Many of us elephant families really do try. We tell the elephant babies they have to take their tap shoes and basketballs outside. We spend tens of thousands on sound-damping walls and flooring. We spend thousands more on rugs. But it’s never enough.
So on behalf of elephant families everyone, I can only offer a sincere apology for our existence.
Or you could just sync to their Bluetooth speakers.
We got our last voice-activated neighbor-tormenter from the local animal shelter.
Then I’d have to guess that their password is “0000”, whereas the science project build method guarantees that any speaker in their house, turned on or not, will start playing the music from the Exorcist. 
When I lived in an apartment, one project that I never built was an IR laser, modulated by all manufacturers’ remote control codes to turn on, max volume, and then sweep all the apartments of a neighbouring building, late at night.
It was one of those projects that was fun to think of, but you’d have to be an asshole to actually use it.
I used to be disturbed by the floor above me dragging furniture and placing it loudly on their tiled floor for extended periods and even during the wee small hours. I wanted a transducer but all I had available was a speaker that I mounted upwards on my ceiling. Then I played this https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/10006/radar-echoes-from-titans-surface/ which I had on infinite loop. I’d start it playing before I hit the bar in the evening and switch it off after midnight on my return. It seemed to have the desired effect.
An idiot “neighbor” two doors down was blasting really lousy rap one afternoon, so I drowned him out with Bach’s pipe organ works. I put the speakers right by the windows and cranked it. He turned it way down long before I had to flip the LP.
Much later, mom apologized to our V nice next door neighbor, since he was stuck in the middle of it, and he laughed and insisted no apology was needed. He thought it was a brilliant idea, and it worked, which was all that mattered.
A friend silenced her next-door-neighbor’s rap using Ethel Merman. A few days later, another neighbor asked her to stop - it was much worse for them than the rap.
Ethel Merman?! Wow.
I could have put on The Dead Kennedys, but Bach was definitely the better choice.
The air raid siren intro of the 12’’ mix of Frankie goes to Hollywood’s Two Tribes on a loop can be pretty annoying. Or so I’ve heard.
This is why I live in a house, by myself.
If the upstairs neighbors needed some quick “re-education” on social mores, I’d probably just whip up a raspie or arduino, listening for specific noise levels and hitting 2 sub-woofers pointed at the ceiling for 20-30 minutes after a specific noise ratio was hit, between say 11pm until 7am.
God, be quiet, I am trying to sleep. Don’t make me turn on the tallywacker.
Maybe talleywacker should be split into its own thread, but I first heard the word in the early 70’s from my foreman, a guy born around 1910 in SE Kansas. It mos def meant penis. Another word he used, almost every day, was “wickerbill”, which I thought sounded kinda nasty itself, but which denoted to him any receipt, list, or bill of dubious utility or validity.
Knock 3 times on the ceiling if you want me… twice on the pipe… if the answer is no
My next million dollars will be for an invention that records noise from upstairs, delays it by a predetermined amount, and then plays it back through a speaker attached to the ceiling. With any luck the neighbours will learn that the only way to defeat it is to stop. For bonus effects, pitch-shifted voices so they’re comically high or warbly and creepy. TM and (c)
It could only be more passive aggressive if it was entirely built out of post it notes.
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
