A Case of the Chronic Car Alarms

I live in a world where there exists...drum roll...car alarms. Chronic, resounding alarms.

It was kind of a tough transition from apartment-overlooking-courtyard to apartment-overlooking-street. Hence my constant white-AC-noise (and sleep mask, for that matter). But it’s really quite difficult to be a recovering insomniac when there are car alarms going off all night every night.

Last Sunday, I had a little funday with my lady friends, Kelly, Jill, and Dana. This last hilarious lass flicked her cigarette butt, it hit a parked car, and she immediately joked, “I hope that doesn’t set the alarm off!”

Amidst laughter, a conversation began on how car alarms are sooooo 90s. And they ARE!! They are beepers in a Blackberry world. Encyclopedias in the Kingdom of Wiki-Google. Bonafide handwritten letters in a society of ecards. For reals.

What purpose do car alarms serve? What is their means to an end? What act do they actually accomplish?

Perhaps they spook away dogs who are trying to piss on their shiny paint. Or maybe they prevent bar patrons from sitting on their hoods, tailgate style.

But really, people: They don’t keep hoodlums from breaking and entering your fancy schmance set-o-wheels.

If your car’s gonna get robbed, it’s a gonna get robbed. It happened to my father on 7th Avenue in broad daylight. Punched out his lock, swiped his wallet, wham bam thank you ma’am. Hundreds of dollars later - hmm. Did the alarm prevent it from happening? No.

There’s no point to the alarm institution. They’re good for nothing but inflicting pain on our poor human ears. Has anyone else noticed how the shrieking of car alarms has grown infinitesimally more torturous with the passage of years? Now there’s not only horns honking at frustratingly close intervals - oh no.

There’s the deep, belching sirens. The short, stabbing squeals. The vibrating emissions that sound alien...or radioactive...or a combination of the two.

Where’s the voice saying, “Step away from the car!” - at least that one provided some comic relief. Too much to ask for, apparently.

In fact, car alarms are so outdated, so archaic, that they’re inventing new uses for them. JUST YESTERDAY, I received an email from one of my high school teachers. No joke!!! Some highlights (copied and pasted...I swear, I kid you not):

“Put your car keys beside your bed at night…If you hear a noise outside your home or someone trying to get in your house, just press the panic button for your car...The alarm will be set off, and the horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car battery dies…If your car alarm goes off when someone is trying to break into your house, odds are the burglar/rapist won't stick around. After a few seconds all the neighbors will be looking out their windows to see who is out there and sure enough the criminal won't want that.”

Oh no, that criminal surely won’t want that.

Come ON, you rich, Village-dwelling peeps. Turn those stupid, shitty car alarms off at night so we can get some SLEEP!

I crack up every morning when I walk by those super famous, cutely painted apartments on my street (where Anna Wintour now lives). It’s a block of nada but Jaguars and Mercedes the occasional Rolls.

Dummy, dummy, dumbass. If you’d rather not have your expensive ass car broken into, don’t park it on the streets of New York City. Because we the people, us regular ole folk, DO NOT want to hear its chronic shrill alarm go off all night every night.

Thankyouverymuch.

Sidewalk Rage

Don’t fret ya’lls. The snarkster is back.
(Though I must say I did enjoy a brief, blissful stint in the clouds the other night after seeing Bright Star again. Seriously, you need to see it. It will forever change your opinion on just how passionate the touching of a wrist can be.)

As badly as I wish it was, unfortunately this isn’t England circa 1818. This is crazy 21st century New York Citay. And though we still have to deal with the occasional pile-o-poop, the sidewalks here are a tad more crowded. Around 8 million times more so.

And navigating them, unfortunately, is no simple feat. In fact, it’s quite irritating. Infuriating. Exasperating. Aggravating. A simple walk on a lovely day can be positively ruined by a slow-moving person. Ruined. I kid you not.

Trying to steer your way through a New York sidewalk is like trying to find your way through a maze. Blindfolded. Behind a pack of abnormally large, mutant snails.

Oh yes. Walking around the Village, especially, (or anywhere in Midtown) will drastically diminish your faith in the brainpower of a Homo sapien. In their ability to understand, to comprehend. To grasp the simple unspoken rules of NYC pedestrianism.

Why don’t people get it?

There’s nothing like being stuck behind a group of slow-moving folks. It makes me want to scream and push and punch someone.

True, these offensive people probably don’t live here. Chances are, they don’t know that we New Yorkers have tacit speed limits for walking. (Especially during peak hours.)

But, that being said, what is so difficult about keeping to the right? Huh? HUH? Do you drive on the left side of the road? No. Do you walk down the left side of a staircase? No.

The left side is the passing side, people. Not the lollygagging side.

Being stuck behind a gaggle of people is probably the worst thing ever. And I mean stuck. Cars lining one side (and you know how NYC cars park - with mere inches, centimeters, to spare), buildings lining the other. No where to go stuck.

It could be three or four or more people blocking your path. It could be. But all it takes is two to trap you.

And if it’s not cars on the other side, then it’s garbage bags. Or couches. Or recyclables. Bam, you’re trapped.

My eyes dart around, I become an assassin planning an escape route. How the hell am I going to get around these stupid, snail-paced peeps?????

If there’s no escape route, I start breathing very loudly. Sigh obnoxiously - I am passive aggressive, obvi. I start fencing in my mind, trying to get by, find a way through the human-traffic-wall. Feint, parry. Feint, parry (coolest last name ever).

Then finally, when I burst beyond the slackers, I double up my gait. I try to show them how we New Yorkers roll - and yeah, it’s quickly.

“...Is Romance Dead?”

Now let me preface by saying this topic was not something on my “No Dankes” list. Well actually, that’s a lie. It probably was something I didn’t know I didn’t like.

But now, after seeing Bright Star recently, a strong aversion to present-day courtship customs arose within me.

How do we ladies stand it?

Keats wrote to his beloved Fanny:

“I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my Religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet - You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often ‘to reason against the reasons of my Love.’ I can do that no more - the pain would be too great - My Love is selfish - I cannot breathe without you.”

Seriously? What? I mean, I know Keats belonged to the Romanticism literary movement and all. But what?


Perhaps I idealize and idolize a bit. Perhaps irrationally so. I know men - and women for that matter - are fairly incapable of writing such poetic, romantic prose these days.
 
What, with Facebook and Playstation and Football games diluting our heads and offering never-ending distractions.
 
And I’m sure we ladies, as recipients (or gentlemen for that matter), would laugh at such amorous endeavors as love letters. Like Carrie laughed when the Russian composed a song for her, getting her to thinking later that day, “...is romance dead?”
 
Yes Carrie, methinks it is.
 
Obviously I can be a judgmental bitch and would most likely say “See ya lata” to any Creepy McCreeperson calling me their religion. But a thoughtful handwritten note never hurt no one. Instead, we modern lassies get texts. Texts. 

“What r u up to 2night!?” hardly compares to “When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses.”
 
Those opposite-spectrum examples don’t even deserve to be in the same paragraph together.
Kelly, a fellow Bright Star-goer had an interesting thought. Maybe the passion of yester-century had to do with the anticipation. The waiting. I mean, we’re talking pre-snail mail. Like, amoeba mail. That shit took weeks, if not months to get where it was going.
 
Can you imagine the patience? The yearning? We modern kids think it’s been forever and a day if we haven’t heard from someone in two hours.
Maybe the lack of immediacy enabled the eloquence. Maybe drafts upon drafts were written to one’s beloved while they waited (and waited and waited) for a reply letter to arrive. 

Perhaps all those moments of waiting simply snowballed and magically manifested their heartbreak into things like: “I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen.”
Yet we wait and wait for a text. A text. Or an email. And even with the passing of a day or two - forever in our interminably high-speed world - that is just so unsatisfying. 

Sorry’s yo. I’m sure once I stop reading Keats’ letters and sonnets and poems, I’ll return to my snarky self. Rest assured.