BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 11:56 AM

""I am certainly appreciative of Kendall's remarks - all of them. Also of leaving a store or other venue that that pollutes my ears or nostrils - connected to my brain which takes issue with being assaulted.""

As always there is another very practical reason for feeling that the necessity to leave premises with unwanted music, rather than to have ones feelings and needs considered by the owners.

By having to choose between ear damage and shopping at my local supermarkets, I am condemned to paying around 5-10% more for my basic needs.

Can that be taken as the reasonable exercise by the stores of the right to deafen.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,Chongo Chimp
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 12:01 PM

Yeah! And if that don't work, open fire.

- Chongo

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 05:07 PM

Don: maybe ear plugs in your pocket could save you the extra money!

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: kendall
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 07:19 PM

I have to eat, therefore I have to shop. You don't have to make unnecessary noise.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST
Date: 18 Apr 13 - 07:43 PM

Here in the U.S. a federal law went into effect a few weeks ago that commercials during television programming couldn't be louder than the program itself. If a TV station is in violation of this rule, the citizen can go to the FCC's website and register a complaint. After that, it's anybody's guess whether the FCC takes these complaints seriously - but then again, it is federal law. At least now a citizen has some legal redress against this specific form of noise pollution.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Gurney
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 12:58 AM

One of the characteristics of Aspergers Syndrome is an intolerance to noise, and the inability to listen to more than one thing at a time.
But BOY, can they/we concentrate!

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 07:58 AM

""Here in the U.S. a federal law went into effect a few weeks ago that commercials during television programming couldn't be louder than the program itself.""

Roll on the day when that happens in the UK.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 10:33 AM

But, what if they set the volume at the level of a gun fight? or a car chase?

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 11:18 AM

Good question, Kendall. Actually, the FCC says:

"Effective December 13, 2012, the FCC's rules require television commercial advertisements to have the same AVERAGE volume as the programs that they accompany. The FCC established these rules to comply with the directive of Congress contained in the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act (PDF)."

However they calculate the average, I don't think the commercials will come out at the loudness of a gunfight.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 12:26 PM

BANG BANG

YOU'RE

something or other...

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Rumncoke
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 12:46 PM

When I used to go to places where there was loud music I used to wear ear defenders - I do have tinnitus thanks to a moron with a starting pistol, but my general level of hearing is still quite acute and I am told it is above average for someone 62 years old. (If so why don't the bats squeak any more? It gives me quite a shock when a stealth bat swoops low.)

Sure I got some odd looks, but it also made some sound engineers go a bit thoughtful.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 01:34 PM

Some few years ago my Beautiful Wife and I and one or two of our kids went to what was then a new restaurant in Indianapolis, called Joe's Crab Shack. Our time and other commitments made it necessary (we thought) to eat there rather than other restaurants.

The sound system was cranked WAY up, so loud that the crowd were trying (unsuccessfully) to talk to each other over it. The waitress couldn't understand our shouted food order, so that we eventually got a wrong (and expensive) item.

But there's more: The group at the neighboring table (3 or 4 feet away) had a birthday boy/girl in their party, it seems, so about ten of the wait staff gathered around to (allegedly) sing "Happy Birthday". They knew the combined sound level of the P.A. system and competing customer chatter wouldn't allow the folks at the table to hear them, so the leader of that ten-strong chorus had to use a BULL HORN for that joyous occasion!

I sat with my hands frantically pressed over my ears whenever I didn't really need them to eat or drink. Helped a little, though not much.

When presented with the erroneous bill (because the waitress hadn't been able to make out our order), I shouted directly into the ear of the wait-staff supervisor a request that the "music" be turned WAY down. Shouting, he managed to get across that "We would like to, but Corporate Headquarters, down in Texas, won't let us turn it down!"

They did delete the entire cost of the erroneous item because of the order mistake. But who ended up with that cost? It was the unfortunate waitress who had to pay for the mistake, we learned.

We bad-mouthed that restaurant far and wide, and never patronized it in the following eight or ten years. When we reluctantly went back there, as the guests of some friends, we found that somebody had gotten through to the high muckey-mucks in Texas, and the noise level was way down.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: mayomick
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 01:35 PM

As I walk along I nearly always have a bit of a tune that I'm thinking about or a song I'm singing to myself . Then I go into a supermarket and a different tune is playing . Whether I like the musical tastes of the supermarket owner or not , the music being played will invariably conflict with the tune going on in my head . Grrr

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 04:04 PM

Is this overloud restaurant muzak an American thing? I don't think that restaurants who use it here in the UK generally play it all that loudly. We never have any difficulty conversing in the Costa Coffee at Ely Tesco's where we go quite often, even though there is a speaker playing quite quiet music in a nearby corner.

Is others' experience different here in UK?

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: JennieG
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 06:24 PM

I don't know about in restaurants, but in many shops music is used as a marketing tool according to an article I read a few years ago.....sorry I can't link to it, can't find it, but it was in the Toronto Star. Shops pitch their stock and music at a certain demographic, and if you don't like the music played in that shop then you are not the customer they are after, it seems.

A local cafe to which Himself and I often go for a coffee has soft music playing, often gentle classical....not Wagner.....at just enough volume to be heard. It seems to make kitchen noises recede into the background and give privacy to other people's conversations, without being intrusive itself.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: kendall
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 08:03 PM

Years ago there was a drive in in Toronto that had a problem with teen agers hanging out, driving paying customers away, so they started playing classical music on there sound system. Problem solved.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: mayomick
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 08:10 AM

Understandable , but a pretty rotten use for classical music all the same, surely?

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 03:24 PM

""Is this overloud restaurant muzak an American thing? I don't think that restaurants who use it here in the UK generally play it all that loudly.""

I think UK rstaurants on the whole tend to be fairly good.
It's pubs, shops and diners like MDonalds and Burger King that seem not to understand the damage they can cause.

Funnily enough, one of the worst places to eat has no music at all.

Wetherspoons generally sound like an amplified parrot house. I have the same problems holding a conversation as I would at a disco. So much for the intended peaceful meal with the gentle hum of conversation. Everyone is shouting to be heard above all the others.

Ear plugs are not the answer, as they reduce my ability to hear even more severely.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 05:14 PM

"Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: kendall
Date: 19 Apr 13 - 08:03 PM
Years ago there was a drive in in Toronto that had a problem with teen agers hanging out, driving paying customers away, so they started playing classical music on there sound system. Problem solved."

That's pretty funny! Though I always think that if teenagers have to resort to hanging around takeaways of an evening, that it's a pretty loud indicator of how little society thinks about and values young people. Children and adults are fully catered to, teens are expected to just eff off and are left to linger around cemeteries or car parks and then people get exorcised about 'feral youth'.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 05:25 PM

kendall, there are numerous activities available for young people but many of them don't seem interested. There are clubs for almost any type of sport. There are the Cadet branches of all the Forces. There are Scouting and Guiding groups, (and they're not by any means as 'twee' as they used to be; they offer adventure and interesting activities). There are music, choral and instrumental groups. Also St John Ambulance, Red Cross and other First Aid organisations. Not to mention the Junior branches of any and every church and religious community. There are also youth clubs, and clubs associated with the youngsters' schools. The possibilities are endless. I get quite cross when these feckless and idle young people whinge that 'there's nowhere to go and nothing to do.'

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 05:37 PM

Actually, Eliza, it was CS you were replying to, not Kendall. She was just quoting him.

Best

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 05:46 PM

Oops! Thank you Michael for pointing that out. And before anyone replies that these poor young folk haven't the money to do these things, most of them are free, and run by highly praiseworthy adults who give their time and expertise for nothing. My lovely neighbours' lad (in his teens) does his homework for two hours in the evening then plays floodlit hockey. He is in a photography club and has a little Saturday job at the village garage. The dear little lass on the other side of us goes horseriding and has saved up and bought a super pony. She too does a bit of work at the stables and in the village pub restaurant to earn enough to pursue her activities. Neither family is at all well-off, but their offspring don't 'hang around' or cause problems to anyone.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 05:53 PM

"" I get quite cross when these feckless and idle young people whinge that 'there's nowhere to go and nothing to do.'""

There are two sides to most stories Eliza. There's a group of about ten or twelve local teens who have, by dint of surveillance cameras and hassle from both shopkeepers and police, been driven away from our small town centre.

I used to feel intimidated by them with their hoodies hiding their faces, but they've settled on a low stone wall in our cul-de-sac, about twenty yards from my back gate, as a place to sit and hang out.

Acting on a suggestion from my son, who is a secondary school teacher, instead of trying to get them moved on, I stopped by to chat with them on a balmy summer evening and found them polite and respectful (once I had made it clear that I wasn't trying to shift them), shared a couple of hours of stimulating conversation and a bottle or two of shandy.

I talked with them about what was lacking and found that they were quite certain that local authorities cater very well for children, but don't have a clue as to what is needed for teens.

I mentioned youth clubs and scouts etc. and was surprised to find that the activities and guidance, games and such are exactly what they don't want. As one of them said to me ""When you were sixteen, did you want to go to anywhere that was run by somebody the same age as your Dad?""

They just want somewhere that they can hang out free from adults and buy a few soft (ish) drinks, and natter and socialise with their own age group.

I'm not saying that there are no feckless louts, but it's probably worth checking to see if they are really what you believe. You might get a surprise.

I regularly sit with them for a while on those nice summer evenings, and they welcome me as a friend.

We haven't had a tyre slashed or a car window broken for about four years.

The glass in my back door was smashed two weeks ago by a twelve year old from the other end of the estate and the police had the name and address of the culprit in less than an hour.

Just saying we don't always understand what it is they need and they are worth a second look.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 05:59 PM

Oh! and by the way, they think my music's Kewl!

No accounting for taste.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 20 Apr 13 - 06:37 PM

So, Don, all those suggestions are 'exactly what they don't want', and instead they just wish to 'hang out, natter and socialise'. Sounds pretty feckless to me, and a singularly useless and pointless waste of their time. And yes, when I was sixteen, I absolutely adored many of the activities I listed above. So do most of the young folk I know round here. At sixteen plus, they should be either studying or in work, which doesn't leave much time for 'hanging around'.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 01:03 AM

They should 'hang around', chewing the fat with their friends for some of the time. It is a valuable activity for a young person [or anyone else, for that matter] to socialise with one's contemporaries and discuss and natter about topics both grave and gay. But I agree with Eliza it is a terrible waste doing only that. I recall, many years ago, my sister being cross with my then teenage [now 60+!] nephew for spending a whole afternoon in a coffee bar with friends, & appealing to me [then a senior teacher] to support her; but climbing down when I pointed out the manifold youth group & sporting activities he was involved in most of his time, and how important social and intellectual, and even trivial, intercourse with his peer group was also.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 07:31 AM

""Sounds pretty feckless to me, and a singularly useless and pointless waste of their time.""

If you had troubled to read my comments Eliza, you might have noticed that I mentioned evenings.

Some of these teenagers are in school and some have jobs. Maybe a few are out of work, but I don't enquire as to their efforts to find work (because it really isn't my business).

Given that you probably relax in the evenings, I can't see why they should be made to do otherwise.

Hanging out and socialising with friends is no more a waste of time than the activities you describe, after all half the population does the self same thing in pubs, drinking alcohol.

My point is that stereotypes are more a description of those who use them than those they purport to describe.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: mayomick
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 09:21 AM

Don may think that the feckless gang don't bother him nowadays because of his reaching out to them on a balmy summer's evening. More likely they were frightened he would come out to the wall with a ghetto-blaster playing Beethoven at full volume.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 02:33 PM

""Don may think that the feckless gang don't bother him nowadays because of his reaching out to them on a balmy summer's evening. More likely they were frightened he would come out to the wall with a ghetto-blaster playing Beethoven at full volume.""

Thank you for that erudite and fair minded comment Mayomick. I'm sure it has added something to the topic, relevant or not.

Kind of makes my point about those who stereotype others.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 21 Apr 13 - 06:38 PM

Don seems to have it down just right. The young people may have "adults" telling them what to do all day. What they are able to enjoy with Don is an adult respecting them, not telling them to DO this or that but allowing them to just be themselves in a safe environment. Could any of us ask for better than that?

When I spent a summer on the coast of Nova Scotia in 1971, I attended at a dance mainly for teens. A young lad from the village where we were living sat down next to me and asked me if I had "seen the RCMP around?"

I matter-of-fact-ly responded: "No, why would they be around?"

"Well a few of us broke into a cottage."

"That does not seem like a very nice thing to do."

"we did not break anything or take anything. We just wanted a place to hang out. None of our parents will allow it. There is no place for us to go."

How I wished I could have stayed in that village and opened our home to the kids as a place to hang out. They even had to have their dances in the next village - 10 miles away - because in their village people complained about the noise they made walking home.

We need to meet the real needs of our young people, not the needs we think they SHOULD have.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 22 Apr 13 - 06:35 AM

Precisely Dorothy!

Too young to use the local pub, and with no cafe or diner option, they have absolutely nowhere to go except the streets.

Then they are pushed away from the shops and the high street into dark corners on the edge of town, where they are automatically suspected of being up to no good.

Small wonder they have the same suspicion of the motives of adults as the local adults feel toward them.

In this world, you get what you give. Offer smiles, friendship and respect where the normal expectation is suspicion and dislike, and guess what...........?

You get the same back!

If anyone should be the stereotypical Gumpy old Git, it's 72 year old me.

But I like youngsters, and strange to relate, they seem to reciprocate.

I just wish we still had the coffee bars of the 50s and 60s, which is where I did my hanging out as a teenager and beyond. I spent many hours in the Macabre, The Heaven & Hell, or the 2i's in Soho just chatting and listening to Skiffle, Rock, or Classical music (depending on our mood of the moment).

We didn't attend youth clubs because the organisers actually dictated how much of the new music we were allowed. Adults of the time were scared of Rock & Roll and the effects they thought it might have on us.

In the Coffee Bars we could play what we liked on the juke box.

When my kids were in their teens, we kept open house for their friends and Ircall evenings when my son had ten or fifteen mates in his room until close to midnight.

There is nothing like that for our grandchildren, and that is a sad reflection on how we feel about teenagers.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: kendall
Date: 22 Apr 13 - 08:04 PM

When I was a teen ager I used to hang out with guys my age, but we had no place in town, we lived 5 miles from town, so we hung out at different houses. We made music, played penny ante poker, listened to stories from the old folks. Many of those stories ended up in my book.

We also played sand lot baseball, raced bikes, fished in a local brook, caught migrating Tom Cods and eels, hunted in season,hell, we were limited only by our own imaginations.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 06:45 AM

Two different cultures Cap'n. Even when I was a kid, the only open spaces where we could go without being told we were trespassing were parks and playgrounds.

We were nowhere near the open moorlands or forest areas and club fishing rights kept us away from almost all but day ticket waters, which we couldn't afford.

Only when I visited my grandparents in Ireland could I walk freely in the fields and fish or snare rabbits for the pot.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 06:59 AM

Imagination knows no borders.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,CS
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 09:12 AM

I think Don had already covered the quaint fancy that 'imagination knows no borders' when describing how every scrap of land here in the UK is OWNED by someone else, and those boundaries (whether you prefer to 'imagine' - or rather pretend - that they're not there or not) are clearly demarked with fences, barbed wire and "Private Keep Out" and "Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted" signs. The highlands of Scotland are one of the few areas in the UK that people are free to wander where they like.

My uncles (going back to the eighties here) learned to fix and make motorbikes out of scrap they found at the town dump, a fairly constructive activity you'd suppose for a teenager, building things that work out of other people's rubbish, but no, the cops would come round to tell my grandmother that they were trespassing and stealing! Nan would have none of it though, and instead of telling off the boys, would tell the cops to go and find real criminals instead of hounding kids who were doing no-one any harm!

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: GUEST,strad
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 11:18 AM

I may have missed it in the posts above but why, oh why must reasonably interesting TV programmes insist on music at the same time as the presenter is speaking? With much less than perfect hearing I can't make out what is being said so, in the end, I switch the TV off.

Gripe over - I'm going to play some music now!!

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: kendall
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 04:21 PM

Strad, I have the same bitch!

Guest CS, Stealing? from the town dump? In this country, anything you throw away no longer belongs to you, or anyone.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 06:44 PM

""Guest CS, Stealing? from the town dump? In this country, anything you throw away no longer belongs to you, or anyone.""

In the UK it belongs to the Local Council and if you take any of it, you can and will wind up with a criminal record.

Daft, I know, but that's the law in Merrie Englande.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 06:48 PM

The same law applies before the Council collect, if you take anything that has been put out in a neighbour's bin for collection.

It belongs to the Council, and you would think they'd be bloody ecstatic if somebody took it and saved them the trouble.

NOT SO!

They prosecute.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: Dorothy Parshall
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 11:04 PM

I must have closed captions to understand anything on TV. Background sounds in any case make it impossible to comprehend, including musicians who do not enunciate or have their instruments too loud. I understand I miss a lot of good words. There was marvellous music at our fav venue last Fri. I know that because I saw everyone enjoying it and my partner told me so. I had ear plugs and still needed my fingers in my ears and still it was physically painful. I felt as though I had been run over, repeatedly, by a steam roller. It was torture. If it had not been so loud, I would have been able to enjoy it.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: kendall
Date: 24 Apr 13 - 07:35 AM

If some drunk takes a piss in the street, does the council own that too? What does the council do with all that junk?
I guess both countries have silly laws.

Subject: RE: BS: NOISE...Is It Just Me???
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 24 Apr 13 - 08:27 AM

The only noises that really get to me are

1. The young mother in downstairs flat when she goes into one of her mentally unhinged shrieking sessions at her partenr or baby girl. This happens almost every day (at any time of night) and at least once one the weekend. This has been going on for 3 years. I have called police. They visit. They leave. She resumes. Baby has now taken to shrieking in the same way.

2. The low air conditioning hum I have heard/felt in some large warehouse stores like B&Q. It really unsettles me and makes me feel quite ill.

3. Sound effects in cartoons and canned laughter in television comedies. Easy enough to turn off if it my TV, but if I am somewhere this stuff is going on, it sets my teeth on edge.

4. My ex-husband's voice when he was incessantly picking at me about some thing or another. Literally hours of following me around as i did house work and yammering until he would wear me down to get an agreement on something I really did not want to do.

5. Last and probably the most important. The sound of someone crying. I cannot let them cry alone and when I start it is very difficult for me to stop.