It started with the washing machine. Dead. Then a demised dishwasher, too. The fridge popped its clogs, almost in sympathy. This was followed by a major meltdown by the stove which wheezed once or twice while labouring to cook dinner and then had a fatal jammer.
What can you do but replace them? Expensive of course, a royal pain in the butt, almost majestically inconvenient. “Oh, it’ll fit nicely where the old unit went. You just have to blow out this entire wall, rewire the kitchen, and bring everything else up to code. Oh yeah, you have to bring your neighbour’s house up to code, too. But that’s all!” Yet once you get them hooked up and running everything is smooth sailing, right? Yeah….right.
Let’s double back. Fridge: 5 unique alarm sounds. Stove: 5 unique alarm sounds. Washing Machine: 5 unique alarm sounds. Dishwasher: 5 unique alarm sounds. Within one year I have had to learn to differentiate between 20 different bingings and bongings. I haven’t the faintest clue which one of these stupid crates is whining for my attention.
Leave the door ajar on the fridge & it tinkles a little alert. Of course you’ve also just installed a washing machine; it bonged-out the entire dance mix of the frickin’ Macarena the other night, so you stride into laundry world, rub your chin in an effort to make all onlookers (of which there are none) think that you’re problem solving. But all you do is stare at that damn unit, open and close the door, then absently scratch your arse.
Oh sure, you eventually echo-locate the source of the sound and shut the fridge door but not before you let all the cold out and lose a few marbles along the way.
It happens once and you find a way to laugh about it. Twice, you get embarrassed. But when it has happened 8 or 10 times you start to feel like HAL 9000 as Dave Bowman is unhooking him. “I can feel my mind going Dave. Dave? Dave? I can feel it.”
I have decided that in my remaining days I am going to hunt down and capture every single engineer or designer who dreamt up these evil sounds. I am going to tie them to a post, affix headphones, and make them listen to ‘It’s a Small World After All’ over and over and over and over and over and over….
VRD
Random Note Generator 