Dammit, there's too much noise today. Admittedly, I don't have much tolerance for noise. Any one of the following would have met my daily quotient. But I got them all!

Someone moving into an apartment in my building has been bumping bookcases up the stairs all afternoon. I was trying to work on a project that required concentration, but found myself instead concentrating on when the next slam-the-furniture-into-the-stair-rail would happen.

So I decided to go run errands. Good idea, except one stop on my route had a load of back-to-school shoppers yelling across aisles at each other. This was a mix pf parents and children. They apparently had the notion that the louder they shouted the lower the prices would be.

When I arrived at home, the moving-in person was done. But another neighbor had been on a shopping trip, and was unpacking his car, bag by bag. This apparently needed accompaniment, since he had left the car stereo on, full blast. All possible doors were open, so the listeners and anyone else in the county could get the full effect. I can't tell you what was playing; the bass was set in such a way that any tune was lost.

Almost as soon as he finished unloading and turned off the stereo, the next bit of aural assault began. This came from the ice cream truck. I would actually enjoy hearing the truck except for one little thing---the music system replays the same half of the song. I wonder how much ice cream I'd have to buy to allow the owner to buy the rest of it? (In case you're curious, it replays the verse to Turkey in the Straw, but omits the chorus.)

After the truck went somewhere else, I was watching the news, and realized something. As I escaped the latest version of the car commercial in which a Japanese vehicle is promoted by people who've just come to the dealership from a bullfight, I figured out that what I really want is a remote control setting that would mute the world around me. Not to the other people, of course; they would be welcome to listen to whatever they pleased, just as people using other tv sets could listen to the commercial tune I chose to avoid.

Will someone ever invent such a gadget? Probably not. But you have to admit it would be a lot more fun than earplugs!