# What kind of DEMENTED BEAST
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [July 23, 2006, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699 "2006-07-23T12:40:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/21 "2006-07-24T15:59:07Z")
You people have it _easy_.
Let me tell you about two years ago.
Two years ago, in an incident that made the papers, a chunk of concrete fell from the balcony of one of the buildings owned by the property management company that also owns my building. The chunk hit a woman on the ground. Said woman, upon being discharged from the hospital, sued the crap out of the property management company. In addition to the payout to the woman, they set upon revamping all of their buildings to bring them back up to code and shore up their balconies in particular – especuially in those buildings, like mine, where the balcony juts out partway from the building. (About 6 inches in my case, but whatever)
This project started in the late spring of 2004. It consisted of affixing powered scaffolding to the front and back of each building, tearing out every single balcony, trimming the concrete down a few inches, then putting in new railings and glass. In use for this project were such wonderful power tools as hammer drills, rotary hammers, concrete saws, angle grinders (with cutoff wheels), power sprayers, and good old-fashioned hand tools like the sledge and the claw hammer.
Now, I don’t know how much you know about the accoustics of an apartment building composed of thick concrete walls and ceilings (which is great for soundproofing absent a really boomy stereo system or people dropping marbles on their linoleum upstairs) but when power tools are applied to the structure, regardless of where in that structure you are relative to said tool, you can hear it do its business. Not like you can when you’re outside near that tool, but like you can when you’re on the other side of that concrete wall the hammer drill is pounding into. Sound travels through concrete in a similar manner to the way it travels through water; the structure just picks up the sounds made anywhere in the building and transmits it to everywhere else in the building.
Now, imagine being in this building with three or four people simultaneously working on it with hammer drills and rotary hammers.
Imagine this going on every day except sunday and days when weather did not permit (i.e. rain or on cold winter days).
For 10 hours a day.
Starting at 7:00am.
For the next fucking _year and a half_.
Imagine how loud it gets when it’s in the vicinity of your own unit. Imagine that going on _all fucking day_ for _weeks on end_ because they’re working on one floor at a time and each floor days them at least a week to do.
Imagine them coming back to your floor for this process on different occasions _four times_ – once to strip the old balcony away, once to chip away the excess concrete, once to set new concrete, and the last time to add the new railing and glass.
It was, in many respects, much like trying to sleep on a construction site.
Feh. One measly alarm clock at 8am. I’ve lived through the Viet Nam of homestead disturbances.
---
### Author:  [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/22 "2006-07-24T18:29:45Z")
I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for the times I left my dorm for the weekend and went home, and left my alarm clock set.
Granted, some RA would come into my room, unplug the alarm and leave it in the middle of the floor with a note saying that I left my alarm on over the weekend and please don’t do it again. But I still felt bad about it.
Well for like 12 seconds until I remembered how much I hated living with those girls in that dorm. But I was still embarassed.
I’m sure this doesn’t help \*\*matt\_mcl \*\* much, assuming he probably wasn’t living in a girl’s dorm in Ohio in 1999 (ASSUMING)…but if you were, I’m sorry.
---
### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/23 "2006-07-24T18:31:26Z")
> [@melondeca](#):
>
> Yeah, yeah…I will take your annoying neighbours alarm clock and raise you a wood planer at daybreak.
In many civilized parts of the world, making that amount of noise at daybreak is illegal. That is, if it is truly at daybreak, and your day doesn’t break at noon.
A visit from John Law sounds like it would be called for.
---
### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/24 "2006-07-24T19:42:30Z")
> [@ExtraKun](#):
>
> Long ago, back in when I was still in mandatory national service, one of the brainless idiots leave his alarm clock for **4am in the f’ing morning**.
>
> I have no idea why, but everyone slept like a log in the bunk except me, a super-ultra-light-sleeper. And only I woke up in the wee hours of the morning, and I have to stumble to the clock and shut off the alarm. And I can forget about sleeping for the next few hours.
>
> Roll call is at 8am. Oh boy, how I hated those days.
This was in a national service barracks? And you and the rest of your bunkmates let this happen daily?
---
### Author:  [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/25 "2006-07-24T19:43:55Z")
**matt** is this a recurring event or a one offer?
---
### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/26 "2006-07-24T19:48:32Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#):
>
> I WILL EAT YOUR FIRSTBORN YOU MOTHERFUCKER.
>
> > [@KarlGauss](#):
> >
> > Hey, I thought you were a vegetarian! 😃
Well, if the alarm clock is inside his apartment, there are more pertinent points than vegetarianism which would get in the way… :dubious:
---
### Author:  [@corkboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corkboard)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/27 "2006-07-24T20:18:53Z")
About a year ago I was listening to Howard Stern and Artie was telling a story about a friend of his. The friend lived next door to a couple that would make noise all night and day, and probably left their alarm clock set when they left for the day.
The guy had a reel-to-reel tape player- I believe the story took place in the mid-70’s. Anyway, he had to leave for a week or so, so as payback, he looped the part of CSNY’s _Suite: Judy Blue Eyes_ that goes “doo-do-do-do-doot… doot-doot–do-do-do-doot” so that it played over and over again endlessly. Evidently they had to call the police to break into the place after 3 or 4 days.
Every time I hear that song I think of the story, and how insane those people must have been after hearing that little melody thousands of times over the course of the week. Artie was in hysterics while he was telling the story, which made it even funnier.
---
### Author:  [@melondeca](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/melondeca)
#### Post date: [July 24, 2006, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/28 "2006-07-24T22:36:52Z")
> [@Voyager](#):
>
> In many civilized parts of the world, making that amount of noise at daybreak is illegal. That is, if it is truly at daybreak, and your day doesn’t break at noon.
>
> A visit from John Law sounds like it would be called for.
I did call and they came to talk to him. The guy was so mad that he made a spike strip out of a two-by-four and some nails and laid it across our drive and covered it with grass, flattening both drivers side tires. Once again the police paid a visit. this time they threw him in jail for a weekend because I threatened to sue the city if something wasn’t done. There were only railroad tracks separating our drive from the park and I told the cops that a kid could have been seriously injured and then they would have two lawsuits on their hands.
We moved shortly after that.
---
### Author:  [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2006, 9:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/29 "2006-07-25T09:13:18Z")
> [@acsenray](#):
>
> This was in a national service barracks? And you and the rest of your bunkmates let this happen daily?
I was the only one who was being woken up. The rest had no issues.
The good thing was – I complained to the warrant in charge after a week of distrubed sleeps (and a visit to the MO for headaches and nausea related to that) and they said, “Well, then maybe you better stayed out and just booked in every morning.”
(It was a reservist unit, and everyone on camp were either storemen or clerks. The norm was for people of such vacation to stay out but our unit just did things differently and insisted on everyone to stay in. Kind of explain the slack discipline too).
---
### Author:  [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/30 "2006-07-26T02:12:13Z")
> [@Gangster Octopus](#):
>
> **matt** is this a recurring event or a one offer?
For the benefit of my remaining unimprisoned, it had better be a once-off.
---
### Author:  [@bloo-bird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bloo-bird)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/31 "2006-07-26T03:30:43Z")
There are good books by a one George Hayduke on how to get back at neighbors…
---
### Author:  [@Ghanima](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ghanima)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2006, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699/32 "2006-07-26T17:17:23Z")
A former roommmate of mine used to set her alarm for about a 1/2 hour before mine was scheduled to go off. She had a hard time getting up in the morning, so she had it turned up really loud. Then she’d hit snooze…over and over and over. So everyday I’d wake up VERY pissed off, get in the shower because I was already up anyway with no hope of sleeping that extra half-hour, after which she’d finally get up. After a couple weeks of this I finally told her to either set it for later since she always got up after me anyway, or turn the fucking thing down. She was scared of me so everything worked out.
Then there was the time in college when I was awakened after a party at my co-op by some loud banging…over and over. When I dragged my ass downstairs, there was a cop banging and banging on the door of this guy’s room…this guy who I happened to know dealt a significant quantity of pot among other things. His music was absolutely blasting and he had left his balcony doors open and the neighbors were going insane. I didn’t want the cop to break in and possibly see some contraband, so I got the keys (I was house president at the time) and tried to open his door. No luck, he had the lock changed. So I banged on the door of the room next door, got no response, and used my key to get in. The guy next door was completely passed out - so passed out he didn’t notice me climb over him in bed, open the window, and climb out of the window onto the balcony for the next room. I got in there, turned off the music, hid all the drugs/paraphernalia and finally opened the door for the cop. I have no idea why that guy decided to leave his room with the music turned up to 11, but he owes me BIG TIME.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-kind-of-demented-beast/365699.md?page=1)