They are also abstractions crafted by scientists who decide what will count as wave activity, whether in a passive medium (as with water waves, sound waves), an excitable medium (as with cardiac and brain waves), or in a vacuum (as with light waves or radio waves; Barad 2007).
It's not just about design, it's about the experience of playing – with their excitable sound effects and visual flourishes, titles like Peggle and Bejewled hark back to the audio-visual feedback loops of those first arcade games; the strangely pleasing bleeps and blips that we all still recall.
But no: the complaint about "the Facebook" is set to a backing so excitable it sounds less like a fiftysomething's grumble than a strident call to arms.
Warren Zevon's "Excitable Boy" sounds like an upbeat piano ballad, even though the lyrics are about a deranged serial killer.
Even John Grant, not a man best known for being giddy in sound or spirit, was flushed, excitable and taken aback; set-closer Disappointing went fully disco, thanks to a crowd more up-for-it than any I've seen in the five weekends of festivals I've been to so far this year.
Amid the excitable hubbub of what sounds like a Hawaiian beach party in full swing, the sampled voice at the beginning of Since I Left You says it all.
Benjamin Lee, a 28-year-old journalist and writer from London, identified himself as the author of the popular @Michael_Haneke Twitter account, which had gained an online following by mixing the highbrow cinematic milieu of the real-life Mr. Haneke with the excitable voice of what sounded like an Internet-savvy if spelling-impaired teenager.
He is known as simply Trimpin, one of Seattle's best-kept secrets, an excitable, gray-bearded, German-born sound artist and recent recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
The White House wasted no time in naming BP as the "responsible party" and the more excitable of Wall Street's analysts sounded dire warnings that the company was destined for bankruptcy, or at least permanent banishment from business in the US.
But then you notice the ranks of excitable bicyclists and wonder whether the last sound you hear might be their merrily jingling bells as they leave tire tracks on your fallen body.
