Nice woofer you got there

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. I was wow'd by the number of articles on the web news this year on the subject. From the significance of eggs, to the plausibility of a physical body resurrection and "how many Christians hold to that belief". I did so much head shaking over the weekend my neck hurt.

I live in a pretty quiet neighborhood. I wouldn't use the word sleepy. You still have to lock your doors and I don't think I'd live here without a burglar alarm, but compared to living in the city it's peaceful. Even out here though you will still get a "9x stereo" roll by and make our windows rattle. By 9x I mean a car with a stereo worth nine times the value of the car it's installed in.

Where do I start with this one? It makes my head swim.

What gives these rolling Eustachian tube cleaners their removal power is the subwoofer or "woofer".

These bass speakers will run the driver anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars. Being generally nerdy, I get the how of the mechanism but as hard as I try I don't get the why. I don't come from the generation that scowls at loud music. When I'm alone in the car I crank up the tunes loud enough that I can't hear my cell phone ring. In some of the cars I've owned turning the music up was how I solved most mechanical problems. When those wheel bearings started to make noise, "pump up the volume". Ok, so in the long run not the most economical form of automobile maintenance, but I'm not much for anything that doesn't come with a keyboard.

I considered that it may be the kind of music that says to the driver "what would really heighten my experience would be if there was enough base produced to occasionally cause one of my toenails to pop off". The only form of music I could think that seemed to fit was Rap.

I'm not a fan of Rap; in fact I don't really consider it music. I might put it in the same category as Beatnik poetry. Please don't hear me say that I'm making a stand against Rap as an art form or making a generally statement in opposition to all who create or listen to it. I'm the last person anyone should come to for input on anything that falls under the heading "art". I just don't get it personally.

Ok, back to subwoofers and Rap. In casual observation that loud thumping bass does appear to go hand in hand with Rap. The more I thought about it though the harder it became to be convinced that to call oneself a connoisseur required a "Womp-o-matic 200 Decibel Knee Krusher". Sure, I understand the adrenaline rush associated with a driving beat like that, but does having it loud enough to create a pressure wave that forces cars next to you on the freeway to go momentarily out of phase with the universe? Somehow I doubt that's a requirement.

It got me to thinking about similar things I observe, for instance, people with loud motorcycles. Again, I'm not a mechanical guy, but I can't imagine a scenario where any vehicle on a public roadway needs so much horsepower that coming in contact with a few pebbles might cause them to transition from "rolling" to "flying". Again, I appreciate enough oomph to get up to merging speed or to pass a slow moving vehicle (where it's legal), but I seem to be able to accomplish this without hardware on my car that risks cracking the pavement.

So yah, it's the cool factor. I get it, I really do. I've lived much of my life trying to get there. When I was younger I got frustrated because I never seemed to fit in with the cool kids. As I got older I started to think that what made those kids cool were the things they had. I chased that for a while. I don't have the physique or eye for clothes, so I tried collecting other things to get cool. It took me a while but eventually I saw folly in that.

My friend Dan puts the word "consumer" up there with some of the most reviled he's heard. I've seen his facial expressions change when it's used casually in a sentence. While I don't get quite to the places he does with it the discussions have caused me to change my thinking about how, where, and why I buy things. I probably won't be giving up my big screen but I do look at the value of placed on stuff and what that says about their owner differently than before. It's been a catalyst for some fundamental changes in the way I live my life.

What I want to say when folks pull up next to me, car windows flexing to the beat, wheel rims giving the illusion their car is still in motion, is that most of us are just annoyed by it. I'd hesitate to claim that most people reach a point where they stop chasing cool. My guess is that their definition of it just changes as they grow older, after all age is no guarantee of wisdom. Allow me however, to make a small suggestion before you upsize your subwoofer or put the next louder muffler on your car. As an experiment, take that money, and make a charitable donation. Maybe buy some food and drop it off at a local food bank. However you define it, try using that money to better someone else's life. My bet is doing that will make you feel cool, though it may keep you from looking the part. That's ok though, the feeling lasts longer than the look.

At the very least it may save us all some trips to the dentist and auto glass repair shop!

Don't drive angry! Drive weird!