bigbadbob's Blog

            There was a time when the sound of wolves howling and coyotes baying would conjure up images of western movies.  Your mind would paint a picture of cowboys sitting around a campfire during a roundup, or sleeping in their bedrolls with their saddles as their pillows.  You know one of those "MACHO-MEMORY-MOMENTS!"  Or the screaming, whining, screeching of cats at night, doing what ever it is that cats do to make those blood curdling noises along with the distant sound of a train whistle that are reminders of those past memories of the summers I spent at Grandma's house.  I no longer find these sounds pleasing to the ear.  Why not, you ask?  Oh I don't know, maybe it's because those are just some of the sounds being supplied by those annoying, obnoxious, grinding "CAR ALARMS!!"

            At first they seemed like a viable, effective way to deter crime.  Someone would attempt to break into a car, a siren alarm or a honking horn would go off and the perpetrator (The Poip, as they say in New York) would be scared off, that's it, end of story. But the manufacturers weren't satisfied, so they set out to build a better mouse trap.  The new ones are so STATE-OF-THE-ART, sound and touch sensitive, that a puppy sneezing a mile away or a gnat landing on the hood can set it off.  This usually can result in a domino effect causing other car-alarms to join in the chorus of MIND-ALTERING sounds!  My biggest nightmare would be if a car alarm went off in Tampa, it would trigger a chain reaction that wouldn't stop until it reached Seattle.  Sorta like a "HORNS ACROSS AMERICA!"

            My least favorite alarm system is the one that offers a potpourri of a dozen different sounds simultaneously.  With the hooting, and the whirring and the beeping and the bopping and the honking and on and on.  These sounds have such a nerve racking effect on me that I could whip a bowl of egg whites into a meringue with just my pinky!

            The sad thing is that none of these alarms are effective anymore.  Name one person you can think of who calls 911 when they hear an alarm.  You can't, right?  If anything car alarms have created more crime.  Now we even have people who aren't thieves breaking into cars, just so they can shut off those stupid alarms!  

            A few years back, a musician colleague who fancied himself an electronics genius, decided that he would BURGLAR-PROOF his car by wiring the door handles of his Mustang so that anyone trying to enter his "ride" would be met by a few jolts of electricity.   Nothing fatal, just enough to knock someone on their keester.  So he did.  The problem was that he forgot to inform his wife, so when she came through the door all disheveled, with her hair smoking and looking like a combination of Kramer and Carrot Top, she wasn't laughing.  This normally beautiful woman looked like a CRASH DUMMY in a static-cling commercial!

            So what's the solution?  I personally feel that it should be mandatory that every vehicle should be equipped with infra-red indelible dye and a homing device.  This way when a vehicle is stolen, instead of high-speed chases, they could be recovered electronically and the thief could be identified with a black-light.  If the recovered vehicle is damaged or stripped, the perp, upon his conviction, should take over the payments on the car, and be harassed by the bank for the rest of his life for missed payments!

            If the car is returned unharmed, the judge should build into their sentence, milage and rental fees, and they should still be harassed by the bank.  Besides jail time, they should also be locked in a special wing of the prison, where a medley of alarms would be played over the PA system, interspersed with elevator music.

                              THAT'LL LEARN 'EM!!