Name that Nuisance

Radio stations often have a "name that tune" or even a "name that random sound" contest with lucrative prizes. I never listen to the radio, even in my car, but I confess to playing the latter game simply because my living arrangement makes me a necessary player.

Indeed, my apartment building makes random noises, and late at night when traffic from outside falls to a low din, the contest begins. I have been declared a winner before: it took me months, but I successfully figured out that the brief, echoing, metallic shuffle that occurred at purely random times was in fact the elevator down the hall closing its doors behind portly occupants.

I write about this now because last night, the night before my first exam, we began a new contest. And because it kept me up most of the night, I compiled a list:

Things I have narrowed down the repeating, cyclic, sharp, scraping noise to be:

- The upstairs neighbour printing out a 40+ page document on a circa 1990's dot matrix printer, where the printer is located on a hardwood floor and he can only print between the hours of 2 am and 6 am.
- An alarm clock woefully attempting to mimic the sound of a cat meowing, lodged somewhere in my bedroom wall.
- A cat meowing, lodged somewhere in my bedroom wall, with an acute sense of timing.
- Tiny jet airplanes flying consecutive passes through the concrete parking garage below.
- A radiator comandeered by a loveless couple, constantly fighting between heat and cold, having never heard of the idea of room temperature, or reasonable hours.
- The ghost of Kurt Vonnegut, because I hated Timequake.