Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Possibly the most irritating thing in the world

...is a neighbor who constantly plays music that's just loud enough for you to hear, but not enough to tell what the fuck it is. All I know is, it's either the same damn song over and over and over again, or a series of songs that have remarkably similar basslines. Slow, monotonous basslines.

Actually, any repeated sound is that much worse if you can't quite tell what it is. In my old place, the people in the apartment right above me used to, frequently, do...something...that I could only guess was a really lively game of marbles. Or, possibly, they had a barrel of ball-bearings rigged to a trip-wire so that every time someone got up to go to the bathroom or something it spilled all over the floor...and then, they had to recollect the whole thing, one. click. at. a. time. Favorite time of day to do this: one or two in the morning. Or there was the next-door neighbor who was training to be on Broadway: never could quite make out which showtune it was, but whatever it was, it was always heartfelt.

Ahhhh, apartment living. Did I mention the part about what the fuck am I doing here, in New York, with the extra-big-buildings-with-their-very-old-and-thinning-walls, among other things? I may have, once or twice, of late.

6 comments:

rey said...

In my New Haven apartment, I lived under someone my roommate and I called Heavy-Hoofed Heather. She was this rock chick who was always dating guys on Harley's.

We attached the Heavy-Hoofed to her real name because she always wore boots or clogs with thick, thick heels. She was kind of small, not really short, but perhaps the footwear was meant to compensate for her height. Whatever the reason, she always wore those shoes. Morning, noon, and night. I wouldn't be surprised if she wore them to bed.

Clump. Clump. Clump.

Anonymous said...

I hate it when people do that! They don't realize that playing music at those levels is absolutely annoying!!

fastlad said...

i grew up around Heavy Hooved Heifers; be glad they haven't moved in upstairs. singing is bad enough but try lowing.

Spiky said...

Rey: That is exactly what I deal with! This guy always wears shoes in the house and he has a very thudding walk for some reason, and -- get this -- walks around the bedroom at 3 am in heavy soled boots.

Why do these people where shoes in the house at all? Especially in winter.

clindsay said...

Yeah, well trying to have a neighbor who yells "Montenegro!!!" for no apparent reason every night at 11:00. I do hope that isn't what he screams in bed...

Anonymous said...

couldn't agree more
not restricted to NY however - good ol' londinium suffers from bastard neighbours too

funnily enough, it made me tiptoe around even more - as i simply could deal w being that sort of tosser myself

damned catholicism....

not that catholicism stopped me wanting to slowly, carefully, gleefully disembowel the aforementioned shits

oh well, can't have it all