It turns out, I don't need my alarm clock anymore! Every morning this week I've been woken up by the same car alarm.  Sweet. Urban living in Sofia, Bulgaria.

You might be wondering how I know it's the same car alarm.  Well, it goes through a seemingly never ending pattern of noise.  It's kind of like a metronome--it starts off slow and low and then it gets increasing louder and faster.  At first, I told myself: you can sleep through it but the way the alarm cycles through the pattern it's impossible to when it's on the high loud frequency.

It's like hitting snooze.  You know you've only got a few minutes of interrupted sleep before the alarm goes off again and you have to decided whether or not to hit snooze again.

The one problem with relying on this car alarm as an alarm clock is that it's not very reliable. <!--more--> This morning it was going off about 7:30 am but yesterday it was more like a little after 8.  I guess for those of us who don't have a lot of early morning commitments it's okay but it's not very reliable.

This morning the alarm went off for nearly 15 minutes.  After the first five minutes, I decided that the alarm was obnoxious.  Ten minutes later I wished I knew what car was making such a horrible noise so that I could throw something at it.  I can't remember exactly when the alarm stopped blaring because just like after a loud concert I think my ears continued ringing long after the alarm had been turned off.

The thing is, looking at the cars on my street, it's hard to imagine which one of the cars has such an obnoxious alarm.  It's not as if any of the cars are new or in fact appear very valuable (but for the record, I am not a car person and I guess value is all in the eye of the beholder).

So this got me thinking, what kind of a person picks the worst, absolutely the worst alarm for their car and then apparently can never hear it to turn it off? I think it's the same person who picks the most current pop song from the top twenty charts and sets this as his ring tone on his cell phone. Of course no matter where this person is, he has his phone on--restaurant, cinema, bar--but he never hears it ringing thus forcing the rest of us to listen to his crappy pop song.

The thing that really gets me is this. I assume that you picked this song because you liked it. If you this were true, wouldn't you recognize it as the song you liked enough to download as your ring tone and answer your phone when you heard it?

So when you don't answer your phone there are only a few things I can assume.
<ul>
	<li>First that you downloaded the song to show off your good taste in pop music and to signal to others that you are hip, cool and current.  However when you don't recognize the fact your phone is ringing it signals to me that you are none of these things.</li>
	<li>Second, I assume that you actually like the song and want to listen to as much of it as possible so you are delaying answering the phone.  If this is true, it just makes you a pain.  I don't want to listen to your ring tone.  Answer your phone.</li>
	<li>Finally, when your phone rings and rings playing the same bad song over and over I am lead to believe that downloading a pop-song ringtone was a bad idea.  The problem it seems is that if a song isn't good to start with making it into a ringtone, downloading it to your phone and then putting the phone in your pocket in hope that you will hear it ring will never make the pop song better.  In fact, the song playing from you pocket on your phone is now at least 10-15 times worse than when it's playing on the radio or in a club.</li>
</ul>
So in conclusion, I think that the guy with the horrible car alarm who lives on my street must also be the same guy who downloads top 20 pop ringtones for his cellphone.  The one thing I am immensely thankful for is the fact that you can't download top 20 pop ringtones for your car alarm.  That, that would be my worst nightmare.

(Now that I've completed my rant, I would like to say I am not an unreasonable person.  I do understand why so many cars have alarms here in Bulgaria.  We have a little problem with car theft and a car alarm is a pretty good deterrent but not a foolproof one. I know this based on my knowledge of car theft rings--which comes straight from American blockbuster movies.  Specifically, if a car thief wants your car badly enough not even a car alarm will stop him.  See Vin Diesel.)