A year ago I didn’t know what an Ipod was and didn’t care.

Today I think I know, but still don’t care. I hear it is a &uot;thing&uot; in which to store songs, stuff kids call music, mostly screams into microphones accompanied by a cacophony of irritating musical instruments.

I can see the need … there are too many so-called singers, male, female, and somewhere in between. It’s bad enough to have to look at some of them, let alone try to decipher the words and/or the “message missing,” repeated over and over.

I saw an Ipod once at a radio station in Chesapeake, and it makes sense there, when most of the day is spent dispensing music.

So one is capable of storing 15,000 songs … who has the time or energy to find that many without going back as far as Al Jolson?

It bugs me like bottled water. Purchased in the small portable bottles, it runs about $10 per gallon, and who knows anything about the Spring Water it is purported to be from? And if they don’t fill the bottles right at the spring, I wonder what lurked inside the tanker that fetched it.

It wasn’t many years ago no one worried about having it nearby, but some doctor, or nut, has convinced millions they can’t cross the street without a bottle in their pocket or purse. Peek in any parked car and you’ll see a bottle on the seat or in a special carrier fastened to the dashboard … sometimes in a small ice chest. I can spend all day mowing pastures on my daughter’s farm and never think about a drink. I load up before I get on the tractor.

But the real irritant is the ubiquitous cell phone. Everywhere I go, including the highway, someone is yakking with someone. In the restaurant the guy at the next table is arguing with his wife, or an employee, mother-in-law, or one of his kids. And the kid is not necessarily at home … probably where they shouldn’t be. How did we ever get along before the invention of this wireless?

People walking along the street or in the mall have one in hand … are they asking for directions or being told what to buy, or just lonely?

A young girl in her car almost hit mine, but she seemed not to notice … a cell phone in one hand and what looked like a chicken drum stick, maybe a lipstick, in the other. I saw a boy talking into one while he mowed a lawn. How he could hear the voice on the line above the roar of the mower is a mystery to me.

That brings me to the person, or persons, I have come to despise … those jerks with their car adorned with speakers, inside and out, and the volume up with some rap music. At the light you are forced to listen, and those offenders don’t have the brains to care. I want to be around when they buy their first six thousand dollar hearing aid so I can smile.

There is only one thing worse that humans are often forced to endure … the senseless lout who owns a barking dog and figures you’ll get used to it. There ought to be firmer laws against such a crime against people, but animal control and most courts wring their hands and say they can’t do anything about it.

I was visiting a friend’s home recently and he was showing me his garden — one of those smallish city lots … and on both sides came barking dogs, one of them snarling, eager to get at him … wonderful neighbors,

His pleading with the owner went nowhere. Calls to city government went nowhere. All that he wanted was peace and quiet for his tax dollars — not a cultural center, not a tourist bureau, not a city spokesperson, not a public/private hotel Hilton, just peace and quiet for his tax dollars.

Contact the author at robert.pocklington@suffolknewsherald.com