Suffering from shattered eardrum syndrome

I thought before I got Sam that Shih Tzus didn’t bark (much). Sam’s not as yappy as some dachshunds I know or poodles, but I have a hard time leaving the house without him waging a holy barking jihad. And just let me try to eat anything without sharing. OMG! I say to him, “Enough noise, already,” and he looks at me like, “huh?”

I’m not as tolerant of noise as I used to be. Have you noticed that in yourself? When I was younger I tied balloons or poker cards to my bicycle spokes and rode around the neighborhood reveling in raucous racket. Harley riders do the same. I understand the joy of gunning down a quiet street at full-throttle, with the sound of roaring pipes reverberating off buildings like a grand-mal seizure of decibel-defying cacophony. We legislate that cars must be muffled, but howling bikers seem to deafen our lawmakers every time they try to quiet things down.

Other noxious noises include diesel pickup trucks. I can’t understand the need to own one of those smelly, noise-belching behemoths. I hate to get stuck in traffic beside or behind one. And car horns . . . wouldn’t you just love to jump out of your vehicle, walk back to the guy who laid on his horn as soon as the light turned green and rip that offending oooga oooga out of his car with his hand still attached?

How about noisy music in our stores and restaurants? That’s supposed to enhance the shopping/dining experience? I have walked out of several establishments without buying or eating anything because the music was so loud. When I’ve asked a clerk or waiter to please turn down the music, they’ve looked at me like I hated American Idol or something.

What got me to thinking about noise was an article titled Blowback, The great urban leaf war, authored by Tad Friend and appearing in the October 25, 2010, issue of The New Yorker magazine. It seems that the good people of Orinda, California (a yuppie neighborhood if there ever was one – I know because I’ve been there) were squabbling over how much noise their gardeners were allowed to make with leaf blowers.  According to Mr. Friend, in 1998, actress Julie Newmar even appeared before the Los Angeles city council (nowhere near Orinda) and “vilified” leaf blowers as “a three-foot extension of a gardener’s masculinity.” Apparently, the mostly Hispanic gardeners in the area took great umbrage at that and went on a week-long hunger strike and started buying mass quantities of ED drugs (no, I made that ED part up). One wonders though why the gardener’s didn’t just quit blowing off leaves. Their clients certainly would have risen up against city hall carrying signs that said, “You’ll have to pry my leaf blower out of my gardener’s cold dead hands.” Something like that. How did former NRA pres. Charlie H. say it?

Anyway, you get the drift of what I’m saying. I’m tossing two bags of Sam’s poop on noise – he’s staying strangely quiet on the issue.

What noxious noises irk the bejabbers out of you, generators in campgrounds maybe? As a CB operator might say, “Come back to me on that good buddies.”