- A Rant by K.
They started testing the loudspeakers at around six in the evening. I could feel unmentionable parts of my body (like the follicles of the hair on my head) quiver as wave upon wave of noise crashed into the walls of my house. And then, curse and blast it all, came through the hideously mutilated tunes of someone trying to sing ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’.
Apparently the speakers weren’t set right.
Another half an hour of MAYHEM, BEDLAM and SHIVAJINAGAR-AT-SIX-IN-THE-EVENING ensued.
About two hours later, two hours that I spent in mortal agony, children trickled out like the last drops of water from your kitchen tap when the water tank above your house just goes empty. They trickled out merrily, and their parents oozed out after them – these belong, in general, to a species much larger than that of the children, who, compared to these, are but ants to a behemoth – raising the general level of noise to Ungodly (or is it UnGodly?) levels.
I think Dante met up with Ser H.G. Wells, traveled forward through the time machine and by mistake came into the gardens outside our apartment, on the evening of the twenty-fourth of December, 2006. He came and he saw and he conkered. He saw the people milling about, the children screaming, the generally demoniac screeching of the loudspeakers, and he thought (to himself): “Now, wot shall we call this, my precioussss???” and several minutes later, came up with a brilliant word, so brilliant, so ethereally SEXY that he went back to his own time, and said to himself again (Great writers always talk to themselves, please note.): “Oi!!! Such a luverly idea-rr as that should be written about!!!” and he started his greatest work, to write about the Capital of Hell, PANDEMONIUM. My place. Of course, he started with some rot about how he came unknowing into the great dark forest, this forbidding place where every fear is renewed (“Which in the very thought renews the fear,” as Longfellow translated it), but you can get the general picture.
After M. Alighieri had come and gone, the party really began. My god. I have never seen such a thing in all my life. The term Bacchanalian would have to be retailored to fit this night. All in the name of celebrating Christmas Eve, these people decided to try, with just acoustics, to tear the roofs from the buildings around.
It’s a wonder the police didn’t catch them at it, seeing as this revel went on till around one in the night (I checked the time). I heard every kind of evil music, from the tunes of Dhoom 2, to all the possible Bollywood hits made all the more vulgar by the addition of the morphed Second-Millenium equivalent of that Eighties and Early Nineties phenomenon called “Jhankaar Beats”.
These people had hired some other people to see that the sound levels were kept insanely high, and the hired hands kept to their task well. Too well. (Indeed, if I’d been an Eighteenth Century writer, I’d have called them ‘Swarthy Ruffians, with a most evil glint in their eyes.’ But suffice it to say that these were probably from another echelon altogether, indeed, such a different echelon, that I could picture them in Tyre Advertisements for the Rural areas, under the motto of the ‘Echelon Man’.
Sorry.
Humour, ran away with me.)
I am sure half those kids will be deaf for the rest of the week (as will most of the senior residents), and most of them will still be breathing out the smoke that they inhaled in copious quantities during the bash.
It was horrible. And if this is the way we are going to usher in one of the most peaceful times of the year, I am extremely sorry.
We have never behaved this way on my home planet.
Bloody Humans!!!
K.
Apparently the speakers weren’t set right.
Another half an hour of MAYHEM, BEDLAM and SHIVAJINAGAR-AT-SIX-IN-THE-EVENING ensued.
About two hours later, two hours that I spent in mortal agony, children trickled out like the last drops of water from your kitchen tap when the water tank above your house just goes empty. They trickled out merrily, and their parents oozed out after them – these belong, in general, to a species much larger than that of the children, who, compared to these, are but ants to a behemoth – raising the general level of noise to Ungodly (or is it UnGodly?) levels.
I think Dante met up with Ser H.G. Wells, traveled forward through the time machine and by mistake came into the gardens outside our apartment, on the evening of the twenty-fourth of December, 2006. He came and he saw and he conkered. He saw the people milling about, the children screaming, the generally demoniac screeching of the loudspeakers, and he thought (to himself): “Now, wot shall we call this, my precioussss???” and several minutes later, came up with a brilliant word, so brilliant, so ethereally SEXY that he went back to his own time, and said to himself again (Great writers always talk to themselves, please note.): “Oi!!! Such a luverly idea-rr as that should be written about!!!” and he started his greatest work, to write about the Capital of Hell, PANDEMONIUM. My place. Of course, he started with some rot about how he came unknowing into the great dark forest, this forbidding place where every fear is renewed (“Which in the very thought renews the fear,” as Longfellow translated it), but you can get the general picture.
After M. Alighieri had come and gone, the party really began. My god. I have never seen such a thing in all my life. The term Bacchanalian would have to be retailored to fit this night. All in the name of celebrating Christmas Eve, these people decided to try, with just acoustics, to tear the roofs from the buildings around.
It’s a wonder the police didn’t catch them at it, seeing as this revel went on till around one in the night (I checked the time). I heard every kind of evil music, from the tunes of Dhoom 2, to all the possible Bollywood hits made all the more vulgar by the addition of the morphed Second-Millenium equivalent of that Eighties and Early Nineties phenomenon called “Jhankaar Beats”.
These people had hired some other people to see that the sound levels were kept insanely high, and the hired hands kept to their task well. Too well. (Indeed, if I’d been an Eighteenth Century writer, I’d have called them ‘Swarthy Ruffians, with a most evil glint in their eyes.’ But suffice it to say that these were probably from another echelon altogether, indeed, such a different echelon, that I could picture them in Tyre Advertisements for the Rural areas, under the motto of the ‘Echelon Man’.
Sorry.
Humour, ran away with me.)
I am sure half those kids will be deaf for the rest of the week (as will most of the senior residents), and most of them will still be breathing out the smoke that they inhaled in copious quantities during the bash.
It was horrible. And if this is the way we are going to usher in one of the most peaceful times of the year, I am extremely sorry.
We have never behaved this way on my home planet.
Bloody Humans!!!
K.
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