"People who listen to MP3 players for only five hours a week at a high volume may be doing permanent damage to their hearing. "
This from a new
study from European Union researchers. I guess you can count me among those who won't be able to hear you sometime down the line. I log more than five hours in one day. The thing is, I don't really care about the risks at the present. Maybe I'm just feeling a little bitter this morning, but most days, I don't really care to hear much of what most people have to say anyway. "Heard it all before" comes to mind. But even when that phrase isn't the case, what newness someone might be saying doesn't interest me, either. I have a pretty good filter for channeling out the crap, but there's just too much of it to filter; it's impossible to get it all. Ah, unless I can't hear any of it.
Yeah, I know: Losing my hearing for the sake of not having to hear a bunch of monkeys recite the standard monkey lines time after time is pretty moronic. About as moronic as the monkey babble being thrown in my direction like little brown monkey wads of poo in the first place.
Election year, check. Monkey poo. Financial crisis, check. Gas prices, check. People losing their homes, check. People losing their jobs, check. All monkey poo. What the hell is there to listen to? Thank god for children. They are the only ones making sense to me these days. Hell, here in Nebraska, though, it's getting harder to even hear the
kids speak. Don't like your kid any more? Drop him off at a hospital. Let someone else raise him. (Yeah, right.) Kid not making sense to you? Drop her off at a hospital? Not liking the way junior is turning out? Drop him off a hospital. Little sister not fitting into that peg you're trying to squeeze her into? No problem. Just drop the little myster off at the hospital and carry on with your day. Let someone else worry about the details. Isn't that the way? Hell, parents don't even have to do the dirty work these days. Somewhere along the line, we just started dropping our no-good offspring off at the grandparents. Hell, let grandpappy or grammy cut the ties for good. Nice. No sweat. No mess. Nothing like a little double-abandonment issue to saddle a kid's lifelong journey toward who knows what with.
Yeah, like I wrote, I'm feeling a little bitter and disillusioned this morning for too many reasons to even count, but I'm not so sure sticking a pair of headphones on all day to escape it all, even with the knowledge it may mean I eventually can hear even the positive, not a fair trade-off.
Some days this photo is entirely how I feel: always climbing up and never really getting anywhere. So much climbing that it's hard to keep the details in perspective. So much climbing, it's hard to feel I'm doing the best I can. So much climbing, the days feel full of nothing but insignificant minutes piling on top of one another. Too many minutes of this nature creeping through. Too many distractions. Too many responsibilities. Too many of too many.
