I live on a noisy street. By dawn, lumbering rattling earth-quaking construction vehicles and delivery trucks chug, growl and roar past my apartment house, which is a dog’s fart distance from the intersection. Thus, the revving up to proceed with their early morning’s constant cacophony is the bitter pineapples on this Paradise Upside-Down Cake.
Give me a tiny cabin in the middle of the Redwoods and a sustainable means to enjoy it and I’m there. Alas, there are few well-paying jobs so far from civilization, if you can call gang-killings, media meltdowns and bromidic bourgeois back-biting civilized.
And who decided that these baby roundabouts on my neighborhood’s streets were a brilliant feat of traffic management? Great, now the idiots blowing by my house and through the intersection are swerving in their Batmobiles. If you want to slow idiots down, put a speed bump across the lane – not a fun obstacle course. Whee! Splat! Oops.
Better yet, take a marketing cue from the internet and install Brick Wall Pop-ups. Sensors in the street would determine if these lead-footed imbeciles – Ricky Bobby wannabes – think they’re approaching the finish line at Talladega. It would sound something like this:
vvvVVVRRROOOOOOMMMmmm!
pop
SMASH!!!
Yuck. *barf*
Sweep, sweep, sweep.
Shake-n-Bake, baby! Then, reset and watch the fun all over again. Sure, we’d lose a few prime contenders for the Darwin Awards, but look at the safety, peace and quiet the neighborhood would gain. Perhaps the politicians need to insert a Clue Book where their thumbs have been residing and sit on that for awhile. Brick Wall Pop-ups would not cost nearly as much as the Granada Theatre, by the way, but the entertainment value would be priceless.
After the city’s $25,000,000 Granada Garage boondoggle, they may not be able to afford to send their urban planners back to traffic school. So, I suggest SimCity 4. It’s less than $15 on Amazon and what they’ll learn by playing it is bound to improve the traffic flow in this town. That lack of a turn lane nonsense on Anacapa Street would never have happened, if the city staff had an experienced SimCity mayor on the team.
There should be at least one day, during the week, that is devoid of obnoxious noise, which includes the majority of TV and radio, as well. Wednesday sounds good. Some of us work from home and it can be hard to think, at times. How can I concentrate on being scathing and vile with all this noise? Consider “Whispering Wednesdays” a contribution to the sanity of your neighbors. Leafblowers, weedwackers and backyard do-it-yourselfers should be ordered to unplug and unwind before some of us come unglued.
Not everyone can afford a palatial estate on the edge of reality where the only discordance is the incessant chirping and whirring of cell phones and fax machines as a legion of lawyers send the latest lawsuit news regarding those two starfish found gasping on the sand a tentacle’s length above the high tide line. Fucking starfish.
Billy Joel said it best when he sang, “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, ’cause sinners are much more fun . . . and only the good die young.”
I like living in Santa Barbara – even on this noisy street with my Gestapo landlady, “Bionic Bob Villa” as a next-door neighbor and my roommate’s darling cat, Li’l Miss Fuzz Butt, which sheds and howls and drags her shitty ass on our hardwood floors. Yep, that whole opposable thumbs thing comes in really handy when it’s TP time. This is why cats do not rule the world.
The Santa Barbara Trolley Tour glides by, regularly, and the tour guide sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher on their muffled P.A., as I can only hear about two seconds of their shtick before they fade away. I imagine what they may say to their captive, if not captivated, tourists at 20 mph:
And here we are on Noisy as Hell Garden Street, approaching Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens; yes, a mouthful, but she was a delightful lady – bless her soul – who deserves to be remembered for her many contributions to our fair city. Don’t pet the koi.
On this side of the street is a yipping, yapping mongrel that has some neighbors, we won’t say who – is it “who or whom?” (tee-hee) – anyway, they’re dreaming up antifreeze enemas and wondering why certain pets were not fed Iyams, Nutro or Eukanuba, recently.
Of course, to avoid being shot on sight by PETA, some neighbors wouldn’t mind if this dog’s owners ingested the toxic pet food, instead. Then, the SPCA would, hopefully, adopt this poor little beast and give it a new home – in another country, like Korea.
Over here, there is some type of remodeling that has been going on since Noah landed the ark on a mountain we’ll show you, later. It begins at dawn and some cessation of hammering and pounding occurs by dusk. This may not be actual construction, since the hedges obstruct our view and it could simply be that Grandpa’s reading “War and Peace” in the bathroom, again, and he can’t hear the grandchildren’s desperate need to use the bathroom.
And this is the apartment where the neighbors are always fucking. We won’t talk about that, because this is a family tour of the city. If you’d like the adult tour, we’ll meet you near the Spearmint Rhino at midnight. Everyone please wear a condom.
Now, here’s a charming home on the outside, but inside lives a cranky and cantankerous curmudgeon who yells all the time, cursing and swearing at: his computer, his roommate’s cat, Cox Cable, the government, his landlady, his computer, Big Oil, the lack of Bush’s brain, his job, his employer, the Pope, Big Business, big “G” God, small-minded fucktards, his computer and 60,000 other things each and every day.
Across the street is Ye Olde Used Yak Shoppe and Muffler Repair, plus, down on the corner stands a less than Disneyesque tenement where they’re rehearsing for the new musical “Diaspora My Ass.” You can hear the leads singing the title song “This Land was Our Land, Vato.” You fat white people might want to duck down. Yes, from the redwood forests to the Gulf stream waters, they’re taking it on tour – one barrio at a time.
And over here . . .
I like my barrio. Walking through Alameda Park, at night, and listening to the older kids talking shit in the shadows of Kid’s World, I get it. They just want a place where they can rule the roost, once in awhile. I remember what it was like being a teenager. It’s probably the most difficult time for a child and, if you can survive it, it can get easier.
Let’s try to allow each other our space to do a little trash talkin’ and play king of the hill, occasionally, but let’s not be knifing each other at Kid’s World, okay? Some things should remain sacred.
And please keep the noise down on Wednesdays. I’m trying to be cranky and I can’t hear myself think.
The Kat
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