Volume Control, or Taming Decibel

See Pluto Rocks for the start of all this.

I have some curious local and personal syncs with sound. The Boeing Supersonic Transport, or SST, was a big deal when I grew up in Seattle - I'd see the life-size illustration of the airplane on the hanger door at Boeing Field when we would drive by on I-5, and it was so cool. The SST captured the imagination of the entire city, even the basketball franchise was named the Supersonics! That was the Jet Age - better living through speed.

In Junior High, I created a super hero named Sonic Man for a creative writing class. His weapon was the sonic boom, his only weakness was a sound proof room! We also have the Seattle Sounders soccer team.

Even though we now live in a fully mediated, sonically amplified, technical environment, I like to imagine what it was like to live a few hundred years ago, when the only human voice you could hear was one spoken via vocal chords, powered by the wind generated through a pair of lungs.

Apparently, the upper decibel limit for a human voice is about 88 - shouting. I note that the DeLorean appears to have a pair of speakers attached to the engine cover. Turn it up to 88.

You're just too darn loud.

Jehovah speaks His creation into being. "And God said..."

So, I get this spam for a megaphone:

Good for Crowd Control... I sometimes think of my Self as a crowd of competing archetypes, alters, subconscious personalities, demons, angels, and what not. Maybe they could use a little amped up volume from me - the Ego.

In Stranger in a Strange Land, Michael Valentine Smith teaches Earthlings how to speak Martian. Martian, martial, god of war, iron man, etc. Heinlein never explains what the Martian language really is, but I think that maybe Stanley Kubrick knew.

In Full Metal Jacket, we see how the Marines operate, which is basically via a lot of shouting and primal dominant/submissive role playing. The Marines act as if every recruit is hard of hearing, and the only way they will get the message is when the drill sergeant yells the command into their face, with spittle attached.



God, what an asshole. It's almost as if the Id is hard of hearing, or maybe the channel between Ego and Id is full of noise, and it might take a good yelling to get through - sort of a sonic gate breaker.

Sonic the Sonic Hedgehog resonates for me, I note that he is also a DNA pathway...

Sonic hedgehog is one of three proteins in the mammalian signaling pathway family called hedgehog, the others being desert hedgehog (DHH) and Indian hedgehog (IHH).

Last week we took Oliver the Oztralian terrier to the vets at the Humane Society Pet Project, and he also got some cool plush toys, one of which was a hedgehog. I like how the hedgehog is conflated with Santa, the bringer of gifts - and coal. The duck... maybe that's the dick, I dunno. Quack.

I hear a fertilizer plant blew up in West, Texas. The orgasm made a pretty big boom. I see my Sonic sign is right there, next to the mushroom cloud.