Noisemaker

Somebody was telling me about a new kind of noise generator used for office spaces. Instead of creating a 'whoosh' of white noise at low levels, it makes vowel sounds. This is supposed to confuse your brain when you hear a faint conversation. The overlapping vowel noises mask enough of the actual voices so that you can't hear--and don't even notice--the voices. Cool idea.

By coincidence I was at a party the other night where a similar topic came up. People were saying that when they were by themselves in a house at night they liked to have a cat around. Failing that, the TV will do. This way if there's a bump in the night, they can blame it on the animal, and not worry about it.

So if you put these two ideas together, you get my noisemaker idea. This box would have several settings. On the Subdivision setting, it would create small sounds like minor house creaks, refrigerators clicking, and other normal house sounds, with an occasional rattle or loud bump thrown in. This way, one could sleep soundly knowing that all noises can be blamed on the machine. On the Farm setting, one could imagine more slamming doors, rattling shutters, and such. The Urban setting would feature sirens and gunshots. Now where's that patent application?