People in this city seem to be completely incompetent with their alarm systems, both in their cars and their houses. Car alarms are so common I barely even notice them anymore; there are several cars that park outside my house on a daily basis and set off their alarms on that same schedule. I’ve learned them all by sound (although not by sight; I haven’t bothered), so I hear a certain tone and length of chirp and go, “Yup, that car belongs here.”
More annoying than that are the car horns, although I think I’ve complained about that already. I know you’ve all heard about the gas trucks, so I won’t go there again. But even drivers who are just trying to get somewhere and not sell propane tanks seem to think that the best way to do it is to honk incessantly. It’s like the engine is somehow driven by the horn, and honking makes it run faster.
The most annoying of all, though, is the house and building alarms. They are instensely (alarmingly?) loud, and no one can seem to avoid setting them off on a regular basis. Three nights ago one went off in my neighborhood from midnight to about 8am; I can’t imagine why no one shut it off in those eight hours, but my lack of sleep can tell you with certainty that for whatever reason, they didn’t. The next night, the same alarm went off again, but thankfully it was shut off after less than twenty minutes.
This morning, and this is what’s prompting me to do all this bitching, two different alarms have gone off since I’ve been awake. The first one must have been right across the street, given the volume, and it sounded for ten minutes or so before being silenced. The one that’s currently annoying me started about an hour ago, but is different than the rest: it doesn’t go off constantly. It starts up, sounds for five or so seconds, then fades out (sounds like a Doppler effect almost), is silent for five or ten seconds, and then starts up again.
So my frustrated question is this: why have an alarm if you don’t know how to use the damn thing? It’s not like they draw any attention – note me, sitting here and getting annoyed instead of calling the police. The police undoubtedly wouldn’t care even if I did call. After all, they might not have the gas to get here. (Actually said to Liz’s dad; he called the police one night and was told that they had no gas, and that to get them out there, he would have to give them gas money. Having no choice, he did so.)
In other facets of city life, congratulations to Cari for being a self-defense hero last night. Liz and I went to Dragonfly, where we were waiting for Cari to show up. She came in about half an hour after we did, looking a little shaken. I asked what was wrong, and she said, "I almost just got robbed!"
"What happened?" Liz and I asked together.
"I couldn't find a taxi, so I was walking here," she explained. "I walked by these two guys, and then they came up to me, and one of them had a knife. I had my pepper spray, and I sprayed him in the eyes, but the other guy pushed me against the wall. I sprayed him too, and I thought he was going to kill me for spraying him, but he backed off and I ran."
Craig told me last night that Massachusetts attempted to make pepper spray illegal. What the hell is wrong with people?
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