From: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Not Al Crawford)
Newsgroups: alt.peeves
Subject: ChirpChirpChirpChirp
Date: 15 Apr 92 16:42:26 GMT
Reply-To: Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk (Not Al Crawford)
Organization: Penicuik People's Revolutionary Sheepdog Liberation Front

Something inside my X-terminal (probably the fan) has started making an
utterly enfuriating noise, rather like a mentally sub-normal metallic
grasshopper, or possibly the noise a very small Newton's cradle would make
if you spun it in orbit around an equally small black hole and watched the
little steel balls trying to loop the loop before the wires snap and they
*schloop* into oblivion.

It's stopped. Now that is just bloody typical. It's been doing that for the
last couple of days, I eventually decide to start peeving about it, and it
stops. For the past forty eight hours, every time I've got out of my seat
to try and track it down it's stopped, only to start again when I sit down.
I'm still going to post this though, since the instant I hit "s" to send
it, the noise will start again.

It's a basic principle, isn't it? If something is annoying you, the minute
you decide to do something about it, it stops. Then, once you've decided
that it's definitely stopped for good, it starts again. Whether it's funny
little metallic grasshopper noises, neighbours playing Megadeth at 3am,
people jingling change at the bus stop...

Interference - that's another one. Every weekday night just after 9pm,
*something* causes bad interference on our TV for about 30 seconds. I say
*about* 30 seconds, since it's usually about 30 seconds before I go
"AARRRRGGGHHHHH! I'M TRYING TO WATCH THE NEWS HERE!" and cross the room to
administer that most effective of high-technology fixes, the thump. Of
course, I only ever get halfway across the room before it stops. I'm sure
if I was capable of sitting there for 5 minutes before it started getting
to me, it would last for 5 minutes.

Same with the radio of course. Now FM is pretty interference resistant, but
you can be damn sure that it'll suffer it on those very rare occasions
where I decide to record something off the radio. I blame the radio station
- they *deliberately* schedule the programmes I want to hear so that they
are broadcast on a night where atmospheric conditions are such that I am
unable to pick up any British radio stations due to extremely strong
interference from Radio Pyongyang.

Still, it's better than MW was. Now that could be really fun - try to hear
the news over some little bingly-bong national anthem being played hourly
by a station in deepest Belgium. Then a Polish station tried to get in on
the act too, meaning that my "news on the hour, every hour" was interuppted
by someone trying to pronounce names with no vowels and 77 "Z"s in them.

I'm also peeved by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Sure, it's supposed to
have reduced world tension but it's *also* robbed me of about the only
foreign radio programme worth listening to - the Radio Moscow World
Service. Only here could you hear the *truth*, about how tractor production
for the first year of the current five year plan was up by 20%, about the
visit of some third world leader as a gesture of socialist peace and
friendship, about the glorious new collective potato, about the new
imperialist US missile that eats babies but leaves buildings standing. Fun
stuff, especially the item about the potato.

ObParanoidPeeve: back when I was 12 or so I had pen-friends in Poland and
Czechoslovakia with whom I used to swap aviation magazines, books, kits
etc. I'm probably thus down on every "dangerous Communist subversive" list
the government has. Maybe if I hadn't tried to swap those Stealth Fighter
plans for that book on the MiG-3...

--
		Not Al Crawford - Not_Al_Crawford@ed.ac.uk
     "The water shines/A sheepdog skips across the face/A dozen times"
Newsgroups: alt.peeves