Happy New Ear

"Wouldn't it be silly", we all wondered, "if anyone cared about this?" Questions like this were everywhere and they were maddening. Certainly we were tempted to stomp upon the Tyrant and release the Messenger O' Love... but frankly, it's simply a matter of restraint.
Tonight there's some godawful whistling sound coming from the radiator. My tinnitus, now celebrating its thirteenth month, is ironically no help at all. You would think that the constant presence of a 15 kilohertz sawtooth wave right in the middle of your head would help mask our high-pitched sounds. Not in my case, of course. Conversely, I seem to have become even more sensitive to them. Particularly regarding car brakes, and the subway. The subway is so varied in frequency information as to make a brave man weep; ridiculous, spleen-rattling sub-sonic wavelengths churning through the ground as the train comes from afar... followed by hair-splitting jolts of high-frequency hilarity when it pulls up to the platform, way up in the area of 100 Kilohertz and beyond I wouldn't doubt.

So recently we've had a furry little visitor in our apartment. He's come to see Kristin twice, and has conceivably visited many more times. Kristin suggests some type of device she heard about: it blasts out super-sonic frequencies that keeps the mice away... and arguably, the cats, dogs, and other smaller mammals as well. Obviously this is more humane than a mousetrap. I'm paranoid, though, that the device will be my undoing as well, due to my super-sonic sensitivities. I can already picture it:

Hanging out in some dark, dirty alleyway with a handful of mice. We are all sharing a small block of cheese, and a FastBreak bar. We're all thinking back to the good old days, eating our meager meal in silence. Yes, we talk about it sometimes, but the pain is great, and could well break us if we were to think about it too much. More often than not, we simply choke down our meal in silence. Sometimes we are joined by the cats and dogs, and even some species of beetles. The other day, the cat comes up to me and says, he says: "Well, I can't get anywhere near the goddamn place, how about you?"