Tuesday, February 05, 2013

Is it Live, or is it Memorex?

There is currently a very high screeching sound going on somewhere outside my window.  A cross between a rubber hose being run across your more squeaky clean pain of glass...and a demented cat going ballistic in a mano-a-mano style take down (or would that be paw-to-paw...claw-to-claw?  Can you tell it's kinda early for me?).

And truly I can only describe it as above because I cannot, for the life of me, tell if this ghastly screech/squeak is coming from a mammal's throat or not.  As it's not driving any of the animals bizzaro-nutzo, I'm leaning toward "live."

No, I am no animal expert.  But if the noise is so nails-across-the-chalkboard irritating to my ears, it must be stun-educing to those poor animals whose decibel range exceeds our poor excuse for auditory conductivity.  As such, and having been a family member with various generations of dogs living in a city, I should hear howling.  This being Capitol Hill and there being an UNUSUALLY large amount of canines within the vicinity (or maybe it's just a whole lot of poop coming out of one dog and that's the real explanation for the unbelievable amount of sidewalk "obstructions" since the start plastic bag ban), I expect to hear a whole lotta howling to protest any man-made cat-fighting sounds. (Cat vs Seagull maybe?)  This goes above and beyond the loose-timing-belt-on-an-engine noise.  Oh my ears and whiskers, yes.

What's most surprising to me is just how damned loud it is.  I live blocks away from the freeway and the business core, not to mention the astounding amount of bars and restaurants and (of course) coffee shops.  And yet, it is so very quiet here usually that this ailing cat/80s-era Tercel, maybe, is drowning it all out.

Maybe it's the fog-ceiling that is causing it all to bounce back down to the ground and all over our apartment building?  I can buy that.  Sometimes I do wish I'd studied Science or another STEM major and WAS the Nuclear Physicist I imagined myself being when I was a kid.  (I also imagined myself as an Astronaut, a Fireman, a Librarian, a Secretary, a Farmer, a Policeman - briefly, then I realized I'd rather be Bo or Luke Duke as they had much more fun.)  Where was I?  Right. Trying not to lose my mind from the screeching and pull a Numb3rs jag and figure out, using MATH and number theory, just where the hell I should aim the sling-shot* to make it stop!

It's dying down now.  Either the fight has moved on, or the vehicle/person running the halyard line through the un-oiled block has given up (this, at least I know is not the case as there is neither a sailboat nor a flagpole - which has the same parts yet different names for those same parts - anywhere near here.)

The sounds of silence (well, the usual traffic hum and possibly a helicopter) are so very sweet in comparison.

Now, back to the game...

*Note to self, buy a sling-shot. 

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