Having huge speakers, mounted to face back, and a loud stereo system in the car, with Anthony Newman’s 4-handed pipe organ version of “Flight of the Valkyries” ready to go when some galoot wanted to share his thumping bass with the world.
A vacuum hose that would suck up cigarette butts from the roadside, and with a powerful reverse gear that would put a pound or so of them into a car window when I see someone throw a butt out of it.
Well, that or, there’s some sick fuck who actually is distributing dog fetuses where kids can step in them. I feel like there’s the makings of a direct-to-video movie there.
A former friend played Ethel Merman singing “There’s No Business Like Show Business” on repeat at max volume because she didn’t like her neighbor’s country music choices.
It escalated so loudly that other neighbors came over with weapons to tell both of them to STFU. Then the police came.
ETA: I’ll be imagining having that vacuum the next time I see someone flinging a cigarette butt.
This is from Matt Groening’s Life in Hell (just the text, though*):
I used to draw this cartoon in a dinky third-floor apartment in Hollywood (Will I be drawing these damn rabbits forever?). When I moved in, the other tenants warned me that the building was haunted by the ghost of Mary Pickford. “She’s real, man.” “If you scoff she’ll get ya.” When she was a young, struggling actress, the story went, Pickford had lived in the apartment directly below mine. Whoever lived there now had the loudest record player I’d ever heard in my life. I’d lie in bed at 2 A.M., listening to the music that vibrated my bed. It got annoying after awhile. Being the nonconfrontational type that I am, I just turned up my own music. But the ghost responded by turning up hers. So I pushed my speakers face-down on the floor, put on some bass-heavy reggae, and skanked in pride. The ghost was not intimidated. She merely cranked up her own music. This went on for weeks. Finally one night I flipped out. I couldn’t stand listening to “Take Me Down To Funkytown” one more time, even if I was the one who was playing it. I grabbed a cinder block from my bookshelf, raised it above my head, and dropped it rather harshly on the floor. The music below suddenly went off. All was quiet, too quiet. Suddenly I heard ferocious pounding on my door. “What the Hell are you doing in there??” The ghost’s voice was surprisingly husky. “The light fixture in my ceiling just crashed on the floor!!!” I just cringed, listening to the heavy breathing in the hall. Eventually, the breathing went away. And the ghost of Mary Pickford never bothered me again.
*I thought I’d posted this here before, and/or actually saved the comic somewhere convenient, but guess not.
I was visiting a friend who lived in an upstairs apartment, and the neighbor below was playing “San Francisco” by Scott McKenzie. Over and over. At as much volume as you can get on a player where the speaker is attached to the rest of it (louder, and it shakes the turntable off). We decided it was a good time to take a walk around town, so we split, pausing in the vestibule outside the downstairs door for a moment. “YOU KNOW,” I remarked, “I HAVE THE STRANGEST URGE TO GO TO SAN FRANCISCO NOW.” “WELL, BE SURE AND WEAR A FLOWER IN YOUR HAIR,” said my friend. “I HEAR THE PLACE IS FULL OF GENTLE PEOPLE,” I observed as we left.
He told me later that there was a note waiting for him, to the effect that the downstairs person was going through A DIFFICULT TIME, and the ONLY THING that helped her was listening to SCOTT McKENZIE SINGING ABOUT GODDAMN SAN FRANCISCO.
We agreed that the price of help is sometimes too high.
