There should be some sort of test you have to pass in order to own a car with an alarm. In fact, I think the test should be mandatory in order to even drive a vehicle equipped with one of the most obnoxious inventions on the face of the planet. And maybe old people should just be automatically denied the right to have a car alarm. Don’t get me wrong; I love old people. Really. Just not old people with car alarms. Besides, they could take the test to get a car alarm if they really wanted to, but I think most old people would be relieved. I mean, old folks always seem to forget that the car alarm going off is actually theirs so they stand there paralyzed in fear of an imminent nuclear attack until they suddenly realize that that heinous sound is, in fact, coming from their new car. Then they fish around in their purse or their pockets for about five hours before finally finding their keys at which time they start randomly pushing buttons and hoping one of them will work. Kind of like when I was in junior high and I tried to be cool and hang out with the boys and play video games like Street Fighter II. I’d just push as many buttons as I could as fast as I could so my character would jump and flail around, brandishing her weapons like someone with Tourrette’s on crack. Sometimes this strategy actually worked and I’d win but it was considerably less effective while playing Mario Kart. I’d always end up falling off some ledge or stuck against a wall and the angry guy in the cloud would come pick me up and face me the right way so I could do it all over again. Maybe that’s all deeply symbolic and the angry cloud guy is actually God and getting turned around in Mario Kart is an allegory for my life and being trapped in a vicious cycle of meaningless existence. Or maybe I just suck at Mario Kart. But back to car alarms.

The thing about car alarms is, they’re not just annoying; they’re ineffective. Sure they got people’s attention when they were new and the first few times you heard one you pulled over to the side of the road thinking it was an ambulance (or in the case of a really obnoxious car alarm a herd of ambulances). But seriously, when a car alarm goes off these days who thinks, “Gee golly someone’s car is getting stolen! I better call the cops!” If anything, you might hope that the offending car actually gets stolen. When I pointed this out to my brother today he claimed he was too “civic-minded” to align himself with my nihilist thinking. But what if the car gets stolen and the new owner is... how shall I put this... civic-minded enough to disable the car’s alarm before smuggling it out of the state? Well that crook would be a hero in my book.

Oops! Gotta go! I’m in the middle of a coffee shop and my cell phone’s going off. At least I think that’s my cell phone... is that my ring? Let me dig through my purse and find out... Oooh there’s that lip gloss I was looking for...