MR WRONG: Aural action
Indignity Vol. 4, No. 180
COLUMN DEP’T.
MR WRONG: My Headphones Make Me Hear Too Much
MY WIFE DOESN’T always listen to me, but it’s only when we’re in the house. It’s because she likes to listen to podcasts, and she has the Apple pods, the wireless little hard smooth white sound-buds, little Mentos-looking glumps, what is a thing shaped like that called, they are like the end of a golf club, what is that shape, a blump? I’m sorry, I am getting all hung up trying to figure out what you call that little sound-shape, and actually this would be the kinda thing I might be yammering at my wife, and when she first got the sound-lumps, I started thinking she was hard of hearing, until we got into a little routine.
Me: I am going to make a turkey meatloaf, but there’s no Italian bread crumbs, so I’m gonna put oatmeal and mix in a buncha Italian spices.
My Wonderful Wife, who is doing something productive at the kitchen counter and not looking at me: [Silence]
Me: Meatloaf?
WW: [Looks up]
Me: Oatmeal, I’m gonna use, OK?
WW: [Reaches for phone, taps on something, looks at me with question-face].
Me, not annoyed, because now I see what’s up: So I’m gonna meatloaf, etc.
Now we have a whole routine, if I wanna say something, but she’s not looking at me, I half-assume we have a bud-pods situation going, so I start out at like a six instead of a two on my volume.
Me, at a six: I AM GONNA MEATLOAF [pause].
WW: [Reaches for phone, taps on something, looks at me with question-face].
Me, at normal voice: Meatloaf, etc.
So it’s a solid system! My wife can spend time with her Ear Friends, as she calls them, and I don’t get mad because nobody is listening to me. Domestic harmony! My wife always tells me about her Ear Friends, she listens to a few, and sometimes we listen together through a bluetoothed speaker in the kitchen, and her Ear Friends are OK, I get it, I’m not jealous or anything, seriously. My only thing is I’m always worried that my wife is sacrificing Situational Awareness with the noise-pods, like, in the house is one thing, but out in the World, I don’t understand how anybody can go outside with sound filling their skull, it freaks me out!
I’m not paranoid or claustrophobic, but I just can’t stand having headphones or buds in my head blocking the sound of what might be an enemy or a car or a dog comin’ at me, it makes me nervous! If my wife is ever in bed trying to sleep and I am in the other room watching some teevee, I have a set of wireless TV-listening headphones so that there’s no noise, but I don't put both cans on my head, no fucking way. What I do is I put one sorta halfway over my ear, and then I put the other side totally not on my ear, like toward the back of my dome behind my other ear, that way I can hear the house and some outside noises in case I need to spring into action!
The problem with this is that somehow, having a mini-loudspeaker semi-cupping my ear amplifies tiny noises in and outside my castle, I swear. The worst part is the goddamn refrigerator, because it has an icemaker, and the one thing about the modern refrigerator, unless it’s one of those richfuck ones with the wood paneling, you know the ones, like “we are ashamed of having a fridge so we have one that looks like a cabinet"? Yeah, they’re pretty cool—anyway, the one thing about the modern refrigerator is, maybe a super-deluxe Sub-Zero or whatever has some sorta high-tech icemaker, but the average affordable—in our case, super-affordable, we got a wild deal at the “scratch & dent” store, it’s a stainless steel model with a dent in the side and a giant scratch on the dent—fridge has an icemaker that was designed in the 1960’s. The water line gurgles and it makes a big click-clunk sound when the water is going into the ice-holes, and then when the ice-pusher thing pushes out the little icicles, they fucking clatter and rattle, and when you’re in the house at night with almost a full half of your ear-senses compromised by Audio Technology and the other ear is somehow finding amplification, it’s kinda adrenaline-stimulating. I sit there watching the teevee and looking around toward each equivalent of a twig snapping in the forest, ready to spring into action!
P.S.: My wife reminded me that one of her Apple pod-buds doesn't work.
Speaking of Ear Friends, here at Indignity we have the Indignity Morning Podcast, and we’ve been fooling around with the sound on account of the host of the Indignity Morning Podcast—who is also the Editor of Indignity, not to mention an important (to me) subset of the operation known as the Mr. Wrong column—has been recovering from some health challenges, which led to some vocal irregularities, so we were messing around with different ways to adjust the sound and we even started using an Artificial Intellect to scientifically adjust the sound, but it also got kinda Uncanny Valley the other day, but it was the same day that the host of the Indignity Morning podcast was in excellent voice, thanks to vocal rehabilitation exercises, so we are back to non-Artificially but Intelligently producing the sound for the fastest less-than-10-minutes podcast in North America, and I encourage you to befriend this podcast in your ear. Thank you.
The MR. WRONG COLUMN is a general-interest column appearing weekly. No refunds. Write Wrong: wrongcolumn@gmail.com.
WEATHER REVIEWS
New York City, October 16, 2024
★★★★ Wind hissed in the leaves of the cross-street trees, in the shade of yet another vivid and chilly day. Neighbors were out having a smoke or a look around. The ivy high on the angled side wall of a five-story apartment building was turning red. Even the trees that hadn't properly colored yet were losing the intensity of their green and going dusty. Blank surfaces—chipped and textured with light and shadow, or reflecting the blue of the sky—belonged in galleries.
EASY LISTENING DEP'T.
HERE IS TODAY'S Indignity Morning Podcast, your Ear Friend!
Tom Scocca
Click on this box to find the Indignity Morning Podcast archive.
TOM SCOCCA
SANDWICH RECIPES DEP'T.
WE WOULD LIKE to present instructions in aid of the assembly of a sandwich selected from 'Please, M'm, The Butcher!': A Complete Guide To Catering For The Housewife Of Moderate Means, With Menus Of All Meals For A Year, Numerous Recipes, And Fifty-Two Additional Menus Of Dinners Without Meat, by Beatrice Guarracino, published in 1903, and now in the Public Domain and available at archive.org for the delectation of all; however, availability-wise, the latest communication from the Internet Archive reports:
Our team is working around the clock across time zones to bring other services back online. In coming days more services will resume, some starting in read-only mode as full restoration will take more time.
We’re taking a cautious, deliberate approach to rebuild and strengthen our defenses. Our priority is ensuring the Internet Archive comes online stronger and more secure.
As a library community, we are seeing other cyber attacks—for instance the British Library, Seattle Public Library, Toronto Public Library, and now Calgary Public Library. We hope these attacks are not indicative of a trend.
Indignity depends upon the Internet Archive for the Premium Sandwich Content you never asked for, but urges you to support their mission.
MARKETING DEP'T.
We are down to the last 19 copies of the second printing of 19 Folktales, still available for gift-giving and personal perusal! The nights are getting chilly and longer, but the stories are each concise enough to read before your bedtime tea cools off.
A Word from FLAMING HYDRA: The SWAG Fundraiser and ARCHIVE PROJECT
A FIERY COOPERATIVE for press freedom, NOW with gorgeous SWAG. Plus, help preserve THE AWL and THE HAIRPIN archives!! Now it is time for our PHASE TWO Kickstarter, to raise more daily operating funds while we reach even more subscribers—and also to underwrite some exciting new projects.
Many of the Flaming Hydras once wrote and/or edited at The Awl and The Hairpin, and we want these sites to have the posterity they deserve. So we’re getting started on the work of online scholarship. With your help, and the advice and help of the editors of The Awl and The Hairpin, we’re designing an online literary refuge for a handpicked selection of the best work these sites produced, presented with care in a well-designed archival setting, with captioning, commentary, essays, and comment sections available for Hydra subscribers. If we reach our GOAL, we’ll design and develop a living sanctuary for these important landmarks in the history of web publishing (so they don’t wind up in some gross AI chum farm where they steal bylines and wreck everything!!!)
SPECIAL BONUS KICKSTARTER EXCLUSIVE: THE AWL BOOK
This collection of top-shelf pieces from The Awl, edited by Carrie Frye and published and produced by Flaming Hydra in consultation with The Awl’s original editors and contributors, will also include ALL NEW commentary and original essays from contributors and readers.
![Screenshot of service questionnaire referenced below, except the emoji are all [SMILEY FACE]](/content/images/size/w600/2024/12/Screenshot-2024-12-09-at-11.09.34-PM.JPG)