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What’s All the Hubbub?

One morning I woke up to the alarm on my cell phone. I often do. The time was 5:00 a.m.; the air conditioner had been running hard all night, and in its loud, motorized hum, punctuated by the occasional asthmatic bout of clanking, I had dreamt strangely.

I’ve gone through some pains to choose my cell phone’s alarm. I seem to remember wanting something that was at once loud enough to cut through the sound of the eternal air conditioner yet soft enough to avoid giving me a case of the vapors every time I was thrust back into what Wilbur so aptly called “the punctual rape of every blessed day.”

I also had to choose an alarm that would reflect my personality with adequate force and subtlety. My phone offers no fewer than twenty-three such options free of charge, among which appear such suggestive titles as “Froggy Night,” “Kinetic Beauty,” “Jazzy,” and, in a crowning irony, “Vintage Telephone.” More up-to-date phones offer more feng-shui alarm noises such as woodblocks, harp strings, and even church bells. But this is worse. Why should I want to hear a harp and think of that long email I have yet to answer, or hear a church bell and have borne in upon my mind the doleful face of my garage mechanic?

Praise the Lord

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