My old Sony MDR-V700 DJ headphones, when plugged into my outboard computer speakers, somehow pick up transmissions between ambulance drivers and dispatch. Often very faint — upping the speaker volume has no amplifying effect — and the signal comes and goes, the voices and their radios’ glitchy cracklings drifting in and out of whatever quiet spooky music I’ve got the phones on for. (Or maybe between tracks if the desk soundtrack skews more toward the unquiet and unspooky.) This afternoon I hear dispatch sending out a vehicle for some poor citizen who is acting emotionally disturbed (no specifics given), and, shortly thereafter, for a fifteen-year-old girl who has spilled a pot of boiling water on her thigh. Thousands of mp3s on my hard drive, stacks of CDs reaching for the ceiling, untold petabytes of streaming music available on the net, and here I am eavesdropping on live local pain and suffering via an accidental antenna. This cannot be healthy…

(Semi-related detail: As I’ve mentioned before, we live across the street from a hospital. The giant ER sign that greets me every day as I walk out the front door is in both English and French and reads, in an assonant and vaguely Ned-Flanders-esque phrase that would make a fine indie-rock album title, EMERGENCY URGENCE.)