Archive for November, 2006
Shut Up or Pay Up.
My first Official Edict when I take over the planet, Rule One of Many in the New Order to Come: Noises Off! Or in more plainspoken terms…”Hey world….shut the f— up! I’m trying to think!
“Yes…yes, you’ll all be thanking me, praising my name…quietly…as you settle into your Barcalounger on a Sunday afternoon to read your favorite novel and realize….it’s quiet! James Be Praised for he hath ordained it and it has come to pass. There is indeed….quiet in the land. Praise be to King James. He hath wrought it and it is good. But how…how has this been manifest…you might ask?
It has been taxed…that’s how. Noise, that is. Call it what you will…A loudness levy, dollars for decibels, a tariff on tumult…it shall all be taxed under what I like to call the Shut Up or Pay Up Tax Plan for a Quieter Society. Own a Harley? Pay up or get a muffler. Own a leafbower? Pay up or get a rake (remember those?). Have a sub woofer the size of a dishwasher in your trunk? Cha-ching, bro’.
I mean why not? We tax other obnoxious behavior like smoking, drinking..well maybe not the behavior itself exactly but the stuff of bad behavior, so why not noise? It’s not as tangeable, sure, unless you’re trying to sleep in on a Saturday and the gardeners descend on the house next door with their thermonuclear leaf blowers.
Offhand, I’m thinkin’ $100.00/decibel per hour of use, so let’s see…taxpayer Rod Testosterone cranks up his Harley on a Sunday morning at 7:30 a.m. and lets it idle in the driveway for a few minutes while he checks his leather pants for salt stains and then drives the belching behemoth down to the Harley store or wherever, and the trip takes about 20 minutes. An average factory-mufflered Harley spews forth noise in the 88-100 decibel range x 20 minutes (1/3 hour) = $2,933.33 on the low end. Disincentive? Uh-huh. Rod then gets a bill from…well, me and failure to pay results in confiscation of said Harley and other indiginities I still need to come up with.
So until such a time as I take over the planet, thereby ushering in the next “Nice Age”, I will suffer the fools with the sub woofers, the crass with their leaf blowers, the uncouth with their back-up-beepers, the cretans with their unmuffled motorcycles, and the just-plain-inconsiderate whose concept of personal space includes their zip code, knowing that someday, if only in my dreams, “Keep it Down” will not be just a request but the law of the land.
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