Bleepin' Beep

Remember that ground-breaking documentary, What The Bleep Do We Know? , a big dose of quantum physics contemplating the universal state of being?  My question is what the bleep we actually did to achieve a universal state of beeping!

 With continual beeps emanating from my computer, microwave, dishwasher, and cell phone, not to mention the sound of the trash truck backing up, it feels like I’m in the middle of a Loony Tunes cartoon with Wile E. Coyote on my trail.

Who decided we needed to be notified every time an email arrives or the laundry finishes spinning. I’m beginning to seriously resent it.  Yes, I do know how to fix the sound settings on my computers and phone, but the microwave, oven timer, and dryer all have permanent settings.  One of my biggest pet peeves is the sound that greets me every morning as I shuffle to the kitchen for coffee.  The dishwasher insists on telling me it’s finished, just in case I forgot that it did its job, and now it’s time for me to do mine, and that I shouldn’t get too comfortable with my coffee and my Facebook.  

Even worse than being bossed around by a lowly appliance, is being bullied by a sinister %$ ^%#* battery-operated smoke detector.

Like girls in a college dorm, detectors that share a home inevitably all end up nearly on the same cycle.  Which means that about two and a half days after I’ve replaced the batteries in the one it took a sleepless week to find tucked back in the top corner of my closet (after disassembling and reassembling the three others scattered around the bedroom), one of them starts to beep.  You get the picture.  

With every problem Steve Jobs solved in his lifetime, couldn’t someone have nudged him to create an immortal battery …or at least a GPS for ailing smoke detectors?