11/20/02’s illustrious band:

Brown Noise

Brought to you by various anecdotes and a rude cartoon, and by the Chicken Step Lady, who revived my memory of same.

Brown noise is a slang term for a subsonic frequency — between 10.5 and 16 Hz, below the audible spectrum — that causes human beings to spontaneously vomit and to lose bowel control. (According to profane TV cartoon South Park, this frequency is believed to be “92 cents below E flat.” In one episode, a stadium full of children playing this note on recorders caused worldwide gastrointestinal distress. Funny!) Brown noise, which is apparently difficult to generate, is allegedly being investigated for military and crowd-control purposes. What a weapon that would be! You’re just casually walking through the DMZ and boom! There you go.

Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla (an eccentric genius whose biography is definitely worth reading!) came upon a brown noise phenomenon when developing his “electrotherapeutic” machine, which flooded the human body with electrical currents and strong vibrations, intended to soothe aches and promote healing. The device induced a bout of spontaneous diarrhea in his friend Samuel Clemens (a.k.a. Mark Twain), and legend has it that Tesla then began to use brown noise to hasten the, er, evacuation of uninvited guests.

Brown noise is also a real term given to a particular kind of sound (which mimics the Brownian movement of molecules) by real scientists who study such things. But it’s not nearly as amusing.

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The news on being on the news: I was, finally, or so I’ve heard. On Monday I was notified by the local TV news station that filmed the handyman service at my house way back on Oct. 2 that the segment would air that evening. (It had already been rescheduled at least three times, with the most recent plan being that it would run the day after Thanksgiving, so I wasn’t counting on it.) I wasn’t sure until Tuesday that it had actually aired, but a friend said she’d seen me on the news. She said I appeared very thoughtful and professional; I told her not to believe everything she sees on TV.

My next adventure, then, will be in trying to secure a taped copy of the segment. I’ve made a few phone calls and hope to have one in hand by the time I head south for Thanksgiving next week. Wish me luck!