A whinnying horse. A blaxploitation sample. A female instructor saying Chinese is the easiest language to learn. These three brief audio samples regularly interrupt my late-night headphone music listening.
I’m not tripping or having a medical episode. My bedroom faces the rear of the Chinese Mission to the UN. I can’t be certain that these unwelcome late-night audio interruptions come from there, but it’s a theory. If you’ve never fallen gently asleep to a bespoke playlist of jazz ballads, only to sit bolt upright in terror an hour later because a horse is shrilly whinnying in your ears, you should try it some time.
Photo by Mikael Kristenson on Unsplash
4 replies on “My Glamorous Life: The Unexpected Samples”
Have you ever heard the song Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLrnkK2YEcE The horse whinnying sample reminds me of that so acutely. I can imagine how disorienting that was!
Started a few months ago. Happens most nights! I wonder if other neighbors in my line of our shared apartment building also hear these interruptions. I wonder if my Airpods Max headphones are more susceptible to this weird interference than, say, Sony headphones.
That’s terrifying! You should talk to an investigative journalist familiar with cybersecurity about it.
The calls are coming from inside the house.™
I owe the Chinese Mission an apology. Turns out it was a recurring prank played by a family member. When my Airpods Max are functioning—which, lately, is about 70% of the time—they will sometimes automatically connect to a device owned by someone else in an adjoining room. The first time this happened, that prankster sent me an audio clip of a whinnying horse as a goof. My phones didn’t know where the signal came from. I reconnected to my device for a few seconds, and then—again!—I was deafened by a horse whinnying in my ears. When I later asked, “Do you know anything about these weird sounds I’m hearing?”, it amused them to pretend they had no idea what I was talking about.
The pranking continued until I was finally moved to blog about it.
Seeing my post, the true culprit confessed at last.
Kids.