Did you hear about the belltower attendant who got clobbered in the head by a bell? When the coroner came to identify the body, he couldn’t remember the guy’s name, but his face sure rang a bell.
And did you hear about the guy’s brother, who had the same job, and died in the same way years later? The coroner couldn’t remember his name either, but he was a dead ringer to his brother.
Pah!
I mock you and your weakness. Went to Modica (Sicily) for a wedding. Stayed in an apartment behind the church for the weekend.
Not just bells. Automated bells. Automated bells in the sense of a bell with a metal bar hooked up to a motor so that it goes klankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklankklank really rapidly for a while. At 7AM. And then every 15 mins until about 10am. At which point they revert to hourly until about 10pm.
So nice, considering we arrived there at 4am, and were hung over every morning until we left.
Still, at least weren’t in the village in Tuscany where my friends’ parents live. They apparently have a church featuring a huge rusty loudspeaker, and a decades-old, stretched, crackly, worn-out recording of churchbells that plays to a similar time schedule.
Is it any wonder people in Italy are turning away from the church?
6 feet is a big bell all right, but not the biggest. At Riverside the big C bell is TEN feet across. 21 tons. But the one time I heard it up close it wasn’t that loud. More like huge. A soul-filling suffusion of sound.
Riverside spent 4 years completely redoing their carillon. Now they won’t let you up there anymore. :dubious:
Normally I wouldnt…but I have to CHIME in on this one…
jeers to church bells!
I’m sending my feathered friend to finish the job:
Once upon a midday dreary, while Khan was unconscious, weak and weary,
Over many a discordious and high-pitched volume of Easter lore,
While Khan nodded, nearly napping, suddenly his eardrums snapping,
As of some Quasimoto loudy rapping, rapping near his chamber door.
'Tis some foul noise,' he muttered, rapping near my chamber door -
Only this, and thank God, nothing more.’
Ah, groggily Khan remembered it was in the bleak of April,
And each separate dying brain cell wrought its ghost upon the pillow.
Eagerly Khan wished the morrow; - vainly he had sought to borrow
From his bottles that surceased to flow - sorrow for the lost Cochlea -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the pink elephants named Cochlea -
Nameless here for maybe another millionth of a millenia.
And Quasimoto, never abating, still is ringing, still is ringing
In the pallid steeple of St. Paul’s just outside of Khan’s chamber door;
And his chimes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is screaming,
And the sun-light o’er him streaming throws his hunched shadow on the floor;
And Khan’s soul from out that shadow that lies drowning on the floor
Shall be hungover - nevermore!
In college, one of my roommates was a bell choir. They all shared one bed. That wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t like the all-night practices they had. The thing that eventually made me move out, however, was hundreds of white gloves all over the damn apartment.
OK, so that’s not true. This is, however.
The town I live in now is also the town I went to college in. There were about six years between graduating and moving back. Sometime in that six years, the city was given an electric carillion (sp?) to put in the cemetary. The giver of this wonderful gift had, apparently, never visited the town, just sent the thing. Now, the cemetary borders one side of campus, including one of the residence halls (the other four halls are all on the opposite side of campus). The system came pre-programmed with some godawful renditions of some godawfully maudlin hymns (Not sure what, off the top of my head, but it really is bad). Now, this wasn’t a big problem, except that when originally installed, they were set up to go off every hour, on the hour. Well, that lasted a day or two (UMM students are mostly from Minnesota and the upper midwest, and are therefor unfailingly polite), but one day, someone noticed that they didn’t year the bells. Cemetary caretaker checked, and found sleeping bags rolled up tight, and crammed in the speakers. This happened a few more times, until the city agreed to limit the hours of use, and also turned the volume down (apparently, when first installed, you could hear it across town if it was calm. Now, not so much).