Everyone has one. Your upstairs neighbor? Your downstairs neighbor? Your roommate? Your cat? Your baby?

How many times a day do you want to scream, Will you please shut the fuck up?

Let it out, baby.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

Answers

my next door neighbors. they have a penchant for metallica. loud metallica. at 2 am. and one of them doesn't seem to have a good concept of "i'm trying to sleep, you fuck, be quiet or i'll kick the shit out of you."

boy, am i glad the term is almost over.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

My husband, who has a "home theater" system with Bose surround sound speakers. And who insists on watching every single movie at window- rattling volumes and with the bass turned WAY up.

My daughter, who chatters incessantly about the details of her day. Yes, it's very cute for the first hour and a half, but after the third rendition of "Did I tell you what Becca said?" I want to run away screaming.

My cat, Spanky, who wanders around howling for no discernable reason. Is he in pain? No. Is he hungry? No. Is he thirsty? No. Is he a dumbass? Why, yes. Yes he is.

My cat, Stimpy (aka Mr. Fancypants), who -- if the litterbox is not to his standards of cleanliness -- sits by the litterbox, meowing loudly in a high-pitched, Fancy way.

Why can't they all just SHUT UP???

http://www.bitchypoo.com/bitchypoo.html

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

The 6 year old. He's a wonderful kind delightful person and he's never quiet. I don't mind when he's actually having a conversation with me, but when he is assailing me with tales of Pokemon, I want to scream evil bad parent things at him. Instead, I invariably say, "I'm glad you enjoy Pokemon, now can we talk about something else?"

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

I have a next-door neighbor we call the Hacking Man. As long as anyone can remember, at all hours of the day or night, this man summons up viscous fluids from deep within his lungs through fits of either hacking, coughing or sneezing. Since several people live in that house, it took me quite a while of surreptitious peeking out our kitchen window to match the sound to a face, but I have done it. He looks to be middle-aged, with greased back hair and a mustache, and always wears a white undershirt. Early in the morning he spends about ten minutes starting his car, a behemoth-sized American junker from the sixties or early seventies (naturally), drives away for a bit, and returns with a styrofoam cup of coffee and a bag of donuts. Also naturally, he smokes. We thought he had emphysema or even cystic fibrosis for a while, but his physical appearance seems too ruddy.

By the way, Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is an excellent short story. That guy could write. I love the Disney version, but I love Irving's prose too, and I see no contradiction in that. It's only 72k and available on the Web, so give Irving ten minutes of your time and see for yourself.

ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext92/sleep10.txt

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

I've had noisy neighbors eveywhere I've lived for the past 30 years in SF. I do scream at them on occasion, but it's almost always a futile endeavor to get neighbors to shut the fuck up.

Plus, my husband snores really LOUDLY. Earplugs do not block it out for me. The only thing that works for that is going into another room to sleep.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

My neighbor across the street. She is loud. Not booming loud, rather screeching, b*tchy loud. We can hear every fight she and her husband have, although only her side of it. A few times they actually walk outside to have their fights, I guess so they don't wake their kids. Which is ironic since the majority of her screeching moments are aimed at her kids. I cringe every time. Those boys are young, just babies, one is 3yrs one is 18mos. She screams, screams screams. There was a two-week streak when we heard her every day. One night, I couldn't concentrate on the movie I was watching, every other word was drowned out by her screams outside. She was actually standing outside her house screaming in the windows at her kids...whaat? IS this good mothering? But I've never seen her hit them or come close to hitting them. So what can I do? To say the least, it's disturbing. And very very very loud.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

Okay, okay, I stand corrected. I just reread the Irving story and it's a hell of a lot better than it was when I had to read it in junior high. Amazing how that happens.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

The man in my life likes to play the stereo a lot more than I do, which is about once a year. And he likes things I can't stand, like Tom Waits.

At the gym there's this guy I call Grunting Man who has to pant and grunt ans he lifts his weights. I'm sure we're all impressed. But worse than that, he likes the music on LOUD and he likes the local oldies station. Cannot stand loud music, cannot stand oldies. We've tangled over this. Luckily, people whose offices are near the gym have been complaining about the music and several of us have complained to the powers that be, so he may be getting his some time soon. Ha.

One of the many reasons I hate to visit my in-laws is that although they live up in the gold country where it's beautiful and quiet, they always have either the TV or the stereo on. Always. Once his mom asked him to pick music to play while we ate dinner and he said "how bout just some quiet?" and she got all huffy.

Basically, I am sensitive to sound and am driven crazy by loud music, dripping faucets, refridgerators running, vacuum cleaners, etc. I sleep with earplugs. I feel out of synch with the rest of the world which seems to prefer having music on at all times. Even though I like music, I don't like it as a background. When I want to hear it, I put it on, otherwise I'd like silence.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

The Damn Dog. I am so sick of The Damn Dog.

He squeaks. It's like a super-high whimper, and he does it constantly. Right now, I'm in the computer room. He's standing in the hallway. Squeaking. I think he just does it to hear himself squeak.

I'll be in the living room, and he'll go lay down on my bed, looking at me through the doorway, and squeak. Sometimes he'll bark, too. Laying on his side. He doesn't even raise his head. Lazy bastard.

There's nothing he wants, there's nothing wrong with him. He just wants to squeak. At night, when we all go to bed: squeak. When I go to the bathroom: squeak. Laying on the floor behind me: squeak. SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEEEEEEEEEEEAK.

He does it so much, that we have incidents like earlier where he squeaks and squeaks and squeaks and I just tell him to shut up over and over again, and then he pees on the floor because he actually did want something this time.

I would love to watch one TV show, one movie, without once having to say "shut up." Eventually I just lose it: "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP I SWEAR I AM GOING TO STICK YOU IN THE OVEN AND COOK YOU IF YOU DON'T SHUT UP!"

I get like Jack Nicholson about 3/4 of the way through "The Shining"; one day the neighbors are going to call the police, thinking I'm going to kill my kids.

Sigh. I just yelled at another dog for drinking water. I thought he was snacking out of the litter box again. Now he won't drink.

I am a terrible terrible dog mom.

-- Anonymous, November 19, 1999

My middle son, Brian. With two kids who can't talk, you'd think I'd be grateful for the one who can---but he talks for all three, and then some! It's not just us. He gets great grades, but every teacher has put a note on there, "talks in class too much".

Al, alive and well at Nova Notes.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 1999

My son Mike. His mouth never never never stops flapping. I get so tired of hearing him talk.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 1999

One more vote for my kids....

My middle one Sarah, just does not shut up. She will tell the same story, over and over again, even when you are obviously listening and have heard it before, yea, were even there!

Or the girls fight at 7 a.m. on a weekend morning.....

-- Anonymous, November 20, 1999

This for all of you people with the kids who talk too much: speaking as one of those chatterbox kids, I'll tell you what you need to. You need to get them an online journal. Yes. It will solve all of your problems.

Well, most of your problems. You might have to start listening to things like, "Mom, did you see what Kymm wrote today? Well, okay, let me tell you about it. But first, here's the background ..."

You all do remember to feel very, very sorry for Jeremy, don't you?

-- Anonymous, November 20, 1999

I'd like to second the 'Damn Dog'. Apparently Bridget thinks that squealing at me or my mom at night is very endearing, and that she is being the ferocious defender of the house. Sooooooooooo whiny.

Also, the cat: whenever I go in the bathroom, Criffin shows up from wherever he is to whine and claw at the door. Unless he is inside the bathroom, in which case he immediately starts clawing and yelling at the inside of the door.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 1999

When I ride the "BART" train to work some mornings, there are teenagers listening to "music" on boom boxes. There is a sign that requires riders to utilize ear phones or headsets when riding BART, but I don't believe it matters to these teens. Their "music" is loud and rather obnoxious, just like their conversation. They scream over their music to converse with one another. It's noisy and downright irritating at 7:00 AM.

I have requested and then demanded the music be turned down. Sometimes the music is turned down and sometimes it is not. When it is not, I move to another train car, if I can.

Most of my life is quite free from real noise.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 1999

They play really loud, music in the weight room at the university. I really hate it, but since I'm 40 years older than most of the other users, I just suffer in silence. Mittens has a very annoying meow, especially at 3 am. when he decides he must go out to pee. The other 7 are fairly quiet cats. Well, Grey Lady will come in and stand by the bed and meow loudly at 9 am on a Saturday morning because she is hungry.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 1999