The one about NPR
Tuesday, May 01, 2001

Hi sweeties,

It's Tuesday. i'm back on track.

About two weeks ago i was watching cartoons (Loony Tunes to be precise. As if i'd watch anything else. Well, there's always the Power Puff girls...i'm rambling). And they showed a coyote & roadrunner cartoon and well, genius. sheer genuis.

So the roadrunner zooms past the coyote right? And the coyote stops whatever it was that he was doing and ties a white napkin around his neck, grabs a fork in one hand and a knife in the other, and takes off running after the taunting roadrunner. His tongue is flapping in the wind, his arms are stretched out in front of him (still clutching the silverware), and everything is in focus except his legs which have become a tangled mass of lines. He's drooling.

And for about 15 seconds i was so jealous of that coyote. i can't remember the last time i was that gung-ho about something.
i think i've mellowed out a bit. And that really scares me.

i take naps. What's THAT all about?
i didn't used to take naps. i used to stay up 'till the wee hours of morning and then make it to an 8 o' clock class at a college that was at least 30 minutes away, ON TIME! What gives? naps? sheesh.
The weird thing is i know how lucky i am to get to take a nap at all. i APPRECIATE the naps i get.
i'm becoming an oldster.
ME?!

You wanna know something else? i'm listening to NPR nowadays. (i just said "nowadays". WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!).
NPR.
For those of you who either don't live in this country (hi rowan!) or who are still young and refuse to acknowledge that today's music:
A. all sounds the same
B. like, totally sucks
C. all sounds like the same sucky song over and over again only sometimes it's a guyband that sings the horrible song that sounds like all the others and sometimes it's a girlband that sings the repetitious song of suck. gaahh.

tangent. sorry.

NPR is National Public Radio. do they have international public radio? Because that's what i really want to listen to.

Anyway, NPR is what old people listen to while they flip between the Weather Channel and Perry Mason reruns.

Here's how it all happened. It's really simple.
As you can probably already tell, "today's music" infuriates me to no end. And rap and country music are right out. So that leaves me with classic rock. ok great. i'll take it.

Well, after working 40 hours a week for a year and only listening to classic rock during that time.... i was ready to attack the radio and beat it with a claw hammer.
That's 4,880 hours of "Stairway to Heaven", Boston, Miss Sir Elton John, and (give me strength) Peter bloody Frampton. i think the local classic rock station only has five (5) reels of music. One day i called in to make a request, i wanted to hear some Eurythmics and the lady DJ said she'd go look for some. So 15 minutes later the lady comes on the air and says she can't find any Eurythmics but that she DID find some Eagles and "that's close enough, right?" And she proceeded to play "Take it Easy".

Have i missed something?! i mean, me explaining the VAST differences between the Eurythmics and *cough* the Eagles, well, that's a Weekly in and of itself.

Ok here's something i should explain, the radio at work is actually a real life honest to God Jam Box from 1982. It belongs in the Smithsonian. What's even more incredible is that it still has it's original antenna and not a metal coat hanger with aluminium foil on top (for effect). Neat huh?
Of course, if someone did come into the shop to take the radio to an antiques museum, i'd kill them with a blow to the head with the fax machine. i gotta have that radio. don't touch.

Ok so the radio is old right? and i work in a pit of industrialness so i didn't think that the old box could pick up any other stations because well, look at the thing! But the classic rock station was playing "Brown-eyed Girl" for the gazillionth time that week and so i walked toward the menacing music box and right before Mr. Van Morrison could start with the "sha-la-la-la-la-las" i turned the tuning knob!
And i got NPR.
That was two weeks ago.

So now the first four (4) hours of my day are straight news. i get stock news, science news, boring news, NASA news, international news, news news, and just plain old news. (eggs, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, sausage, and spam) It's insane. i know about current events. What is happening to me?

The worst part of NPR so far is that between news shows they'll play 15 seconds of the coolest Irish reel, soul harmonica, or quirky bluegrass piece you've ever heard and then some bored chode comes on and tells you that "it's now 11 minutes past the hour" only to go into another news show.
Meanwhile you were really jamming to that song clip and would really like to know who the artist was and the name of the song. i guess radio is radio.

The last four (4) hours of my day are the really exciting ones. You never know what will be playing next. Some days have a Showtunes Hour (i like that one the best), somedays have a classical hour, and somedays they throw in an extra news hour (cut to singing vikings: spam spam spam spam). Today they had a computer hour and these two shemps talked about the Windows Media Player for 10 minutes (like there's 10 minutes of conversation on that?) and then people would call in and say the same things that the two host-shemps had just said. It was worth a laugh or two, i guess.

So now, when i get to work i shut off the alarm, turn on the lights, and make a beeline for the radio (napkin around my neck and silverware in hand) all excited about what i'll learn that day and secretly hoping that i'll get to hear Carol Channing sing "Hello Dolly!"

i ask you, what is happening to me?!

next week: The Suez Canal Crisis of 1956... For Dummies
(possibly co-written with Mr. Brook "sound dad" Finlayson. I'm so excited!)

jaimie "and...she's...buy-ing...a....sta-air..way.......to..heaven" pickle

If you would like to no longer receive these emails, um, i'd suggest calling the whambulance. big baby.

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