Hi, Noon!

We have a weekly test of our emergency broadcast system as well as a simultaneous announcement on the loudspeakers around town. It's at Saturday noon, just listened to it a few minutes ago, in fact. The loudspeakers are easily heard, they are strategically placed all over town and also double as sirens in case of disasters such as tornadoes. I forget which signals are which but I betcha I could figger it out quick enough if sumpthin' was happenin'.

My nephew "Garf" has been up here when the things have gone off. He has commented that it smacks of "Big Brother". Clever young man, great observation and analogy, he takes after his uncle. One of his other ones, not me. Standing outside, the audio effect is almost surreal as more than one loudspeaker can be heard but they're not quite "synched" and it's almost like a reverb on an electric guitar or an echo at the Grand Canyon.

(or the echo I hear when I visit the dentist and he ubiquitously says:
"That's the biggest cavity I've ever SEEN SEEN seen seen seen seen seen!" )

The cable TV interruption is annoying, especially when it breaks into a good movie. (or during Antiques Roadshow when they're fixin' to tell something they brought in a POS) We get an annoying, squealing alarm that starts off the announcement, then the dispatcher down at the police dept. breaks in in real time and informs us this is indeed, a test, if this was a real test, yada, yada, yada. I'm always hopin' for a few bars of "Saturday, in the park...I think it was the 4th of July."

BTW, it's generally always been a female dispatcher, at least it's a feminine-sounding voice.... A woman's voice is supposed to be more calming than a man's, but I suppose that's discounting some hysterical woman screaming in your ear.

It's only happened once that I recall, but I remember some severe weather happening one Saturday just before noon and watching frequent interruptions of the regular broadcast with weather warnings. Just as they broke in and announced the sighting of a tornado in this county, "they" went ahead with the regularly scheduled test of the emergency system.

My panic attack was less than many others, I heard. At least I got that goin' for me.

Oh yeah, and one more annoying thing, I can think of others, but they also repeat the broadcast over the loudspeakers in Spanish. I guess that's for "them" that's more of a doofus than me.