h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

>Meanwhile, *anyone* complaining about washing machine noise is obviously nuts.<

Yeah! How much noise can a washing machine possibly make? I've got one in my flat, I run it and the dishwasher at the same time and you can't even hear it in the next room, not to mention the next flat down.

That's being a bit touchy, I think.

<> (psychocandy)

Curiously the family that lived in my flat before I moved here - I used to live next door - had three children within five years. The amount of screaming that went on was frankly unbearable. I had flatmates who threatened to move out. I had one German flatmate who said in Germany she would have called social services already - the amount of screaming WAS NOT NORMAL. I remember once going over to ask the woman if she was okay, if her child was sick, if I could help in any way. Got the door closed in my face. I really think this woman was just not able to cope and left her babies screaming and screaming - it was the worst sound imaginable. Not just about the noise level, but the gut-wrenching 'oh my god that child is in pain' empathy feeling and feeling helpless to do anything.

Probably if this had happened in Canada I would have also called social services. But I just didn't know how things worked here.

Heck, that was even worse than the Peruvian water-torture band.


az

It's especially odd as the washing-machine woman lives in the building across from us, we only share the courtyard, and our machine is in the basement... Where we used to live, in a row of terraced houses, there was a playground right behind us. Wonderful for my little sister, but it drove us all up the wall because of our dog. He was our farm dog, and trained to bark when someone came to let us know, we might be off in the barns etc. But he couldn't resist barking at everyone going past in the row, he tried to stopp it, buried his nose under things etc., but the barks just burst out of him. Drove everyone nuts!

That's awful. The shrieking downstairs seems, fortunately, to be the sort of shrieking small children do when they're playing *really hard* and having a lot of fun. And the little one's not even a year old yet. It certainly doesn't sound like shrieks of pain, agony, or anything indicative of a problem.

Their older daughter has a habit of banging their front door shut so hard (and it's not her fault, the doors are big, heavy, solid oak things that even *I* have to push on pretty hard to shut all the way) and it never ceases to startle the bejeesus out of me. But no hard feelings there, either. Kids will be kids. They can't help it.

>It's especially odd as the washing-machine woman lives in the building across from us, we only share the courtyard, and our machine is in the basement... <

That is VERY odd!! Sounds like a cranky, unhappy woman, that one. Maybe she just needs something to gripe about? I had a neighbor when I was growing up, at my parents old house, who used to bellyache if the water from our garden hose came through the chain-link fence to her side. She filed a complaint that we were putting water runoff on her property. End result was funny- turns out their house was actually built in part on *our* side of the property line. She stopped complaining after that came out.

>But he couldn't resist barking at everyone going past in the row, he tried to stopp it, buried his nose under things etc., but the barks just burst out of him. Drove everyone nuts!<

Awww, the poor guy! Dogs must be dogs, too, I suppose.

Barking dogs only drive me nuts when they're the small, yipping kind or dogs with really shrill barks. Or the dumb poodle next door, who used to crap on our front steps until I left a particularly ripe specimen in his owner's letter box once.

No, big Shepherd, this, but if you hear it all day, it still drives you insane! The griping woman also complains if we grill in the courtyard, becuase the smell apparently gets into her kitchen and ruins her cakes!

>The griping woman also complains if we grill in the courtyard, becuase the smell apparently gets into her kitchen and ruins her cakes!<



Can't she shut the window?

I think being subjected to anything all day, every day, day after day, drives a person crazy after a while. Isn't that part of why most people dislike their jobs so much?

I suppose some people are more sensitive to noise, or particular sounds, than others. What irritates one eprson, another will barely notice.
Timing is a factor too, as has been mentioned. Some people do live to an odd schedule.

My washing machine is rather noisy - I would never have it running at night like some people do. A regular noise would be OK, it's the irregularity as well as volume & pitch that is disturbing.

I have no particular objection to loud noise through the night at weekends. However I always feel a bit put out when it happens on school nights.

"Nice gender-neutral pronouns!"

Glad you liked them--I think I found them in your old Post article.

<>

R. Daneel didn't take offence, zie just felt zie should explain zirself--zie realizes that what zie has been doing is rather odd and perhaps inconvienient for others. R. Daneel apologizes if it has caused any inconvienience.


<>

Don't worry about it--my first name actually is "Daniel". That, along with my being a huge Asimov fan is why I picked the username I did. My object wasn't to the suggested gender pronoun in any case--people have been refering to me as "he" here for quite a while. I just thought it was odd that you spoke to me in the third person, so I decided to respond in the third person. And since I do think that gender-neutral pronouns are a good idea, and am starting to be less sure of my gender than I was before, I felt using them seemed reasonable in that case.

"<>

Huh?"

I think Edward assumed that my use of gender-neutral third-person singular prounouns to refer to myself implied that I am not male and that I was offended by his use of "he" to refer to me. Actually my main objection was just that I was being addressed in the third person rather than the first when I was clearly present. And since my first name actually is "Daniel", it would be unreasonable for me to object to being refered to by it, although I prefer R. Daneel or RDO.

lovely night

I live in a very quiet, middle-class residential neighbourhood, so I'm not usually plagued by noise, but I often enjoy it. There is nothing quite so magical as riding on a noisy subway and having to yell at the person next to you in order to carry on a conversation. I'm a city person at heart, I suppose.

But then again, I'm also a band geek, so I'm quite used to loud noises.

I always support buskers - as a fellow musician I'm usually sympathetic. At the city park we get a few buskers who are actually somewhat talented - there's a jazz saxophone player and a violinist who plays Irish music whom I see regularly, and I always give them a dollar or so.

And bagpipes are way cool.

early afternoon here.

There is only one "bad" neighbor near me in my complex. In the summer, when the kids aren't in school and it's still light out, the moms and dads let their kids stay out until around 8. He would complain that they were too loud, running around outside. One night, he called the police with a noise complaint.

The cop showed up, asked him what his problem was, and told him that if he didn't want to put up with kids, then perhaps graduate family housing wasn't the place for him. And told him the next time he called on such a frivolous thing, *he* would get a ticket for filing a false report.

This is also the guy who would call the housing office about people having overnight guests for more than one night, or people who didn't have saucers under their plants, etc. Basically, one unhappy guy.

nah, really loud noise I object to, I don't go to discos or pubs where it's too loud for a conversation. But then, i'm more the country type, grew up on a farm...

I once had a woman call the cops on me in berlin because a few friends and I were juggling in the park and we might break off the star of her Mercedes parked in the street. They took her in for calling the police too often over nothing!

I think atleast some of the problems are due to people movin to an area without appreciating the environment.

I get really hacked off when woken up at 2am by people walking drunkenly back from the nightclub, singing, shouting etc. But then, *I* was the one who moved into the centre of town. What did I expect?

My parents village has a similar situation. New development in a small village. People move in from outside 'oh yes, lovely quiet, quaint little village etc etc, idylic rural setting etc' and then have the cheek to lodge complaints about the farm next door. Hello? It's a farm. A dairy farm no less. The cows get milked 6am every day. That's what happens in a village with a working farm. Luckily they got very short shrift from the council.

Bit of a leap here, there have also been incidences of people being banned from having bird feeders and so forth in their gardens since they attract birds (!) and they birds then have their dawn chrous (type damn chorus then! ) and neighbours complained about the noise.

Can't find a reference on line, but did find this, which is funny!
http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/dammed.htm

I like a lot of the city noises- it's like white noise. I used to live across from a railroad crossing, and now I live very near an el station. There's lots of noises my former roommate used to gripe about- the ice cream truck, neighborhood kids playing out in front, even traffic sounds. That stuff doesn't bother me. Nor does loud music in and of itself (my partner plays drums in a couple of bands so I'm used to LOUD music), aside from wanting my bedroom to be serene and not wanting it to seem like the back room at a night club.

One thing I always really enjoy is a local street fest that takes place down the street from my place during July. They normally charge $10 admission per person, but as I'm only a couple of blocks away and we live on the top floor of the highest building within the immediate area, I get to listen to all of the performances for free! Same with the air and water show- we can see the "air" part from my dining room windows.

>Bit of a leap here, there have also been incidences of people being banned from having bird feeders and so forth in their gardens since they attract birds (!) and they birds then have their dawn chrous (type damn chorus then! ) and neighbours complained about the noise.<

Oh, my, that's ridiculous! I've heard of being banned from having bird feeders because of pigeons (they attract rats), but not as a noise nuisance! I love being woken at dawn by birdsongs. It's one of the only things I like about summer.