Siren's Song?

[Paul Mackin]

Here are the sounds of various sirens including British WW II.

http://www.airraidsirens.com/audiovideo.html

One is described as having the pitch of Concert A.

Many are multi-toned.

In GR sirens are described as wailing. And in musical thirds

Seaman Bodine has a siren-ring:

Bodine has a siren-ring, the kind kids send away cereal boxtops for,  
cleverly arranged in his asshole so it can be operated at any time by  
blowing a fart of a certain magnitude. He's gotten pretty good at  
punctuating his music with these farted WHEEEEeeee's, working now at  
getting them in the right key, a brand-new reflex arc, ear-brain- 
hands-asshole, and a return toward innocence too.




On Nov 1, 2005, at 11:48 PM, ruudsaurins at aol.com wrote:

> A squeaming comes aquoss this guy......
>            ......and its while of the list....as a child growing up  
> (trying to) in suburban Chicago, I was fascinated by the periodic  
> testing of the civil defence siren whose piercing noise  
> (screaming?) could not be missed and would interrupt whatever was  
> going on at the time.  Since it was never accompanied by any air  
> raids, it assumed the peculiar traits of being simultaneously  
> obnoxious and reassuring.  It was as if our government wished to  
> let us know in no uncertain terms that they could warn us if needed.
>            I was always puzzled by the "screaming" at the opening  
> of GR, knowing that the V-2 was faster than sound.  That the  
> screaming could be a siren never occurred to me.  Now (Thanx!,  
> posters!) it seems quite possible that the screaming is a siren,  
> and that the inspiration may have been TRP's adolescent exposure to  
> the civil defence sirens of Long Island, assuming they employed the  
> same technology.  Does anyone out there know if Long Island had  
> those obnoxious little buggers?
>                                                                        
>   truly,
>                                                                        
>   ruud

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20051102/bb4ec91d/attachment.html>