General ringtone: “I Can’t Decide” by the Scissor Sisters.
Special ringtone for the wife: “Redneck Woman” by Gretchen Wilson.
My favorite one I’ve ever heard: one of the undercover cops would sometimes get calls from his confidential informants. For them, his ringtone was “The Freaks Come Out At Night” by Whodini.
My text message alert noise, incidentally, is one of those droid turrets from Portal saying, “Hey, it’s me!”
Shipping Up To Boston, Dropkick Murphys.
Motörhead’s Ace Of Spades, of course.
I wanted mine to be the Doctor Who theme but I never found one I liked and don’t know how to make them.
I wanted to make Carmina Burana (The Omen theme) my ringtone for work and a certain co-worker but I didn’t buy it from iTunes so they won’t let me make it a ringtone and again, I don’t know how to make them.
I’m such a nerd, I’ve edited mine down to loop seamlessly and given them punny names:
[ul]
[li]Green Onion Rings (The opening bit from Booker T. & the MG’s “Green Onions”)[/li][li]Ring Ring Ring (with a Swing) Gene Krupa’s opening drum solo from “Sing Sing Sing (with a Swing) by Tommy Dorsey”[/li][/ul]
Hall of the Mountain King- Apocalyptica
Theme to “Kill Bill.”
For text messages or voice mail I’ve had a variety, but my favorite is the “I’m a monster, rawr!” sound bite from one of the D&D 4th edition promo cartoons.
“Temptation Sensation” by Heinz Kiessling (better known as the theme music for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia).
When I get a text, it’s that crickty sound that the communicator badges made on Star Trek: the Next Generation.
Now I want a turret saying “Hello, are you there?”
I like this too.
When my son calls: Carry On My Wayward Son by Kansas.
When Girl Wonder calls, it’s “I Hate Everything About You” by Three Days Grace (she picked it!). For everyone else, it’s “Hangingaround” by Counting Crows.
ETA: When my little brother calls, it’s Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” which he says is the worst song in the world.
Golden Earring’s Long Blond Animal. It fits well for my ex-wife.
Now that I can make different ring tones for everyone I’ll have to figure out some new songs.
Very simple step-by-step tutorial for making your own ring tones with iTunes:
I added the Doctor Who theme (9th) for calls from Mrs MB and the Kimmunicator tone for voicemail/messages. The default is still the Torgo Theme.
Right now it’s Stephen Colbert’s cover of Friday. It was actually really hard to get a section without too much cheering going on.
My text message is the “Doors Closing” announcement on the Chicago L trains. And e-mail is Strong Bad saying “Check Your E-mail.”
There’s probably a reason why I leave my phone on vibrate when I’m out in public.
Wow, hey, that’s mine, too!
Oh, wait, reading comprehension kicked in. I just have Tubular Bells. So close…
Be careful what you wish for. One of the default ringtones for our office VOIP phones is a man or a woman saying “are you there? Are you there?”. Shit gets old really quickly. Of course it’s not a turret (whatever that is :o), but it does suck a lot.
General : Sabbath Bloody Sabbath by Black Sabbath
Wife : Blackbird by the Beatles
Gmail alert : Dr. Zoidberg saying “Whoop whoop whoop!”
Text alert : Peter Griffin yelling “Genital warts!”
Secondary alert : Peter Griffin saying “What the hell was that?”
Joe
In the game Portal, there are these killer robots called turrets. They stand on 3 legs with a little laser detection beam coming out the front. If they detect you, they shoot and kill you. They have adorable lil voices, and say things like “Hello, are you still there?”, and “There you are”. Then they shoot at you.
Old-fashioned Ma Bell-style ringing telephone. I want my phone to sound like a PHONE, dammit!