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I have an inordinate fear of leaving my bicycle unattended for any period of time. I don't even think of turning my head and having it out of view for even a moment, because I've heard a dozen stories of people who've lost their bikes while leaving them for a minute or two...like going into the Qwik Mart for a King Cobra. But you know, I don't have the same concern over my car(s). They are always parked outside, never in the garage, unlike all my neighbors...and I don't set their alarms.

Car alarms suck. They really suck. In my estimation, there are nine thousand, two hundred and seven false alarms for every real alarm. While camping at Lake Camanche last weekend I must've heard a half dozen alarms go off each night I was there.

Tell me. What are the odds that some idiot willingly pays to enter the Camanche campground, twenty miles from the nearest city, to steal a car at 2:00 AM from campers in their tents twenty feet away?

No, the real idiots are the people who set these fucking alarms in the first place, and while they never believe they'll be stupid enough to set them off unintentionally, they do. By the dozens. By doing so, they contribute to the din of superfluous noise technology brings us, like beeping respirators in hospital rooms, cell phone interruptions during presentations, the "clicking" of each character entered into a text message, an incessantly beeping fire annunciator, on and on and on and on and on.

Twenty seven years ago, when car alarms first entered the market, you'd hear one go off in a parking lot at the mall and you'd actually bother to look around, to scan the surroundings, to possibly see some "action." "Hey, a car's being stolen! Gotta be on the look out! I might get a description of the perp and I'll contribute to his arrest! I might get a heroes reward!"

Today, mall security guards won't even look over their shoulders if an alarm goes off because they know it's just another false alarm. Just another false alarm. Stack it up alongside the six hundred thousand other times he's heard the same thing. Today any one of us can hum the classic 6-tone alarm sequence, knowing what's coming next because you've also heard it six hundred thousand times:

Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo-Wo Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh-Deugh Duuuuuuuu-Eeeeeeeee Duuuuuuuuu-Eeeeeeeeeee Duuuuuuuu-Eeeeeeeee Duuuuuuuuu-Eeeeeeeeeee Dooooooooooooooooooeeeep Doooooooooooooooooeeeep Ant-Ant-Ant-Ant-Ant-Ant-Ant-Ant Weeeooo Weeeooo Weeeooo Weeeooo Weeeooo Weeeooo Weeeooo Weeeooo

And don't you feel special, walking away from your vehicle amongst other people, and getting to make that Wah-Wah sound from your remote, letting you and everyone around you know that you just armed your car alarm? Doesn't that make you feel good? And don't you like to do it with some flair? Like really throwing your arm at the car, or a behind-the-back shot, or under the legs? Yes?

Yes. Then, say, you'll set it while you're at the California State Fair, where you set your alarm in the parking lot and where you won't be anywhere near it for the next several hours and if someone attempts to steal it he knows that no one's gonna give a shit, no one's gonna look, and everyone around will just assume he's just another stupid car owner who can't figure out how to disarm his alarm and indeed might even help the guy stealing the car figure out how to turn it off. I know I would. If I were parked next to someone who (unbeknowst to me) was stealing a car and I had to listen to that racket you're damn right I'd help him disarm the thing.

Car alarms. Just another item where we easily see the diminishing returns of technology.