TOO MUCH! TOO FAST!
Yesterday, within one radio news segment, sandwiched neatly between three commercials, I found we now have available, or, will have very soon, both a Self-tuning Piano and an Acoustic Refrigerator/Freezer.
I can't say how long I have waited for such a double wonder to happen!
Will this flow of fantastic inventiveness never cease?
We only recently found a new home for our spinet piano of some forty years enjoyable residence, and I am thinking of the number of times we had it tuned, with varied results. Never once did it have an opportunity to re-tune itself, which new pianos now do. Eighty-eight wonderful keys slighted!
I am told the new system works pretty much as does the present electronic tuner I use with my vintage acoustic guitar of some sixty-four years. I like it. It is very efficient and quite small, too. I feared the new piano tuner might be larger than the piano itself, but that has has been pretty well taken care of and we can expect self-tuning pianos to glut the keyboard market any day now. Set! Bing ! Forty-five seconds later: “Okay, boys, hit it from the top!” In a good many cases it might be wise to go with self-playing pianos, too.
Now, it's time to move along to the food preparation area of your home.
The Technicians have just finished installed your all new, snow-white, absolutely quiet acoustic refrigerator. The buzzing, antiquated box you've had all these years, has been loaded on a truck and will soon grace an eroding corner of the county landfill as yet another antiquated piece of electrical equipment which is now outclassed in every way. The new box is powered by noise.
Somebody just recently found out that sound can freeze things if you make it loud enough. It would seem that bit of information would have come to ear earlier with all the noises we make about us in these modern times, but it is a recent development, I've been told. I know for a fact that when someone kicks an electric guitar amp up a few notches, it sends a cold chill up and down my quaking spine. And, in spite of the fact that noise does all your cooling for you, you don't hear a thing. The “noise” energy is contained in small tubes, I understand ,and I wonder what happen if one of them springs a leak during the night. I have heard of “all Hell breaking loose” and I think that's what it might sound like with bit of purgatory tossed in. When you pick yourself up somewhere around Chicago, get your eardrums vulcanized or just patched up a bit, you might wonder how and when it all started.
That would be the waning days of the year 2002.
There is some concern, too, about the affect acoustic refrigeration might have on the market is general. Some see it as sound investment while others are rather cool about the whole thing.
A.L.M. December 6, 2002 [c512wds]
