Things That Annoy Me, But Shouldn't

As a friend used to say: 12V can kill you when the car battery drops onto your head from the roof.

 

All kidding aside, even low voltages can be dangerous. There have been cases where people have pushed the tips of multimeter probes through the skin, or inserted them where they don't belong. Although I do not know specific cases, I also assume that touching car battery contacts with open wounds is not a good idea. Most electrical safety assumes that there's the skin as a (more or less) high resistance insulator. Things change radically when you circumvent it.

 

Hmm, I wonder how dangerous the "open wound touching car battery" is. Maybe it could explain freak accidents? Must do research! That could be an interesting plot point to use....

 

12volts is not dangerous. The arc from making/breaking contact may be.

 

A lot of otherwise safe things are also dangerous when introduced to open wounds.

 

Beat me to it!

 

But it doesn't have to be even remotely lethal to be painful. Back in the day we tested the theory that you could torture someone with a hand-cranked field phone (I forget the nomenclature). Based on the zap I got across my fingers (Mickey put the ends of the wire across his temples, but Mickey was that sort of guy) I'm pretty sure you could, especially if applied to someplace more... sensitive.

 

As kids we used to see who could hold their tongue across the points of one of these the longest. Does that count?

 

Yep

 

(Seemingly) intelligent men who buy a tabloid newspaper.

 

Page 3?

 

When you telephone a business and have to wait to be connected to the person you want to speak with ... and you have to listen to lousy 'music.'

 

Yes, this page does usually illicit cries of "Wahaay! Look at the shirt potatoes on that!" etc.

 

That music they play when they put you on hold is one of my very favorite things.

 

... and just when you're beginning to get into it, it gets cut off and there's a human voice, and now you can't remember what you wanted to say...

 

Surely that depends on what it is that's being played?

 

Yeah. I love ad jingles for the same reason. They're so melodic.

 

Not so far. It's all pretty much the same anyway.

 

Ours vary. If they play a classical piece I'll hang on... sometimes as long as 30 seconds if I'm in a good mood. If they play modern shite I hang up without hesitation.

 

I've come to the realization (some years ago) that commercial jingles are often far better than most of what passes for modern popular music on the radio.

Just as all the best talent from Hollywood seems to have emigrated to certain cable networks (or Netflix) because the Hollywood politics and in-house incompetence has grown so bloated and unworkable, the same seems to have happened in regards to music production through the big popular record labels.

 

Some of the stuff they play sounds like an early Aqua demo. I always stay for that.

 

Of the last ten modern pop songs I bought (yes, I do that. Never used an online streaming service for music), eight I discovered by their use in advertisement...

I'm still angry about two songs especially composed for ad campaigns which never got a full release version.

 

The Folger's jingle is one my all time favorite pieces of music.