[283] in Humor
HUMOR: Dave - Pop! goes the weasel
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Mon May 23 10:11:12 1994
From: abennett@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 23 May 94 10:06:37 -0400
To: humor@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <S6cc.23f9@clarinet.com>
Cc:
Pop! Goes the weasel.
by Dave Barry
> Recently, several alert readers sent me a news item from
>the Houston Chronicle that struck a responsive chord in the
>upright piano of my brain. The item begins as follows:
> "SAN ANTONIO -- A man fed up with the repetitive strains
>of 'Pop! Goes the Weasel' from an ice cream truck attacked the
>hapless 67-year-old driver with an ice cream cone and a pickle
>jar, police say."
> Here we have yet another argument for a mandatory five-day
>"cooling off" period on the purchase of ice cream. Because in
>this day and age there is NO EXCUSE for this kind of violent
>incident. Just because a driver is operating a truck that
>repeatedly blares an annoying song over a loudspeaker in a public
>place, that does not mean that we should attack him with dairy
>products and condiment containers. We should use nuclear weapons.
> Forgive me for sounding hostile, but I am getting SICK AND
>TIRED OF LOUD INTRUSIVE MUSIC IN PUBLIC. It is everywhere. All the
>shopping malls and restaurants and airports are riddled with low-
>fidelity loudspeakers, which apparently have developed the ability
>to reproduce by themselves; these are all connected to a special
>programming service called Music That Nobody Really Likes, and YOU
>CANNOT GET AWAY FROM IT. For example, recently I was in a
>shopping-mall restroom, and suddenly, without warning, the speaker
>started blaring out the inexplicable 1963 hit song "Dominique,"
>by the Shrieking Nun.
> Listen, Mr. or Ms. Shopping Mall Manager: I speak for all
>humanity when I say that, when I am in your restroom, I AM NOT IN
>THERE TO LISTEN TO A NUN.
> Likewise, Mr. or Ms. Airport Manager, I don't go to your
>airport to listen to music. I go there for the same reason as
>millions of other business travelers, which is to be hassled by
>religious loons and find out that my flight has been canceled.
> And as for you, Mr. or Ms. Restaurant Owner: I don't mind
>if, while I'm eating, there's an actual musician somewhere in the
>background tinkling softly on a piano. (True story: Many years
>ago, I was at a party where a person named Walter actually did
>tinkle on the piano. But that is not germane to this discussion.)
>But WHY DO RESTAURANTS PLAY MUSIC SO LOUD THAT PEOPLE CANNOT
>COMMUNICATE?
> WAITRESS (shouting): GOOD EVENING. MY NAME IS BETTY.
> CUSTOMER: DOES THAT COME WITH CLAM SAUCE?
> And it's just as bad when you go outside. One afternoon I
>was at a beach, along with hundreds of other people, all of us
>enjoying a pleasant afternoon listening to the barely audible
>"ping" of solar rays ricocheting off of our No. 4.7 Million Sun
>Block, when some young men arrived with a boombox the size of my
>first house, and of course it was playing music by Todd Tuneless
>And His Sounds Of Ugly, and of course it was turned up so loud
>that the Atlantic Ocean started going backward, with waves rushing
>out to sea to get away from the noise. You could see that a lot of
>the people on the beach were annoyed, but nobody dared to say
>anything. It was like a western movie, when outlaws ride into a
>small town and use their six-guns to make the terrified townsfolk
>listen to stupid music. Finally I had had enough. I am not
>ordinarily a courageous person, but I stood up, brushed the sand
>off my butt, and decided that, no matter what the personal risk, I
>was eventually going to write a newspaper column on this topic.
> That would have been a perfect situation for an invention
>conceived of by my dentist, Stanley Krugman. Stanley is always
>having ideas. He'll be peering into a patient's mouth, trying to
>figure out if he can cram any more dental appliances in there, or
>maybe even -- this is what dentists do for fun -- slip in a
>harmonica, or a zucchini, and suddenly he'll have an idea, and
>he'll instruct the patient to rinse while he calls me up to tell
>me about it.
> This particular idea involves a small but powerful
>transmitter that you'd carry around. When a person started playing
>a loud boombox in your vicinity, or drove up in a car with one of
>those sound systems emitting bass notes so powerful that they
>cause big cracks to open up in the road, you'd simply press a
>button, and the transmitter would send out a signal, and the
>person's head would explode.
> No, that would be wrong. Innocent people could be hurt by
>the shrapnel. Stanley's actual idea is that the signal would cause
>the boombox to emit annoying static. Of course there's always the
>danger that the kind of people who play loud ugly music in public
>would LIKE annoying static; maybe it would be better if the signal
>caused the boombox to play "Pop! Goes the Weasel."
> Anyway, I think somebody should make a transmitter like
>this and send me one. I think it should also have a feature
>whereby, when you're driving, you could point it at a car in front
>of you and press a button that would cause the car's radio, even
>if it was turned off, to shout at the driver, in Gen. Norman
>Schwarzkopf's voice: "IF YOU'RE GOING TO DRIVE 38 MILES PER HOUR,
>GET THE HELL OUT OF THE PASSING LANE, YOU MAGGOT."
> Also it should be able to make neighborhood dogs shut up.
> Also the U.S. Congress.
> You can rinse now.
>
>(C) 1994 THE MIAMI HERALD
>DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
