I was thinking of this the other day... I used to work nights in a type house, we set type (back in the 80s)... no Quark or InDesign or even Macs with hair on their balls yet... all done code only, blind. Anyway, this asshole inbred kid at the front desk started popping his gum, which was annoying while you're trying to concentrate.
Then he taught the other guys at the desk how to do it. After a few nights of random POPs for eight hours I started to insert [POP] into the shit I was setting whenever they'd pop their gum. That got old (we had proofreaders).
Then I bought a cap gun at the market. I'm sure that cap guns are illegal in a hundred different ways after 9/11/01. Probably a Homeland Security issue. Anyway, I brought the cap gun in to work and typeset away. When the gum popped, I'd pick up my cap gun and hold it up and squeeze one off.
They wanted to fire me. They stopped popping gum. I kept my cap gun at home.
