In praise of higher gas prices...

Today is proving to be something of an acoustic adventure:

First, the hired lawn maintenance people turned up with their riding mowers, trimmers, blowers, and other assorted devices. Following that, a crew turned up to repaint the various lines in the apartment building parking lot -- an undertaking that also involved a number of implements powered by small gasoline engines, and took no small amount of time.

As a consequence, I'm hoping that there may be some additional good come out of increasing gasoline prices: a decrease in the number of gasoline-engine powered 'tools', such as leaf blowers, trimmers, weed-whackers, lawn mowers, and so on.

I've noticed that virtually NONE of the companies that makes/sells these various gizmos bothers to put anything even faintly resembling an effective muffler on the damn things -- if some jackass wants to fire one up, pretty much everybody in a 6-block radius can hear it. And if you're one of the poor saps that happens to live next door... well, that's just too farookin' bad: you get to listen as the dipstick 'driving' it gooses the throttle repeatedly while taking his/her time about getting done whatever the hell they dug the damn thing out for.

As an Added Bonus Attraction, the shitbirds that have and use them generally opt to do so without the slightest care or concern about anyone around them: want to sleep late on a Saturday or Sunday morning? Tough! Your jackass neighbor will, in all likelihood, elect to "get an early start" on their little task.
Work from home? Fuggedaboudit!
Take a nice afternoon nap? Ain't happenin', Jack.
Try to hold a conversation with someone? Nope.
Do pretty much anything that requires even a modicum of quiet? As if...

No, I'm hoping -- praying, even -- that these bloody damn annoying pieces of crap die out because the gas for them is simply too expensive. If I'm lucky enough for that to actually happen, there will (of course) be consequences: either the folks that WERE using them will have to start doing the manual labor themselves (and thus get more exercise, and thus healthier), or hire someone to do the labor FOR them (creating more jobs, or at least putting more people to work). In addition, we have less pollution in the air and in our ears.