By Brian J. Karem

My wife has this silly idea and I can't talk her out of it.

She thinks the most obnoxious sound in the world is the car horn. Me? I can think of a lot of other sounds that are much more obnoxious, including the sound our big black dog makes after he's ingested the pot roast we accidentally left on the counter to cut up for sandwiches.

But my wife is convinced of the awful sound of the car horn and proposes that in the future car horns should become diversified. In short, she thinks you should be able to pick the sound your car will make when you honk the horn - kind of like personalized license plates.

There's the sweet "Hey fellah the light's green" your car can shout nicely after the light has turned green and the guy in front of you is still busy exploring the depths of his nostril cavity.

Then there's the "Move idiot" sound your car can shout seconds later when the same guy still hasn't moved. Finally there's the "$%#&*@#!" sound - maybe like a foghorn - you can dial up when the guy still refuses to move and the light turns yellow.

You see where this is going don't you?

You can't just stop with a couple or three choices and soon your horn will look like your cell phone/computer/iPod/whatever you keep pinned to your ear with one of those Borg implants - I mean blue tooth devices.

You'll need a sound for the idiot who is on the phone and driving 20 mph on the one-lane road where the speed limit is 50 mph.

You'll need a sound for the kids who jump out in front of your car in the neighborhood - alarming, but not over-reacting. You'll need one that's polite for friends, or nasty for relatives and strangers.

You're definitely going to need one for any time someone cuts you off in traffic. But you have to have a nice "Hey there, sorry it's me, I'm here" sound for those who really don't seem to see you and are 90-years-old and for whom the sound of a horn can trigger a major coronary. But at the same time, you need another foghorn with a twinge of anger for the mental midget who just likes to cut people off in traffic.

Then again, you're going to need a reverent tone for church when your equally happy church-going neighbor cuts you off in the church parking lot after that mass where you heard the sermon about "loving your neighbor as yourself."

And who can forget the happy "Yeah Baby!" tone you're going to need when the Redskins pummel Dallas again? Or the "Hey I'm a newlywed" tap on the pipes you'll need as you cruise down the street headed to your honeymoon on the Outer Banks.

Soon you'll see a whole slew of horns with the "My house wasn't repossessed!" sound - that will come right after the "My car wasn't repossessed!" sound and right before the "My boat wasn't repossessed!" sound. The "I didn't lose my job" sound will be at the very top, because of course without your job, you probably wouldn't have the money to waste on personalized horn sounds.

Yep, all in all, it's a silly idea, but you know what? I've heard sillier as of late.

Just imagine there's no Heaven. Imagine there are no countries. Imagine no possessions.

Imagine no need for greed or hunger.

Imagine all the people sharing the world.

Yep. Those are sillier ideas.

Imagine a working economy and a world where George Bush wasn't elected to office once - let alone twice. Oops. Wait. Chances are he got into office twice on bloodless coups, so I can't imagine a sillier way to get into public office, destroy the economy and world stability.

I heard a sillier idea, that Bush was a minion of the devil, but I don't think the devil has such incompetent boobs working for him. Probably a point of pride - the downfall of most devils.

Come to think of it, I guess the multi-horn idea of my wife isn't so silly.

But I also think John Lennon's idea of a brotherhood of man wasn't so silly too.

So don't judge by me.