starting LAST YEAR, sometime *before* that insane fucking heat dome, and NOW with the clear and present danger of it getting way fucking worse.

And people marching jogging wheeling cycling or even just STANDING under your windows, in the street, yackyackyackyackyackyackMWARHARHARHAAAA-LISTEN-TO-MY-OBVIOUSLY-FAKE-ASS-EXAGGERATED-EMPTY-SOULED-PERFORMANCE-LAUGHTER //inhale bitter shallow breath quickly through nose// yackayckayckayacyaka;kljasd;flkjas;dlfkjafd;io;ujidfakadfjslfdsl;adfklfdsl;

I promise I don't just bitch about it though. I fantasize about and envision solutions. And not just nasty violent ones, either! I think about how I grew up with PHONE BOOTHS: things that had DOORS ON THEM EVEN so they weren't just there to protect the telephone and cabled-on-phone-book from the elements, but ALSO TO PROVIDE THIS NOW-COMPLETELY-DEVALUED UNDESIGNED-FOR THING CALLED *****PRIVACY*****.

Oh, I know, there is a new very expensive fancy trend in open offices to finally provide little fish bowls within these spaces for such things, but it's not catching on as fast as it should, it's not affordable, and it's not recognized as a beneficial thing to build into other communal spaces or to have on offer or just to put on display as a suggestive hint. And it's certainly not a *requirement*. And now with pandemic there is the problem of needing to mitigate or eliminate the lack of air circulation.

I did read a novel that gave me some hope: TELL THE MACHINE GOODNIGHT by Katie Williams casually included wonderful phone booths in the near-future. I don't remember now what she called them, so let this be an excuse for me to re-read it.

So here's another idea: MOVING WALKWAYS. Like in airports. In big soundproof or somewhat-removed spaces (like dead malls?). Go to them to take your walk. Go be with one another, phone-talking-addicts.

Of course they won't do it, and in this era of people on all sides angrily refusing to give up a single selfish entitlement or make even the smallest concession to letting CLEAN UNDISEASED AIR or QUIET or DARKNESS be the default and it being SUGGESTED if they want to stray from that, that they make some small effort to contain their infectious noises, bright screens, or lung ejaculate, they feel SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OPPPPPPPRESSSSSSSSSED because it is their CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT (they think) TO DESTROY EVERY NOOK AND CRANNY OF PEACE OR SAFETY we "snowflakes" try to secure. THERE SIMPLY MUST NOT BE A SINGLE PLACE WHERE THEY ARE LOCKED OUT: the noisemakers, the spewers, the flip-flop-loogie-hauck boys, the busybody know-it-all next-door gossip tattle cunts, the IMPORTANT MOVERS AND SHAKERS on their fucking VIDEO CONS in every fucking eating and drinking and book-reading establishment you try to get a break in.

Can I really be surprised though when people seem to have lost the ability to prioritize RESTROOMS in their rush to LOUDLY USE ALL OF THE SHINY NEW-MODEL POLLUTION MACHINES while infrastructure under our feet and tires crumbles? I guess that's where I need to continue to refocus: we need to design the horrible cities and bullshit "communities" we are all being forced to live in with each other to at least have CLEAN WATER FOR EVERYONE, and 24/7 safe publicly accessible places to SHIT, SHOWER AND SLEEP, and reliable safe free public transportation to unburden and unclog roads and bridges. Otherwise? How can we hope to live in anything but each other's raw fucking sewage, exhaust and noisy insanity?

It's NOT 2016 Yet, Assholes

I live on the WEST COAST. The PACIFIC NORTHWEST coast.

It's only fucking 9:03 PM here and some shitholes have been blowing up fireworks for the past three minutes like they don't know where the fuck they're at.

Go back to the fucking east coast if that's the way you want it, dickstains. And you better pack up all your fear-of-nature noise-polluting New Yorker bullshit and take it home with you. I don't want to hear it, and I don't want to see you wearing ballcaps and jerseys supporting your fucking east coast sports teams, either.

Happy fucking new year, assholes.

Barking & Bitching

I'm *really* excited about the dog barking in our neighborhood. At THREE O'CLOCK IN THE MOTHERFUCKING MORNING.

Oh ... nice. It just stopped AFTER, LIKE, FIVE MINUTES or whatever as soon as I typed that. I guess five minutes isn't a really long time. UNLESS YOU WERE FUCKING SLEEPING.

I wasn't. So it just gave me something great to exuberantly bitch about!

*****

I've got a lot of bitch drafts in the hopper, just waiting for the right time to post them.

One of these days ...

Splurging on Dinner Out with YOUR FUCKING BABY

Dear assholes who take your fucking babies to fancy restaurants: PAY FOR EVERYBODY'S MEAL.

When you bring your crying infant or noisy child to an expensive restaurant YOU ARE EFFECTIVELY RUINING PEOPLE'S NIGHT OUT. One they may have saved for a month for. That they are not paying $17-$50 a plate to eat accompanied by the sound of you trying to baby-talk your child out of screaming, or train them how to sit in a high chair ("sit your bottom down :: sit your BOTTOM down :: SIT your bottom down :: SIT your BOTTOM down! :: SIT YOUR BOTTOM DOWN!") or endure the drama of your precious toddler choking while you throw it over your knee and whack it repeatedly in the spleen.

What kind of a fucking asshole are you? You're a shitty self-centered fuckwad with too much money. I'd be happy to relieve you of all of it minus cab fare to get you the fuck home and away from everybody's else's grown-up dinner.

There is a difference between The Old Spaghetti Factory or a family diner and a pricey restaurant with walls lined with drugs (aka alcohol). Your little fucking child does not belong there. If the average price of an entree is over $15, YOUR BABY SHOULDN'T BE THERE. *****ASSHOLES*****

This is for you, mouthbreathers at The _____ Grill on this Friday in Seattle tonight. I don't know if it was the parents' choice, or the grandparents perhaps insisting NO IT WILL BE *FINE* KIDS! OUR TREAT!! LITTLE FUSSY HONEYPANTS WILL BE JUST FINE THERE!!

Actually I really blame restaurants for this. You have no fucking business allowing barefoot people, dogs, folks with their dicks hanging out of their pants or wee ones into a restaurant where you charge those kinds of prices. Your food is delicious and worth it, but you should comp everyone or give the whole house deep discounts if you compromise the entire dining experience by letting morons in with their noisy little creatures.

Now that I think about it, I would MUCH rather sit next to a barefoot dog with its dick hanging out of its pants in a nice restaurant than a baby, okay?

FUCK PEOPLE IN RESTAURANTS WHO BRINGS THEIR BABIES AND/OR TALK ON THEIR PHONES. FUCK YOU. FUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!

A Midnight Clear NOW WITH ADDED CHEMICALS!!!

Just after midnight. Christmas day comes to a close. Nearly-full moon.

I step outside to enjoy the stillness of this night, AND SMELL YET AGAIN THE HORRIFYING SCENT OF LAUNDRY CHEMICALS PERMEATING THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD. Like I walked into a giant chilled box of dryer sheets.

I cannot fucking live in a land of vaporized douche powder. It's disgusting. I hate people. I want to get away from them. I don't want to smell you. You sicken me.

The lack of appreciation for clean backyard air, the inconsiderate freedom people have to needlessly, unproductively pollute each others' outdoor homes perplexes, alienates, depresses, poisons and angers me.

I don't want to be near any of your shitty all-night bright lights, your noisy leafblowers and lawnmowers, your desires to febreeze every inhabited tract of land. Fuck off. Go pitch a tent in the detergent aisle of your nearest discount or grocery store if that's what you want your world to smell like and be lit up by a thousand migraine-inducing fluorescent lights. I hope you sanitize yourself until your skin melts off.

Enjoy nature AND GET OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE!!

Taking a walk on a woodland path -- no power lines, no electricity, supposedly peace and quiet -- some fucking bitch is YAPPING ON HER FUCKING CELL PHONE. Why the fuck don't you stay home and get on a treadmill? The sight and sound of you disgusts me. I know that's a hideous thing to say and even worse to truly feel, so I'm working on it and trying to be kinder.

Then we encounter a cunt who is not only talking on her phone, SHE HAS IT ON SPEAKERPHONE!! So *EVERYBODY* gets to hear some damned fool yapping in that electro-microwaved amplified lo-fi way. YOU INTRUSIVE INCONSIDERATE CUNT!!!

I hate people and I hate their out-of-touch device addictions. Get in touch with your surroundings and the people present in your physical space and GET OFF THE FUCKING PHONE, shitholes!!

More Bitching about Neighbors

I even feel bitchy about our mostly-GOOD neighbors. Because the truth is that I do not want to have visible neighbors at all.

I don't want to see my neighbors, I don't want to hear my neighbors, and I don't want them to see or hear me.

I don't want to see their dog, or see/smell/step in their dog's shit, especially in our own fucking yard. I don't want to live close enough to a neighbor's yard that wherever they throw their dog's shit or direct their dog to squat that the smell of it drifts over to my life in my yard. Especially if they have a black lab or large dog with soft, wet, giant shits.

I don't want to HEAR my neighbors' dog(s), and especially do not want to hear that low, persistent woofing for sometimes hours without ever once hearing my neighbor say "shuttup" to the pesky motherfucker. I also don't want to hear any neighbors' tiny dogs and their chirpy, anxious yip-yip-yipping.

I do not want to hear my neighbors at all. Not his daughter's boyfriend parked in the driveway talking on his cell phone like a little bitch, not his worker bees, not his friends, not his cunt of a lazy ex who honks when she pulls up instead of hauling her fat ass out of the car.

I do not want to hear my neighbors' power tools or hammers or engines starting up or car doors slamming or VOICES. I don't want to hear any of that EVER.

I don't want to hear my neighbors' engines revving or cars warming up. And I don't fucking EVER want to hear the sound of a large vehicle's back-up warning system, those brain dead beeps you can hear from blocks away. I am glad that I learned this because now I know never to ever live within a mile of any place any sort of dump truck, loader, pick-up & delivery vehicle, or garbage truck visits regularly. No carpet store, no nursery with landscaping materials like bark, no city facility with large mounds of gravel.

I don't want to see my neighbors' friends. I don't want to know who they are, and I certainly don't want them thinking they can cut through my fucking yard to get to his.

I don't want to see or hear my neighbors' kids or even know they have any, whether they be screaming infants or sullen teenagers. I don't want to wonder whether or not I should call them cops when they have a party or a fight. I don't want to fucking KNOW if they're having a party or a fight. I want no auditory or visual or olfactory evidence of those things to penetrate my peace and quiet in the center of my property.

I don't want my neighbors animal shit or dead-car fluids or septic tank seepage or lawn and garden chemicals to sully any of my own groundwater or picturesque streams.

And if a cougar ventures into my yard I want to be able to kill it. With a gun. I guess that's a little off topic.

I don't want my neighbors to know whether or not our lawn is mowed or whether or not we even HAVE a lawn. I don't want them to know whether or not there's moss on our roof or if I'm standing paralyzed in the morning dew feeling wet grass tickle my ankles. I don't want them to know what I'm wearing or not wearing when I'm inside or outside. I don't want them to gawk when my girlfriend absent-mindedly sticks her hand in her bra and fondles her breast while standing at the kitchen window.

I want to be able to shoot anybody who trespasses, and for it to be obvious what is mine and how you should fucking keep out. I don't want any fucking public trails inviting strangers to mosey on by or through, way too fucking close for comfort. I probably wouldn't ever shoot someone, but I at least want to be able to look at them with extreme hostility and tell them they're not welcome, not now and for their own safety, not ever again.

I need a buffer. A deep, wide, green, dark buffer no one can see through. I want to make believe that I am untouchable by people surrounded by a thick denseness of forbidding nature. I want to have chickens, but I don't know about roosters because they are loud, and they are loud in the morning, which is the worst.

I understand how mean and unsociable it is to not want to get to know your neighbors. To pretend they don't exist and avoid making eye contact with them. I do think that is missing out on something good. But I feel in my bones that I'm missing out on more by not having quiet wet growing places all around me to explore and get to know intimately, like I and my closest family are the only ones to smell and touch and investigate and hear them in all the decades that I live there.

I'm sad that the possibility of having this kind of freedom from others and privacy is nearing impossible. IS impossible if even a small percentage of the people in the world demanded it. That this place is just overrun with people and their sounds and their dog shit and their own shit.

I feel sort of petrified by the fear and likelihood that I'll never have this. That there will always be neighbors in my peripheral vision. That I'll never be able to melt into green invisibility.

Even if you're able to afford a few acres out in the woods or country, sound carries farther where it's quiet so you just need more. And you have to be constantly vigilant everywhere now for where they'll put the next landfill or development or resort or border patrol station. People are everywhere and most of them show no regard for maintaining a big space cushion between each other. They show no shame over their sounds and growling oversized useless pickups and stupid fucking mobile phone conversations. I SHOULDN'T KNOW THIS MUCH ABOUT YOUR STUPID LIFE!! Not without using stealth, anyway. Or reading your stupid blog (like this one).

I don't want to see the headlights of the cars pulling into my neighbors'. I don't want them to be able to penetrate the gloom that should surround me.

More Gravel Raking?

What the fuck is that sound on a pleasant windows-open September weekend? Someone raking gravel again? Someone stroking a very long tube of cardboard with very dry, calloused hands? Someone brushing metal with sandpaper in three foot long strokes? Oh, it's someone sweeping their driveway.

Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit! Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit! Schhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwwwiiit!

I would like to stick that broom handle straight up that motherfucker's ass.

Oh god. Now someone is striking up a conversation. Two BOOMING men's voices. HIIIIII. Blah blah fucking blah. I hate the sound of people. When I'm at home, I don't want to be reminded you exist within earshot of me. Go inside and watch some football or something.

Honkers

Grrrr . . . I fucking hate people who can't haul their lazy asses out of a car to knock on someone's door rather than whizzing up and HONKING so everyone in the neighborhood has to hear them. What the fuck?

One of our neighbors (not even the bad neighbors, but people we generally hear little enough from) has what I imagine is a cranky ex-wife who always honks when she pulls into their driveway. My theory is that she's a fucking bitch who resents sharing custody or something and rather than parking her cunt car and getting out to knock like a civil human being, she decides to disrupt everyone with her impatient beeping. Bitch, get the fuck out of your car! It's not that fucking hard!

It's not like her car will be stolen if she leaves it running for a minute in the driveway, nor is it blocking anyone. Also, she does it regardless of the weather so it's not that she's avoiding rain or cold or anything. It can be a beautiful starry summer night and she still won't get her bitch ass out of the car.

The only excuse for it I can imagine is if she is handicapped. But I don't think she is.

Silence - I'd rip out my ovaries to get some

I don't know what my problem is this afternoon, but I don't. Want. To hear. ANY SOUNDS. I feel really hypersensitive to noises right now. The door knocking back and forth in the frame because of the wind circulating through the house. The sound of Delia's music in her office to accompany her shows. The fucking CROW cawing incessantly outside my window. The sound of cars driving over gravel. The hum of planes. The grating noise of a computer thinking.

I think I can even hear myself blinking, I'm feeling that tender.

God grant me a fucking padded cell already.

Seriously, I feel horrible about being so irritable; it makes me act like an asshole. I dream, though, of having a custom-built home with super-insulated walls and floor/ceilings with my office and one other room, at least, totally soundproof so I can FUCKING CONCENTRATE. I don't want to hear people I don't want to hear machines I don't want to hear birds I just want to have my mind to myself.

The funny part is that other times I really love noise, especially the noise I make myself. I actually *love* hearing crows and cars and computer noise and music. SOMETIMES. While others? I wish we had an underground bomb shelter where no noise could penetrate and no one would find me.

Rake on Gravel = Fingernails on Chalkboard

It's almost 9:30, nearly dark out . . . I opened the window to get some fresh air and what do I hear? The scraping of gravel with a metal-tined instrument of auditory torture. RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE.

The lady up the hill from us must have hired some boy to smooth out her gravel driveway which is right in front of our driveway which is where we turn around. So I actually feel sort of badly, like I should go out there and offer to help or pay for the labor or something since we are part of why it gets UNsmooth.

But fuck, I am so not in the mood to talk to anybody right now or smile or any of that nonsense. Plus I can never remember her god-damned name (she's really nice, though, our neighbor responsible for the crazed raking).

Chatty Gym-Goers

Yak, yak yak, giggle, teeheehee.

Who are these assholes who go to the gym and spend the entire time bullshitting? I wish the gym would have a couple hours of quiet time on their schedule when they DON'T blast stupid music over their stereo system and people are discouraged from yacking. I just want to hear the sounds of the equipment and the songs on my iPod, thank you. NOT the stupid bitch with the high-pitched voice chattering on and ON and fucking on. SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

Seriously, if she can still talk while she's supposedly doing cardio then she must not be working hard enough.

Yipping Heelbiters

It's a beautiful spring day, really the first warm enough to have all of the doors and windows open. The sky is blue, I work at home . . . life is beautiful.

EXCEPT for the yipping little demon dog a block away. One of its inconsiderate owners is mowing the lawn while he completely ignores his peace-disturbing ceaselessly-barking high-pitched-squeaking lap-mongrel. The people at that house are the types who are constantly standing in their driveway yapping on their fucking cell phones -- the types who don't comprehend the meaning of peace and quiet or, you know, self-consciousness but instead are always busying themselves with conspicuous yacking and flapping of their jaws so its no wonder they don't give a flying fuck about their shitty little dog's noise pollution and how it totally shatters the joy of a nice day. It's so intrusive!! How am I supposed to concentrate enough to work with that HORRID racket?