Urban Crickets Date Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 05:34 PM PST Topic Work OK, so yesterday morning I came into work at the usual hour. The only thing I did different was to have lost my keys. This is not in and of itself a crime, but apparently, kharmicly, it is. I got into the store just fine, I sat down to spend the day doing fuck all without any effort at all, but once the jewelry were laid out and the web site double checked, that was when it began. You don't notice them at first, they are the urban cricket, the noise that you are always hearing dimly in the periphery of your hearing. but they never stay on and they are usually far away. Yesterday morning the car alarm from hell went off at precisely 10:30 Am and stayed that way for the remainder of the day. The alarm ran thusly: thirty seconds on, a blaring, screaming, horrible wake you up in the morning kind of alarm followed by ten seconds off. That was the cycle. Thirty seconds on, ten seconds off, thirty seconds on, ten seconds off. I had nothing to do all day but sit here and listen to the car alarm for hell. At around 11:00 Am, after a mere half an hour of the noise pollution, I called the police to see if I could get the thing towed. The police are not allowed to touch cars if it's only because the car alarm is going off. Not unless the car is stolen. At 11:30 AM things got a little interesting, someone put two bullets through the windshield of the offending vehicle, sadly, while it destroyed the windshield, it didn't do so with any exciting flames or anything. And the alarm blared on. I considered adding a few bullets to the mix myself, but I didn't know which guns in the shop were registered. At noon I left the shop for half an hour to get some peace and quiet, oh and a bit of lunch. It was glorious. I had a veggie burger and fries at a local dive at which I eat quite regularly. It was nice and quiet. I thought I was in heaven. When I got back the alarm was still going. I had entertained hopes that the battery would die, but no such luck. Not only was it still going, but none of the tires were flat, which was one of the nicer things I had wished on the car while i had the peace and quiet to allow myself the luxury of thought. At 12:30, my boss called to see how the day was going and to remind me that a .45 magnum will actually crack the engine block of most vehicles. He lives on the third floor of the building in which I work. I don't think he cared if the gun was registered any more. A few minutes later I called the police to ask them to run the plates, just in case the car was actually stolen. It wasn't. I locked the gun drawer closest to me, just to be on the safe side. At 1:15 I went quietly insane. At 1:30 I got verbal about it. At 1:45 I went into the back room to consider flushing myself down the toilet and by 2 O'clock, I realized that katanas have no rifling and as such could not technically be traced back to the shop. Now granted in hind-sight this is a little silly, I mean we are the only shop on the block with an officer's katana from world war two, and by this time half the block was watching that car in shifts. I think we all were waiting to see who would crack first and go medieval on the thing. I put the keys to the sword case in the gun drawer and relocked it. By 3 O'clock I was ready to chew my way through the hood and kill the alarm myself. At 3:15 I went out to see if I could find any loose wires or anything to yank on that might disarm the damned siren. Well to be honest, by 3:15 I just wanted to commit some petty vandalism and if it stopped the alarm it would have been an added bonus. I couldn't fins any wires so I had to console myself with a few well aimed kicks at the tires and then a hasty retreat because some tourists were looking at me like I had somehow set the alarm off myself. I came back to the shop and double checked to make sure the gun drawer was locked. By 4 I was officially out of my mind. The alarm had been going off for five and a half hours and all I could think about was making the pain stop. My shoulders were so tense I must have looked like a hunch backed gargoyle. My ears were ringing, I had a headache that made me truly believe in the headache gnomes and I was beginning to think fondly of the beer in the company fridge. I locked the kitchen and added that key to the drawer when i remember the unopened bottle of vodka in the company freezer. At 5 the end was in sight. I had a half an hour, maybe 45 minutes until I was able to leave and I had while the battery had not yet died, I could console myself with the thought that hopefully the alarm would drain the battery to such an extent that it would no longer start the car when the owner returned. I entertained the thought of buying earplugs and taking a nap on the hood of the car so that when the owner did return I could beat the snot out of him or her, but I decided not to on the grounds that they might be either cute or apologetic and that would make things awkward. I gritted my teeth and rummaged around for the key to the kitchen, but I couldn't remember where I had put it. At 5:30 I shut off the lights, told the remaining customers in the store that they had ten seconds to exit the premises before the entire shop was flooded with a toxic nerve gas that would incapacitate them instantly and kill them over the course of several very painful hours; and locked up behind them I put away the jewelry, found the key to the kitchen door next to the guns and the sword case key, stared at them for a few minutes before closing the drawer again and left the shop. I was careful to lock up behind me with the spare store key I had grabbed and then, after aimed a few well placed evil looks at the offending car with it's evil as fuck alarm, I turned on my heel and walked away. At approximately 8:00 PM, I killed that car in effigy with dozens of video game victims while I drown my sorrows with expensive Cognac and an amazing back rub from callei. I believe it was around midnight when I stood in front of the offending car, it's alarm still blaring into the night and performed the sledgehammer dance on its hood. I woke up around 3 am to go pee and swear under my breath at the trauma of the car. At 9:00 Am this morning I arrived at work to find that the car was finally gone. According to my boss, at ten in the evening when he turned up the television and put in a pair of earplugs, the alarm was still going. According to rumor, the alarm stopped at 1Am when the battery presumably died. At 1:35 AM, the fucking car finally became a stolen vehicle, according to rumor. I feel so good. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=716