The use of vuvuzelas — a long plastic horn popular with South African soccer fans — at the World Cup has sparked debate about the level of tolerable noise at a sporting event. Here's a look at some other sounds that are not music to our ears.
1. Vuvuzela (or lepatata)
Vuvuzelas have been all the buzz at the 2010 World Cup, but not in a good way. The incessant beehive sound created by the long plastic instruments has saturated entire stadiums, indiscriminately drowning out players trying to coordinate strategy, sportscasters trying to call plays and fans trying to cheer on their team.
2. Emergency Broadcast System
It has probably happened in the middle of your favorite show. Right at the most exciting part, the television flashes to a rainbow bar graph and all sound halts. Three ear-splattering screeches grab your attention and hold it with a full 15 seconds of blaring tone. If you're lucky, you'll hear, "This is only a test." If not, the Emergency Alert System will notify you of a flood, an earthquake or a nuclear accident.
3. Gilbert Gottfried
The stand-up comedian has made his loud, grating voice his trademark, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. Still, he has parlayed his headache-inducing sound into numerous movie and television roles, including that of adoption agent Igor Peabody in the Problem Child movies, Iago the parrot in the Aladdin films and television series, and the voice of insurance company Aflac's signature duck.
4. Nails on a Chalkboard
Class nuisances and exasperated teachers have been using the old nails-on-a-chalkboard trick for ages.
5. Car Alarms
Not only is the sound of a car alarm annoying, but the alarm itself is increasingly ineffective. Because some car-alarm systems are sensitive to even the slightest nearby provocation, they can go off multiple times depending on how highly trafficked the area is. The more they go off, the less people pay attention to them.
6. Dial-Up Modem
Before DSL and the cable modem made broadband Internet a household commodity, the dial-up modem reigned supreme. In this dark age of bandwidth, connecting to the Internet was not only painfully slow but also took up your land line. Worst of all, it was annoyingly loud.
7. The Hum
A low, rumbling noise people compare to an idling diesel engine, the hum might infuriate one person, while the man standing next to him hears nothing at all. It occurs the world over: there's the "Bristol Hum" in Great Britain, the "Bondi Hum" in Australia and the "Taos Hum" in New Mexico
8. Snoring
A snoring kitten is cute; snoring that sounds like Darth Vader choking on an Ewok is not. The result of obstructed airflow in a sleeping person trying to breathe, snoring not only affects the sleep quality of the snorer at large but also makes all those within hearing distance lose sleep as well.
9. Cicadas
he next time your tone-deaf significant other brings you out to a drunken night of karaoke, consider yourself lucky that you're not listening to a cicada mating song instead. Every 13 or 17 years, periodical cicadas of the Magicicada genus emerge en masse in eastern North America to sing, mate and drive locals into fitful bouts of insomnia. The males (much like their human counterparts) are the primary culprits, producing their deafening love "song" with timbals, an accordion-like membrane built into their exoskeleton.
10. Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber
"Hey, wanna hear the most annoying sound in the world?" Jim Carrey doesn't give you, or his hapless hitchhiker, much of an option. The sound, a mixture of a car suddenly braking and a Wookie howling, is a lesson for all those who would hitchhike on a van decorated to look like a shaggy dog — just say no, or you may be going on the auditory ride of your life.
Source: Time.com
If you like this informative post, then please subscribe to my full RSS Feed.