Have you ever been prevented from concentrating on something by a repetitive noise, only you didn’t know you were being prevented from concentrating on something?

It took about two days for me to realize I couldn’t concentrate on writing because the sound beacon attached to the crosswalk lights outside my window was broken, and the electronic pulse had been repeating for thirty seconds out of every minute.

…every minute for twenty-four hours a day, for ten days before the municipality finally called the beeping repair guys.

So for ten days I was unable — even with the Seroquel — to get into a deep sleep. Plus I had to deal with County employees who had no idea what was going on.

When my girlfriend called the County office last week, they told her everything had been fixed. But nothing had been fixed. They even told her they had dispatched a County crew, but we later found out the maintenance is only done by a company from Ottawa. When my neighbour from up the street called the County office they told him the sound beacon was working perfectly — even though it hadn’t turned off in a week.

So take someone who has been sleep deprived because something is broken, then tell them over and over there’s nothing broken — my frustration levels hit new and unexpected highs over the weekend.

I did do one thing incredibly stupid and unforgivable last week, because I was so tired. And I’m trying to figure out how to write about it, but I’m not ready yet.

…but no one’s dead, and the damage turned out to be fairly minimal. I’m still in shock over it, but other than that everything seems fine.

Anyway. After receiving dozens of phone calls, each one more irate than the previous, the County finally called the repair people in Ottawa, and they came down three hours later and fixed the beeping thing.

Three fucking hours to fix a problem they knew about for ten fucking days.

So I finally slept from Monday* afternoon, until Tuesday afternoon. I swear, in the time between the beeping thing being fixed and my falling asleep, I could still hear that fucking beeping noise in the background.

Ten freaking days I put up with that beeping sound, and I haven’t found a decent outlet for my frustration yet. I can feel it in the back of my head, I just want to sit here typing out obscenities until my fingers bleed.

So, anyway, that’s why I haven’t written anything here. I did manage to write a post on the other blog, but that was early Monday morning, and it was mostly about the fucking beeping thing.

I do have video / audio of the beeping thing going off, but I stupidly included the signs for the intersection where I live in it… kind of hard to remain the partially anonymous enigma that I have become when my street address is splashed on my blog.

So, think of the sound a truck or bus makes when backing up… then get German electronica pioneers Kraftwerk to run it through a synthesizer to make it sound less organic, then up the volume by thirty percent and, while you’re listening to it, think about the time you tried to convince an idiot of something so simplistic it made your eyes bleed when they couldn’t grasp the concept — and the truck or bus keeps backing up for ten fucking days, while you and the idiot walk and talk beside the truck and your eyes are bleeding.

That’s about a tenth as annoying the sound was in real life.

Anyway. I should have something substantial later this week. In the meantime, here’s some Blues music from the Old School… musically speaking, this is were life began:

Blind Willie Johnson,
“Dark Was the Night (Cold Was the Ground)”; ‘Dark Was the Night’ (1927/2009)

Muddy Waters,
“Mannish Boy”; single (1955)

Reverend Gary Davis,
“Samson and Delilah”; ‘Harlem Street Singer’ (1960)

Magic Sam,
“Sweet Home Chicago”; ‘West Side Soul’ (1967)

*Monday morning is when the County started removing the old sidewalk just on the other side of the street from my bedroom window… with jackhammers and backhoes. Construction lasted until Tuesday afternoon.

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