“Alexa, drop dead.”
About 6:00pm yesterday, I noticed the stereo was on upstairs. The bassline comes down through the ceiling in my front room (bedroom/living room/every other damn thing room). I was one room away and could still hear it. I ignored it. Didn’t bother me all that much, since I was playing an audiobook.
9pm, during a lull, I heard it again. Still on. Oddly, it sounded like the same song as when I noticed it earlier. Bassline was going thumpa bumpa th-th-th-THUMP, round and round like a hamster wheel.
11pm. Silence. Well, that’s good, I thought. I sighed in relief and relaxed. Then it started up again. Thumpa bumpa th-th-th-THUMP. Is that the same damn song?!
1:00am. Still playing.
2:30am. Still playing. I tend to keep vampire hours, so it’s not unusual for me to be up at this hour, but I could feel myself fading. But that thing was still going up there and it was not going to let me sleep.
3:30am. It finally dawned on me that even the most devoted audiophile can’t sit on the couch basking in music for over nine solid hours. It had to be on repeat. So I went up there (they leave the door open 24/7, home or not). Pitch dark. Some kinda cheezball dance music at a volume it would be difficult to hold a conversation in the same room with it. I couldn’t find the light switch. Went back downstairs, got my phone, switched on its light.
There’s the big dumb dog, lying on the couch, wagging his tail forlornly. Next to him on an end table is the speaker. A black cylinder about 9 inches high. I press buttons. No effect. The microphone icon is red and has a line through it, by which I assumed meant it was locked On and it would take some magic code word to get it to shut up.
So I jerked the power cord out of it.
Somebody (the dog’s babysitter, because the owner is away until the middle of next month) had left it on for the dog and then just walked away. For ten fucking hours.
Really? The dog, an obese lab, listens to dance music? He’s expressed a preference for it?
